Supergirl - Season Four

I don't know. I think they went with the baby angle as a excuse for a breakup because the one actor was leaving and also felt like it played with with the Reign storyline but it never was all that interesting so now they are bringing it back because they know they had to address it at some point and they want her and Kelly to become a couple.

If her and Kelly ends up becoming interesting then maybe it will work out in the end but I haven't personally warmed up to Kelly yet. Perhaps in time. To me the most interesting romance is actually is Brainy and Nia. Well the Lex Luthor/Teschmacher is kind of interesting as well. I want more Lex/Teschmacher and Otis scenes together.

Jason

Jason

 

Yes, obviously, but I'm talking about this week's episode specifically, not last season.

I don't see that as anything close to a romance. Eve may be in love with Lex, but she's just a lackey to him.

 

That's true. I should have said unrequited romance where she feels one thing and he doesn't.


Jason

 

I hadn’t been watching past the first couple or so and had like a daunting dozen plus episodes on my DVR. Of course, being CW I couldn’t watch the ones I was missing from the start of the season. So I watched like the last sixish or so and deleted the rest. (I actually deleted the whole season of Arrow unwatched which was kind of liberating)

I thought Lex Luthor worked surprisingly well. I was a bit skeptical hearing Jon Cryer had been cast but I think he’s been good. The notRussia Supergirl has been interesting and Melissa Benoist has done a good job there as well. Nia/Dreamer has been solid and her relationship with Brainy cute. All pretty decent and I don’t feel I’ve missed too much.

It’s a little odd how Lex and Red Daughter (ugh) kind of fell away to go back to the other story beats. And yeah the baby stuff I could do without, seems it should have came earlier if they had to bring that in. I’m curious if they pull anything out of the Sam Witwer storyline which was more compelling earlier and has gotten a bit hamfisted.

 

Yeah the Lockwood storyline has gone downhill. He is now just a cliche baddie at this point. Lex Luthor and Russia Supergirl is more interesting. Maybe this show should think about doing less episodes or splitting arcs into down the line much like "The Flash" needs to do.

Jason

 

15-20% of the population. That means 1 out of every five or six characters on a program should not be straight if you want to incorporate real world demographics. That character deserves the same time and subplots as the others based on your minimal expectations. The CW's entire advertising campaign the past few years has been promoting diversity---Dare to Defy. They have stated their "political" position--if you don't like it then watch something else.

 

Which is just as much a marketing/business position. The Millennial/Post-Millennial target audience that networks like The CW and Freeform are targeted toward is diverse, inclusive, progressive, and socially activist, and the marketing of those networks is tailored to those attitudes. Which is sensible, because that generation is the future; their demographic and cultural presence is only going to increase (which is what the old white male conservative establishment is so terrified of these days). Diversity isn't a pie-in-the-sky abstraction, it's the everyday reality that generation has grown up with. It's simply who they are. So businesses that want their patronage need to cater to who they are.

 

True, but that doesn't keep a marketing campaign like The CW's "We Are Open" spots from being genuinely positive and encouraging.

For that matter, it's struck me how common it is these days for even mainstream advertising to feature diverse actors, as well as frequently including interracial and gay couples. And then I think about how bigots must be affronted by virtually everything they encounter out in the world at this point. And then I feel all warm inside.

 

SJW was a concept / term I was unfamiliar with before this show. I can't recall what thread I first read it in, but I found it alternately confusing and belittling.

"Social Justice Warrior" sounds like it should be a good thing, right?

Superman seems like the quintessential SJW as his motto is nothing if not a socially progressive view, "Truth, Justice, and the American way."

https://thegreatdepressionandthe1930s.weebly.com/superman-comic.html

"American way..." Early on it seemed to mean anti-fascist, anti totalitarian, pro-little guy.

https://www.supermanhomepage.com/comics/comics.php?topic=articles/new-deal-symbol

The iconic scene of Superman rescuing a cat from a tree and giving it back to a small child is the parallel to Mathew 6:25-34. If God does not forget the birds of the air or the lillies of the field then he will not forget me, the little guy, the nobody, the downtrodden.

Sounds pretty SJW to me... then again until a year ago or so ago SJW did not sound like anything to me.



In a comic book world where catering to the male fantasy of what women should look like much less think like...

... I can see how a 21st century SuperGIRL as a Social Justice Warrior can seem more than daunting. It can be down right threatening.



I love the argument that if the writers were only better/more subtle in their social justice agenda the show would be better received, but when the lead character in the show is female its hard to be subtle about that part of the agenda that deals with female empowerment because its obvious every time she comes on screen.

In fact, Supergirl's "agenda" makes me think of another super-female...



A woman who worked for social justice, but this time as a way to atone for Xena's many sins against humanity. Hmmm, another female superhero show that the second most important person in the series be a non-superpowered female.

Speaking of non superpowered female lead shows who's mere existence trumpets SJW...



I couldn't keep this name without her.

I love Supergirl and her sister and everything that relationship brings to the show, even if its about nonsanctioned alien (krypton) immigration, alternate (daxamite/kryptonian) sexuality, or female (Queen of all Media, or President of the USA, or head of the DEO) empowerment.



That's why I watch it weekly.

 

Pretty much for cynical business reasons to make money than them actually becoming "woke" in other words, but the right would have us believe that these helpless companies have been infiltrated by communists who now using their positions of influence to brainwash everyone with their evil social justice propaganda.

 

I figure maybe the intent of the people who coined the term was to accuse their opposition of being too fanatical or militant about social justice... but there's always been an implicit undercurrent that social justice isn't something they value or desire.

It might be partly that the right-wing media have spent decades demonizing progressive values and policies as "socialist," to the point that they've stripped the term of its actual meaning and present-day progressive politicians are openly adopting the "socialist" label as a positive even though their policies are just socially liberal. But anyway, maybe the right-wing media's audience has been conditioned by now to hear any phrase beginning with "social" as a bad thing.

I wouldn't call them "cynical" business reasons, necessarily, just pragmatic, like profit-making businesses always have to be. Better to acknowledge the reality that the audience is there and give them what they want than to keep excluding them. It's good for the audience and good for the business.

In one of the Marvel threads, the question was recently raised why the Marvel Studios TV division, which is led by the right-wing, Trump-supporting Ike Permutter, is so much more progressive in portraying racial and sexual diversity than the movies. And I think the answer is that business outweighs politics. It's the same reason Rupert Murdoch's FOX TV network has shown so many left-leaning or iconoclastic programs over the decades, despite having the same owner as the right-wing propaganda engine calling itself "Fox News." If it's what the audience wants to see, if it sells ad time and makes the company a profit, then it's what the company will put out. Even the staunchest right-wing billionaires will fund "liberal media" as long as there's an audience that will make it profitable.

 

Any or all of which he richly deserves, since his crimes and cruelties have far exceeded any possible justification. But yeah, it would have been better drama and storytelling if he had remained the more complex figure from earlier in the season, an antagonist who challenged our heroes on an intellectual and moral plane. He was far more interesting one-upping Kara in a televised debate or attempting to seduce James to his cause than he is bellowing and throwing cars around.

 

It won't be popular here, but Lockwood is an absolutely tragic character, molded by loss and circumstance, his own self righteousness propped up by his own palpable sense of loss, death and pain. The alien that killed his wife is absolutely a murderer, and absolutely should have been arrested as a lone criminal. That action alone will continue to self-justify his actions, inside his own tortured psyche. The nuance of villains in the Arrowverse is often lacking - last year on The Flash, the Thinker and his wife started out the same as Lockwood, nuanced, tragic, deep, and ended up chewing scenery. Honestly, I'll call it the Lorca syndrome......

 

Except that Lorca was always, always meant to be a bad guy and we were shown clear evidence of it throughout the season; it's just that we wanted to think he was more nuanced and so we rationalized away his awful behavior as "Oh, it's the harsh necessities of war" or "Oh, he's just pretending to be a jerk to help motivate that other person" or "Oh, he's broken by his past trauma" or whatever, when really the signs were always clearly there and we were just making excuses in our own minds because we wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. He's not a character who started out nuanced and lost it, he's a character who tricked us into thinking he was more nuanced than he was. And I totally fell for it at the time, but once the truth came out, I looked back and realized that it had been staring us in the face all along, and we just fooled ourselves because of our own desire for him to be nuanced.

 

Some of us weren't fooled by Lorca.

 

Its actually one of my complaints that Lockwood would be interesting as a one-dimensional embodiment of hate but the show expects us to feel sorry for him past the point he murders innocent factory workers. Yes, I sympathized up to the point he was radicalized but he's a monster afterward.

 

But thats the whole point - we know that he's crossed the line, but his own internal moral scale / ego / psyche is processing it differently - he still absolutely believes he is the good guy; these inhuman creatures just murdered his wife, and are getting away with it! Its the Lex syndrome on a smaller scale. He feels absolutely justified, his hate and self righteousness enabling a viscious circle where he can not psychologically admit to himself that he has crossed the line or is wrong in any way. HIS loss, HIS hate, is RIGHTEOUS - to *himself* - and he keeps proving himself right every time "they" do something terrible... like Supergirl attacking the whitehouse, or an alien murdering his wife. The deeper he goes the more desparate he gets which makes him need to try that much harder and become that much more viscious. Its not dissimilar to how i've always viewed the descent of Hal Jordan into Parallax (pre retcon). It could be fascinating but they are ignoring any depth they've set up.

 

Or just wanted to think that the writing was deeper, the twists not so choreographed and predictable, or that there was no way a first year show was going to descend into the MU that quickly.

The perspective needed to understand the character pre-twist was a necessary one based on what we knew about the character at the time.

 

I thought that it was pretty darn obvious that Lorca was a psychopath all along. I didn't need to know he was from the MU to see that. It was about character, not birthplace.

Or so I thought, or thought it should have been. I was awfully disappointed that his evil nature was "explained" by making him from the MU. That did hew towards reducing character to birthplace, which is very shallow.