Spoilers Supergirl - Season 1

[Admiral2]

That's the cool thing about Cat -- she's a very flawed character, but she has hidden depths. Complexity is interesting.

I see it as kind of a modern take on the original characterization of Perry White, who -- at least on the '40s radio series where he was introduced -- was extremely grouchy and prone to anger, constantly screaming imprecations at his reporters and firing them at a whim and rehiring them moments later. He was basically J. Jonah Jameson without the hatred for the superhero. But he was also a deeply principled man and a mentor figure and was very protective of the employees that he constantly insulted and screamed at and threatened to deprive of livelihood. Cat is a cooler, subtler version of that -- as she explained, she had to be, because a woman in the business world couldn't get away with the kind of vehement tantrums that Perry White was known for.

The one thing Perry White has never been depicted as is dismissive. He doesn't call his best reporter "Louise," or his notional protégé "Jamie Holden," or for all his tantrums treat any of his close associates like throwaway people. Cat threatened "Kira" with unemployment just to prove a point. She is not Perry White. She's Lex Luthor, ruthless businessman (or at least she would be if you assigned her worst character traits to a man.)

 

[Admiral2]

As it stands, that character--Cat--was designed to be annoying; the bitchy foil is not endearing to anyone. The characterization is so extreme that attempts to humanize her with her family woes still do nothing to justify her biting, complaints, and manipulation. No amount of personal whining justifies 24-hour asshole mistreatment of all around her, so if she's kept at arm's length, that will help the main focus of the series develop.

Supergirl/Kara already has enough personal life issues to deal with, and does not need the "I know who you are!" crap from the boss.

Yes, TG, we got it. Are we supposed to give Berlanti and Company cookies and chocolate milk because they wanted to create an a-hole character and managed to do it? Yay them!

There's a difference between being annoying and interesting to watch and just being annoying. Sheldon from Big Bang Theory is annoying but interesting to watch (I suppose. I hate it, but there must be some reason the show's been on so long.). Cat is just annoying. Nobody is saying Kara needs the aggravation of Cat knowing her secret. I'm saying Cat needs to know to bring her up to "annoying but interesting" status, because then we'll get to see how she decides to use the information, or whether she uses it at all.

 

[davejames]

I find Cat to be pretty entertaining myself. She's bitchy as all hell, but Flockhart delivers her lines in such a fun and breezy way that the character never actually feels annoying to me.



Of course... I'm one of the very few people who also thinks Willie in Temple of Doom is a lot of fun to watch, so maybe I just have a really high tolerance for those kind of bitchy/whiny/annoying characters.

 

[USS Triumphant]

And, of course, the lab is room 52. Why is DC so obsessed with that number?

I assume you're kidding?

Comic books generally come out weekly. Does that help?

Maximum verbosity

I didn't say an individual series. I said "comic books". As in, the whole shooting match.

And the reason people think you get upset is because you rant. Personally, I think you do it because you are trying to be thorough and express yourself precisely, sometimes, and sometimes it is because you are trying to drive a point home and you know that repeating an idea several different ways is a valid strategy for doing that, but, when MOST people do that, it is because they have become emotional about a subject. So sometimes you come off that way.

 

[davejames]

Eh, I wouldn't call what he does "ranting." Just explaining things verrry thoroughly.

 

[Christopher]

I didn't say an individual series. I said "comic books". As in, the whole shooting match.

But there are many, many things that come out weekly. New episodes of TV series, new issues of magazines, new DVD releases, etc. As I've said, it's far too generic a phenomenon to explain why only one specific comics publisher has chosen within only the past 9-10 years to make that number a key recurring meme. Yes, obviously comics do come out weekly, but comics are also printed on paper, are rectangular in shape, contain words and pictures, etc. Yet DC doesn't use "paper" or "rectangle" as a recurring mythology meme, and they do use the number 52. So pointing out that comics come out 52 times a year and assuming that somehow answers the question is like pointing out that a murder victim was shot with a bullet and saying that solves the crime. It is obviously an element of the case, but it is not an explanatory one in itself. The important thing is not the fact that the bullet exists, but the reason why the bullet ended up where it did.

 

[Kai "the spy"]

Maybe they'll call the next crossover "2", after the number of staples used on any copy of a single issue.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Individual fullsized physical titles do not come out weekly if they are made by the collaboration of one artist and one writer, without sweet delicious meth.

One a month. 12 to 14 issues annually is pushing it.



What Marvel did with Amazing Spider-Man a few years back was pretty cool.

Marvel cancelled 5 or 6 ongoing Spider-Man books, with different adjectives, Sensational, friendly, Web of, Spectacular, etc, and numbering, and then hired back all the same writers and artists (and editors) to all work on Amazing Spider-Man together in shifts of 6 episodes, which came out weekly, each and then switch out.

Writing for the trade.

 

[Corran Horn]

I didn't say an individual series. I said "comic books". As in, the whole shooting match.

But there are many, many things that come out weekly. New episodes of TV series, new issues of magazines, new DVD releases, etc. As I've said, it's far too generic a phenomenon to explain why only one specific comics publisher has chosen within only the past 9-10 years to make that number a key recurring meme. Yes, obviously comics do come out weekly, but comics are also printed on paper, are rectangular in shape, contain words and pictures, etc. Yet DC doesn't use "paper" or "rectangle" as a recurring mythology meme, and they do use the number 52. So pointing out that comics come out 52 times a year and assuming that somehow answers the question is like pointing out that a murder victim was shot with a bullet and saying that solves the crime. It is obviously an element of the case, but it is not an explanatory one in itself. The important thing is not the fact that the bullet exists, but the reason why the bullet ended up where it did.

This is going to collapse into a singularity pretty soon.

It's obvious that it's because it's a weekly and there's 52 weeks in a year.

Someone thought that was a 'cute' idea.

In your comparison your question is like asking whether a murder victim with a gunshot wound was killed by the smoking gun found at the scene or a trebuchet 800 miles away.

 

[Christopher]

It's obvious that it's because it's a weekly and there's 52 weeks in a year.

Yes, it is obvious that that's why they chose that name for their 2006-7 limited series that put out one issue per week for an entire year. I have already stated that. The actual question is about what came next -- why they chose to continue invoking that number over the years that followed. As I said, in the case of the limited series, it ended with the re-establishment of the DC multiverse, and they decided to have 52 different universes for the sake of resonance with the title. That much is clear, if a bit arbitrary. But then they chose to invoke the number again when they did their "New 52" reboot, and that's when it was elevated even further to the level of a franchise-defining number. It's that decision to jump from having 52 parallel universes to having a single rebooted timeline with 52 concurrently published titles in it that's a bit of a leap -- although I suppose that, since it was a universe reboot, maybe that's what they saw as the connection.

An alternative answer might be that the 52 limited series itself was successful and popular enough that DC wanted to continue to evoke it in subsequent events. Does anyone, like maybe Greg Cox, have information on how popular an event it was, compared to other DC events?

And no, the number of weeks in the year does not explain why they chose to have 52 titles in their rebooted lineup, because they put out 52 issues per month, not per year. So why they chose to elevate that number to such a defining level is not as "obvious" as you assume.

You seem to be suggesting that the obvious answer is the point at which you stop asking questions. I see it instead as the point at which you need to start asking deeper questions. The obvious answer is quite frequently the wrong answer. At best, it's the tip of the iceberg. And just as a general rule, there is no point at which one should ever stop asking questions or stop thinking about things.

Still, I suppose I should be grateful for the pushback here, because my attempts to explain my question further have given me the opportunity to examine its aspects more deepy and come up with some possible answers for it. So by not just accepting the "obvious" answer, I've learned something. Which is how it's supposed to work.

 

[tomalak301]

As it stands, that character--Cat--was designed to be annoying; the bitchy foil is not endearing to anyone. The characterization is so extreme that attempts to humanize her with her family woes still do nothing to justify her biting, complaints, and manipulation. No amount of personal whining justifies 24-hour asshole mistreatment of all around her, so if she's kept at arm's length, that will help the main focus of the series develop.

Supergirl/Kara already has enough personal life issues to deal with, and does not need the "I know who you are!" crap from the boss.

Yes, TG, we got it. Are we supposed to give Berlanti and Company cookies and chocolate milk because they wanted to create an a-hole character and managed to do it? Yay them!

There's a difference between being annoying and interesting to watch and just being annoying. Sheldon from Big Bang Theory is annoying but interesting to watch (I suppose. I hate it, but there must be some reason the show's been on so long.). Cat is just annoying. Nobody is saying Kara needs the aggravation of Cat knowing her secret. I'm saying Cat needs to know to bring her up to "annoying but interesting" status, because then we'll get to see how she decides to use the information, or whether she uses it at all.

I think so far Cat has been the most interesting character on this show. Part of that is the relationship with Kara but I didn't like her after the first episode and she got better as the season has gone on. It's actually one of the big reasons why I wasn't happy with them going back to Cat not knowing Kara was Supergirl. It feels like they sacrificed the relationship development we have gotten so far in favor of maintaining the secret identity and that's a shame. It's also something I'm noticing Berlanti and co do quite a bit in The Flash and I don't like it there either. Maybe in these shows the characters develop too fast, but they shouldn't undo that development just to maintain the status quo.

 

[Taylirious]

Cat has grown on me week to week and I think Calista Flockhart gets more into the character week to week as well. I wasn't into her in the pilot.

Melissa Benoist is simply SUPER! I actually wish she was the DCCU Kara.

 

[The Old Mixer]

In your comparison your question is like asking whether a murder victim with a gunshot wound was killed by the smoking gun found at the scene or a trebuchet 800 miles away.

If it happened in a J. J. Abrams film, not only would the trebuchet be the murder weapon, but there'd be eyewitnesses in China to corroborate it!

 

[Corran Horn]

And no, the number of weeks in the year does not explain why they chose to have 52 titles in their rebooted lineup, because they put out 52 issues per month, not per year. So why they chose to elevate that number to such a defining level is not as "obvious" as you assume.

There are entire wikipedia articles on it.

If you can trace the New 52 back to the 52 weekly and not think it leads to 52 weeks in a year I don't know what to tell you.

 

[USS Triumphant]

And no, the number of weeks in the year does not explain why they chose to have 52 titles in their rebooted lineup, because they put out 52 issues per month, not per year. So why they chose to elevate that number to such a defining level is not as "obvious" as you assume.

There are entire wikipedia articles on it.

If you can trace the New 52 back to the 52 weekly and not think it leads to 52 weeks in a year I don't know what to tell you.

I think he's missing that it is one of those situations where someone thinks something that is important in their trade should be important to everyone else. It isn't just there's 52 weeks in a year, it's that there's 52 weeks on the annual comics release calendar, if you take the difference.

It's like this shirt I have - I work in IT - where stick figure A asks stick figure B to make a sandwich, and B says no, and then A says "SUDO Make me a sandwich", and B says, "Okay." It's funny for people who work with that command, but the comic almost presents it like it is something that everyone should think is amusing. That's how I see what DC has done with "52". They're trying to make "fetch" happen.

 

[Corran Horn]

That's how I see what DC has done with "52". They're trying to make "fetch" happen.

I get that they're trying to be cute with it. Why they thought it was cute is a whole other thing.

(and I'm always in the wheel)

 

[Christopher]

If you can trace the New 52 back to the 52 weekly and not think it leads to 52 weeks in a year I don't know what to tell you.

You're still getting it backwards. That's not the point I'm trying to get to, it's the point I'm trying to get from. It's the obvious starting point, as I have acknowledged half a dozen times by now with you apparently not noticing. But I'm heading in the opposite direction from the one you think I am. I want to know how it got from that obvious starting point to where it is now.

And please, please, stop stating your grasp of the obvious as if it represented an accomplishment.

 

[USS Triumphant]

I rather think it is you that is missing a nuanced part of what you are calling the obvious. I tried to explain it, but to be fair, I don't think I did the best job of it.

 

[Thestral]

There's not anything complicated to it really. DC folks think it's cute to make "52" a recurring number as an in-house meme. It's really no different than 1138 for Lucas or 47 for Star Trek. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, sometimes an in-joke is just an in-joke.

They've made fetch happen... for those who care.

 

[EnderAKH]

If you can trace the New 52 back to the 52 weekly and not think it leads to 52 weeks in a year I don't know what to tell you.

You're still getting it backwards. That's not the point I'm trying to get to, it's the point I'm trying to get from. It's the obvious starting point, as I have acknowledged half a dozen times by now with you apparently not noticing. But I'm heading in the opposite direction from the one you think I am. I want to know how it got from that obvious starting point to where it is now.

And please, please, stop stating your grasp of the obvious as if it represented an accomplishment.

In the original 52 series, it was revealed that there were 52 alternate universes containing 52 alternate earth's so that the title of the series would have a double meaning. So for several years following there were 52 earth's in the DC universe, solidifying the number 52 as significant the the DC world. Because that number now had significance, when they relaunched the DC universe they decided to release 52 new series thus reinforcing the importance of 52 and giving it another facet. It has now become a kind of totem for DC.