Spoilers Supergirl - Season 3

[Christopher]

Daxamites were a bit more personal, but only because Mon-El is her boyfriend, so again she's one step removed from the baddie.

Well, also because Rhea's feud was with her as a representative of Kryptonian culture. Kara had needed to deal with her cultural prejudices about Daxamites in getting to know Mon-El, and Rhea represented the reverse, the long-simmering Daxamite resentment of Kryptonians and their blame of Krypton for bringing about the destruction of Daxamite civilization by inconsiderately exploding. So it wasn't just indirectly personal through Mon-El. Yes, Rhea wanted Mon-El back, but the reason she was so adamant about it was because she hated Kara for taking Mon-El from her and "corrupting" his values. Krypton had taken her rule from her, and now one of the last Kryptonians had taken her son from her, and her pride would never accept that. As we saw when she killed her husband, Rhea cared more about her pride and her dominance than she did about her family. So ultimately, her actions were motivated more by her hatred for Kara than by her love of her son. I'd say that was pretty personal.

Still, I think I prefer it when not every story arc revolves around the hero's own personal problems. We've had that on Arrow this season, and pretty much the entirety of The Flash has been about Barry cleaning up problems that either he caused directly or that others caused in reaction to him. To me, superheroes should be defined by selflessness, by their willingness to put themselves on the line to help and protect others. When the narratives are all about the heroes dealing with their own personal problems, it's too self-centered. Sure, let them have personal drama in the subplots, but don't have every threat they face be directly about themselves or their immediate families. Heroism should be outer-directed, but the rise of serialized, character-driven TV narratives means that protagonists have become far more egocentric in their concerns.

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

What Moron didn't know Jimmy and Kara would eventually be fucking, after watching the pilot, which had a cold opening 8 months before it's debut on cbs?

The "morons" who--under no circumstances--ever considered Kara to be with a black man. In their minds, they wanted the typical CW show, and after showrunner capitulation, they got that with the rushed relationship with Mon-El.

The decision to move away from the Kara/James relationship was made between April and July of last year,

The episodes were long in the can / aired by that time, which means the audience reaction was known all season long, and into the hiatus period, hence the reason the S2 break-up appeared so abrupt after a full season of building the James/Kara relationship.

and there is zero actual evidence supporting the notion that negative fan reaction had anything to do with it... hence my emphatic dismissal of said notion as "completely unfounded paranoia".

The audience reactions were real, and there's no production company that is unaware of audience response online and at times, base decisions on it. That is as much an important part of the business of filmmaking as producing the content. So, for a series to spend the entire first season building a relationship, then abruptly ending it at the beginning of the next goes further in supporting the audience influence having an effect than your unsubstantiated claims in the opposite, and/or neverending desire to sell this series as perfect.

 

[dahj]

To me, superheroes should be defined by selflessness, by their willingness to put themselves on the line to help and protect others.

I don't disagree, and that works for villain of the week episodes, where the heroes get to actually help someone, or solve a particular issue, in 40 minutes, but for a villain to sustain twentyish episodes it's kinda hard to keep it interesting without at least some kind of personal connection.

 

[Awesome Possum]

I don't disagree, and that works for villain of the week episodes, where the heroes get to actually help someone, or solve a particular issue, in 40 minutes, but for a villain to sustain twentyish episodes it's kinda hard to keep it interesting without at least some kind of personal connection.

True, just look at the first season of the Flash. Reverse Flash was the best villain. He was the man responsible for killing Barry's mother and his mentor and childhood hero. The show has never been able to top him.

 

[Christopher]

but for a villain to sustain twentyish episodes it's kinda hard to keep it interesting without at least some kind of personal connection.

Why? Does a soldier in a WWII story have to be Hitler's cousin for the story to be engaging? Isn't "Oh, I'm really mad at this bad guy for hurting/killing people" a relatable enough motivation? Is our generation really so pathologically self-absorbed that we no longer know how to identify with people whose primary desire in life is to help others, regardless of personal friendship or family ties?

Batman isn't related to the Joker. Only one movie -- which was a decent Tim Burton movie but a deeply inauthentic Batman story -- ever tried to tie the Joker into Batman's origin. What makes the Joker Batman's arch-nemesis isn't something personal, beyond the fact that Batman has an intense personal motivation to protect people from harm and the Joker lives to cause people harm. The Joker is the ultimate embodiment of the randomness of violent crime, the cruel pointlessness of murders like the one that took Bruce Wayne's parents, and that alone is enough to make it personal for Batman. Insofar as there's any personal link between them, it's the Joker who makes it personal by fixating upon Batman as his favorite sparring partner and going to great lengths to torment him, do horrible things to his sidekicks, etc.

This should be what differentiates heroes from villains. Villains can be motivated by revenge, vendettas, petty personal stuff like that, but heroes should be motivated primarily by the desire to protect everyone. So their guiding motives shouldn't be about themselves. The conflict comes from how their selfless mission to protect others creates difficulties for their personal lives, whether it's by interfering with their jobs and relationships or getting their loved ones placed in danger by the villains who do make it personal.

Sure, it can be worthwhile to do stories with more personal connections between hero and villain. For instance, the Green Goblin is the father of Spider-Man's best friend, Doctor Doom is an old college friend/rival of Reed Richards, Star Sapphire is Hal Jordan's girlfriend under alien mind control, etc. But it gets tiresome if it's always that way. Then it ceases to be about a hero protecting the innocent and it just becomes a soap opera about superpowered people acting out their petty personal drama in ways that cause massive property damage.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Still, I think I prefer it when not every story arc revolves around the hero's own personal problems. We've had that on Arrow this season, and pretty much the entirety of The Flash has been about Barry cleaning up problems that either he caused directly or that others caused in reaction to him. To me, superheroes should be defined by selflessness, by their willingness to put themselves on the line to help and protect others. When the narratives are all about the heroes dealing with their own personal problems, it's too self-centered. Sure, let them have personal drama in the subplots, but don't have every threat they face be directly about themselves or their immediate families. Heroism should be outer-directed, but the rise of serialized, character-driven TV narratives means that protagonists have become far more egocentric in their concerns.

I was actually hoping otherwise for season three. Season two had a happy ending for all of the main characters, except Supergirl and Mon-El. Supergirl flew away in pain with a look of anguish on her face. I was hoping that we'd spend at least some time in season three focusing on how she copes with the denial of her personal fulfillment. Furthermore, at some point, she could reach a breaking point or need to take a break.

Regardless, we still need to focus on Supergirl's personal issues sometimes, have her make decisions, not all of which are right, face consequences, learn, and grow, or otherwise she's not much of a character. What you are proposing sounds at least somewhat like what Superman has been routinely criticized for over the years, being an uninteresting and one-dimensional paragon of virtue. Thankfully, this show has taken a step away from that. For example, overcoming her prejudice against Daxamites was an example of Supergirl starting out wrong and engaging in personal growth to become a better hero.

This is the Supergirl show, so I hope in this season we see Supergirl herself face an obstacle that triggers, in an interesting way, the need for personal growth in order to become a better hero. Stories are about conflict, you know.

 

[dahj]

Why?

Because there's only so many times you can save a busload of kids.

You kind of went on a tangent there that has nothing to do with what I said, exemplified by this...

Batman isn't related to the Joker.

You seem to infer that by personal I meant that the hero should be driven by selfish motives, but I implied no such thing, just that for a villain to be interesting for 20 episodes, it can't be just the hero purely mechanically stopping the villain's evil plans week in, week out. Some connection between them has to form (or preexist) otherwise one might as well get a different villain every week.

And the Batman/Joker example is actually exactly what I'm talking about, that's the hero/villain relationship where the focus of most stories where they face each other, certainly the focus of the most famous stories, is precisely on the personal conflict between them, and not on the selfless saving of civilians. Of course Batman opposes Joker for selfless reasons, but the meat of the story is never in just that...

Is our generation really so pathologically self-absorbed

Well, yeah, but that's a whole 'nother topic...

 

[Christopher]

You seem to infer that by personal I meant that the hero should be driven by selfish motives, but I implied no such thing, just that for a villain to be interesting for 20 episodes, it can't be just the hero purely mechanically stopping the villain's evil plans week in, week out. Some connection between them has to form (or preexist) otherwise one might as well get a different villain every week.

Form, sure. The specific thing I've been talking about all along is the tendency in much series television today to have every storyline revolve entirely around the protagonists themselves, the consequences of their own actions, or their immediate family. The complaint was that the big bads this season weren't sufficiently personally connected to Supergirl, and I don't agree with that. She had an emotional stake in Cadmus due to its effect on her foster family as well as her concern for the welfare of her fellow alien refugees on Earth, and she had an emotional stake in Rhea's actions through Mon-El and as a result of Rhea's personal vendetta against her. What I'm saying is that she could form personal involvement in a storyline without having to have a pre-existing personal connection to the people driving it, as she did with Astra. I think you're basically saying the same.

But I, for one, don't need a hero to have some specific personal reason to care about fighting the bad guys, like a member of their family being hurt or the situation reminding them of their daddy issues or whatever. I think people caring about other people should be the default. Especially for someone like Supergirl. She cares about everyone. It shouldn't matter if it's her best friend or someone she's never met before -- she'd be just as saddened to see them hurt and just as eager to help and protect them. You can certainly get good stories out of a character's connection to a guest star, like James and the alien boy the other week -- or, heck, like most series television prior to a couple of decades ago.

And the Batman/Joker example is actually exactly what I'm talking about, that's the hero/villain relationship where the focus of most stories where they face each other, certainly the focus of the most famous stories, is precisely on the personal conflict between them, and not on the selfless saving of civilians. Of course Batman opposes Joker for selfless reasons, but the meat of the story is never in just that...

But that's just what I'm saying. It's only personal from the Joker's end, because either he resents Batman for constantly stopping him or is fixated on Batman as his favorite opponent in the "game" he thinks he's playing. Batman doesn't need a personal motive to counter the Joker, beyond the personal loss that drives him to do everything in his power to make sure that nobody else has to suffer the same pain he did. Yes, some stories have tried to make it more personal by having the Joker kill Robin or paralyze Batgirl or whatever, but that's superimposed onto a conflict that was already well-established without it -- and, indeed, part of the point of The Killing Joke was that it didn't actually change anything from Batman's side of things. The Joker wanted it to drive Batman and Gordon over the edge, but they refused to let it, as awful as it was. They still did things by the book (insofar as the book allows for a guy in a cape and mask), and Batman still even tried to reach the Joker and reason with him, to break the cycle of violence before it got worse. The enemy that Batman has a personal vendetta against isn't the Joker -- it's crime. All crime. He doesn't want anyone to have to suffer the way he suffered, not if he can help it. So every fight against every criminal is equally personal to him. That one horrible moment under that streetlamp (it wasn't actually an alley -- that's just a nickname the street acquired) was the most personal motivation imaginable. So any attempt to graft on a more personal vendetta against any particular villain is superfluous to Batman's character.

 

[DigificWriter]

I think the main problem is that her ties to the ongoing storylines were more indirect than direct this year.

This is patently incorrect. Kara's personal connections to the Cadmus storyline manifested themselves in the form of her friendship to Lena and her love for Jeremiah, and her personal connections to the Daxamite invasion storyline manifested themselves in the form of her relationship with Mon-El and the underlying prejudices against Daxamites that had been ingrained in her, subconsciously, since she was a child.

The two storylines were also linked to each other through her broader concern for the welfare of all life on Earth, both human and alien.

Even the perceived "focus" on Mon-El ties directly into Kara's individual season-wide narrative journey, first through her struggle to set aside her preconceived prejudices, then through her "mentorship" of him, and then through the evolution of their romantic relationship.

By comparison and contrast, Alex and Winn had one episode each in which they were the "primary focus point", and J'onn, James, and Lena had two episodes each in which they were the "primary focus point". That's 8 episodes out of 22 that were primarily focused on a character other than Kara and her personal narrative journey either in costume, out of costume, or in service of the Cadmus or Daxamite invasion storylines.

 

[Guy Gardener]

You actually got in your little car, went down to the patent office and took out a patent?

How much does that cost?

 

[dahj]

The complaint was that the big bads this season weren't sufficiently personally connected to Supergirl

That wasn't a complaint, I was responding to DigificWriter's post on the topic of "Kara wasn't the focus of her own show" that he raised, and I drew a parallel between seasons' baddies to point out the difference: she was so heavily front and center for every major plot in Season One(which is understandable because the whole season is kinda like a big origin story), and Season Two's major plots involved others in a much more prominent way, so she wasn't as directly involved in everything.

I even literally said that this is not a bad thing in principle, my only complaint is that the execution was at times off and she did feel at times lost in the shuffle.

Anyway...

I think you're basically saying the same.

Pretty much, though...

But I, for one, don't need a hero to have some specific personal reason to care about fighting the bad guys, like a member of their family being hurt or the situation reminding them of their daddy issues or whatever.

I think you're still not quite getting what I mean by personal, perhaps my English is a bit limited, but I really can't think of a better word right now. I don't mean that the hero must have a personal reason or motive to fight the villain, but that the encounter should in some way speak about her character, her personality, challenge her, reveal something personal about her... something other than "this person fights baddies."

I think people caring about other people should be the default.

Absolutely, that's my whole point, that this is the default.
And sure, you can do a show about just that, but a show will be much more interesting and compelling if you build other stuff on top of that.

Basically...

to have every storyline revolve entirely around the protagonists themselves

You don't have to, but I doesn't have to be a bad thing if you do.

Take Jessica Cruz, she cares and wants to help, that's a given, but the entire focus of her stories is just on her and her battle with anxiety. That's a far more important and powerful story than if she's just a green lady helping people. And that's the sort of personal I'm talking about, not that the villains might go after her sister.

 

[Jayson1]

For me I don't think Supergirl needs a villian with a close connection to her but I do think she needs some kind of person in her life who isn't a big fan of hers who really challenges her ethic's. On "Buffy" you had Cordy and Spike and on "Smallville" you had Lex. If you don't have that type of character then it does have to come from the villian.

Jason

 

[Christopher]

I think you're still not quite getting what I mean by personal, perhaps my English is a bit limited, but I really can't think of a better word right now. I don't mean that the hero must have a personal reason or motive to fight the villain, but that the encounter should in some way speak about her character, her personality, challenge her, reveal something personal about her... something other than "this person fights baddies."
...
Take Jessica Cruz, she cares and wants to help, that's a given, but the entire focus of her stories is just on her and her battle with anxiety. That's a far more important and powerful story than if she's just a green lady helping people. And that's the sort of personal I'm talking about, not that the villains might go after her sister.

Well, sure, I have no problem with that. What I'm talking about are storylines where the primary antagonists are related to the hero, or where their entire season-spanning evil plot is a reaction to the hero. Like Alias, where all the big spy intrigue arcs ultimately turned out to revolve directly around the heroine, her parents, her love interest's father, etc. Or Steven Moffat's Doctor Who, where just about every season-long master plan of the villains has turned out to be a direct reaction to the Doctor's existence. That sort of thing. Sure, sometimes that can work well. The entire series arc of Fringe was basically about Walter Bishop dealing with the consequences of his own younger self's mistakes, the chief of which was directly connected to his son, and that gave it a unity that helped hold it together through its various shifts of subject and format. But as I said, it's become too commonplace these days to do stories like that. I'm not just talking about stories that explore how the lead character is affected by the villainy, I'm talking about stories where the villainy wouldn't even occur if not for the presence of the hero and/or their family. Those kinds of story are just too insular and self-absorbed.

For me I don't think Supergirl needs a villian with a close connection to her but I do think she needs some kind of person in her life who isn't a big fan of hers who really challenges her ethic's. On "Buffy" you had Cordy and Spike and on "Smallville" you had Lex. If you don't have that type of character then it does have to come from the villian.

Max Lord filled that role well in the first season; it's too bad he didn't follow the show to Vancouver. I guess Lillian was pretty much the person who took over that role in season 2. She was mostly more villainous, but she did end up following a Max-like arc, an antagonistic figure who ended up helping Supergirl against the bigger bad in the finale. Although she remained rather more antagonistic than Max did.

 

[Jayson1]

Well, sure, I have no problem with that. What I'm talking about are storylines where the primary antagonists are related to the hero, or where their entire season-spanning evil plot is a reaction to the hero. Like Alias, where all the big spy intrigue arcs ultimately turned out to revolve directly around the heroine, her parents, her love interest's father, etc. Or Steven Moffat's Doctor Who, where just about every season-long master plan of the villains has turned out to be a direct reaction to the Doctor's existence. That sort of thing. Sure, sometimes that can work well. The entire series arc of Fringe was basically about Walter Bishop dealing with the consequences of his own younger self's mistakes, the chief of which was directly connected to his son, and that gave it a unity that helped hold it together through its various shifts of subject and format. But as I said, it's become too commonplace these days to do stories like that. I'm not just talking about stories that explore how the lead character is affected by the villainy, I'm talking about stories where the villainy wouldn't even occur if not for the presence of the hero and/or their family. Those kinds of story are just too insular and self-absorbed.




Max Lord filled that role well in the first season; it's too bad he didn't follow the show to Vancouver. I guess Lillian was pretty much the person who took over that role in season 2. She was mostly more villainous, but she did end up following a Max-like arc, an antagonistic figure who ended up helping Supergirl against the bigger bad in the finale. Although she remained rather more antagonistic than Max did.

I think John Jonez could actually fill that role. He is her boss and after a alien attack you would think the government might actually start to crack down on alien refuge's which would put him in a place of going against Supergirl who would be against discrimination and Boss who would feel compelled to become more hard in his efforts to defend earth which of course would also be great since he is a alien as is the president.
Doesn't hurt that Harewood is proably the best actor on the show or second best if Flockhart is in it so it would be nice to see him get a expanded role. Plus they really need to come up with a excuse as to why he keeps having to look human all the time if people around him are progressive people who would accept him as he really looks.
Jason

 

[Guy Gardener]

J'onn J'onzz, which obviously sounds just like John Jones, which is a bad joke about something.

A crack down? But they just had an amnesty!

More so Refugees are the people who ran away from empire building assholes, so do not happen to be empire building asshoes themselves at all.

Which is a distinction that Trump is failing to grasp as he's continuing to fiddle with his own immigration policy, which this is obviously all just a blunt metaphor for anyways.

 

[Mudd]

If a character has a trait that deeply motivates or defines them in a way that stands out from other superheroes, and their stories consistently utilize that...well, that's the whole point of these things isn't it?

They all (mostly) "care about people."

 

[Noname Given]

If a character has a trait that deeply motivates or defines them in a way that stands out from other superheroes, and their stories consistently utilize that...well, that's the whole point of these things isn't it?

They all (mostly) "care about people."

"Like pets?"

 

[Kirk Prime]

Earth-38 either doesn't have doppelgangers of our primary hero characters from Earth-1, or they're just normal people on E38.

Do we know this for a fact, or is this just speculation? Maybe on Earth 38, Oliver is still on the island and Barry hasn't been hit by lightning yet. All we really know that I remember is that Barry googled Caitlin and Cisco and they weren't there.

In Barry's case, it makes sense. If we follow it through, on Earth 1, Reverse Flash traveled back in time, and manipulated things so that Barry would become the Flash earlier than he did. The Barry that was Reverse Flash's initial enemy did not have his mother murdered by Reverse Flash, and everything we have watched is a time altered universe. What if Barry in Kara's universe got his power later?

And even though the producers said they would never touch it, is there a slightly younger, not yet active version of Clark Kent on Earth 1?

 

[Enterprise is Great]

Odette Annable cast as Reign

 

[Mudd]

"Like pets?"

"I suppose..."

Presumably Reign's the Evil Baby being launched from Krypton at the end of Season Two. Don't they even namecheck her?