Spoilers Supergirl - Season 3

[TREK_GOD_1]

Lena was absolutely right though about Kara's unprofessional behavior. In the real world, Kara's absenteeism and poor attitude would have gotten her fired a long time ago.

The difference here is that her boss--James--understands her distracted behavior and has voiced true concern, not trying to artificially bond to Kara like Lena. She's just a bank account with ulterior motives, and barked at Kara for being shut out of her personal life. If Kara spilled out her issues with tear-rimmed eyes, Lena would not cop that snake attitude and instantly become just as "unprofessional" in trying to bond with Kara.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Half the reason Lena bought that paper... I mean, Multimedia conglomerate was to play house with her BFF Kara.

Every day was supposed to be a teenage girl slumber party where they do each other's hair and nails and talk about boys... So long as Kara knows her place and fetches coffee, and opens doors for Lena.

 

[Romulan_spy]

The difference here is that her boss--James--understands her distracted behavior and has voiced true concern, not trying to artificially bond to Kara like Lena. She's just a bank account with ulterior motives, and barked at Kara for being shut out of her personal life. If Kara spilled out her issues with tear-rimmed eyes, Lena would not cop that snake attitude and instantly become just as "unprofessional" in trying to bond with Kara.

I don't think that changes the fact that Kara was acting very unprofessional.

 

[Guy Gardener]

On both jobs/lives, Kara should have been away on a mental health holiday until she recovers from her boyfriend running off.

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

I don't think that changes the fact that Kara was acting very unprofessional.

Yeah, but the last thing some new "owner" to do is to instantly jump to a controlling/snake attitude the moment the employee does not allow Lena into her personal life. That's the kind of treatment that causes greater workplace conflict.

 

[JD]

A thought on the Lena/Kara friendship/working relationship.

Now Lena is working at CatCo, I'm wondering how long before she find out who Kara Danvers really is.

James can only cover for her frequent disappearances for so long and new boss has already read the riot act

I was thinking the same thing. This week she could at least use the whole Mon-El situation as an excuse, but will only work for a very short time.

I enjoyed this one.
The stuff with Psi was good, it was interesting seeing Kara have to confront the destruction of Krypton like that.
Lena coming into Catco was good too, and the conflict between her and James worked pretty well.
I'm curious to see if something is going to happen to fully activate Samatha's powers. The most obvious one would be to kill off her daughter, but I'm hoping they don't go that route.

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

Supergirl--
"Far From the Tree"

Kara/SG: For once, she's not moaning over the tepid Metro-El plot...well, at least for one week. Her presence on Mars was not necessary. The producers needed to give her something to do (just to make some "convincing" speech, etc.), and she had no place in the B-story.

J'onn: "Its my father" This series loves the far overused broken family plot device (no longer having weight). However, I did enjoy the breaking of said plot device with the father/son dynamic in the end.

James and Winn: They exist.

Alex: Too much foreshadowing over her relationship not lasting--possibly through tragedy. If it does not, I can only hope the character is not hammered into the "I'm forever defined by the loss" in the way many a medical and cop show has sabotaged characters with one event moving from believable tragedy to maudlin anchor.

NOTES:
The entire Martian plot fails to go anywhere, other than being the sort of "tortured past" plot that never live up to the character it was created for. J'onn as more of a mystery with a past not seen was more interesting than this poorly conceived, allegorical (for humans) race conflict. Further, from the resistance meeting in the caves (including bickering over method and who is more hotheaded to fight) reminds me of a copy+paste combination of TOS' "Patterns of Force"--sans the intensity/heart.

The showrunners need to stay away from subjects they clearly do not understand. I'm not the only minority not appreciating the attempt to force issues such as racism/overcoming as analogous with the problems of others as presented here. The practice and philosophy of racial hatred is on a level of historical/global/personal destruction in a horrid class all by itself (beyond even that description), and current world affairs do nothing to suggest that's going to change anytime soon. Its not to be misused in this way.

The car & Martian (especially the Martian children) FX. Ohhh, boy. Spend money. Three seasons in, and its still video-gamey. One would think the texturing of J'onn's (and his father's) face would not come off as so plastic in appearance, but that's yet another running problem with this series.

I see the Tessaract--er staff on earth causing problems in the future.

GRADE: D

 

[The Realist]

I love this show to death, but this season hasn't been great so far. And I wish the show's producers hadn't forgotten the woman who refused to kill on principle back in season one. Last year she destroyed Parasite and blew up a Dominator ship, and tonight she's vaporizing White Martians wholesale.

There was also the weird dialogue about building a wall to keep Mexicans out, and thinking they're all murderers and rapists. While I sympathize with the political point, did the producers forget which Earth they're on? Surely that's not President Marsdin's America.

 

[Christopher]

I love this show to death, but this season hasn't been great so far. And I wish the show's producers hadn't forgotten the woman who refused to kill on principle back in season one. Last year she destroyed Parasite and blew up a Dominator ship, and tonight she's vaporizing White Martians wholesale.

Yeah -- I liked it up to that point, but that was just wrong. They should've staged it so one of the Martian rebels did that. There was just no story reason for it to be Supergirl.

Still, great to see Carl Lumbly, who played J'onn on Justice League, playing J'onn's father. Between him and Helen Slater as Eliza, that's two cases of actors playing their own former characters' parents in the same episode.

The whole "It's our custom to take the form of our guests" bit was a tolerable excuse for having the actors look human, but I wish we could've seen more of at least the Green Martians in their native form.

There was also the weird dialogue about building a wall to keep Mexicans out, and thinking they're all murderers and rapists. While I sympathize with the political point, did the producers forget which Earth they're on? Surely that's not President Marsdin's America.

That was weird, yes. But the show's always been strong on social commentary, and it can't really comment on our current awful state of affairs if everything's hunky-dory in their US. In the premiere, though, Cat Grant attributed some Trumpish idiocies to "the Speaker," so I'd imagine that Marsdin and Congress are not on the same side politically, and on their world it's Congress that's been pushing these things.

 

[Marc]

Tip of the hat to the Justice League cartoons with Carl Lumbly as Martian Manhunter senior

 

[cylkoth]

Two years.....all the times a spaceship could've come in handy, and Mr Jonn had one parked in a garage and never bothered with until now???

 

[Gryffindorian]

Yeah -- I liked it up to that point, but that was just wrong. They should've staged it so one of the Martian rebels did that. There was just no story reason for it to be Supergirl.

Still, great to see Carl Lumbly, who played J'onn on Justice League, playing J'onn's father. Between him and Helen Slater as Eliza, that's two cases of actors playing their own former characters' parents in the same episode.

The whole "It's our custom to take the form of our guests" bit was a tolerable excuse for having the actors look human, but I wish we could've seen more of at least the Green Martians in their native form.




That was weird, yes. But the show's always been strong on social commentary, and it can't really comment on our current awful state of affairs if everything's hunky-dory in their US. In the premiere, though, Cat Grant attributed some Trumpish idiocies to "the Speaker," so I'd imagine that Marsdin and Congress are not on the same side politically, and on their world it's Congress that's been pushing these things.

That's one of the things I like about this series. Like Orville, it touches on contemporary sociopolitical events and issues in the real world, such as racism (white vs. green Martians) and homophobia. Maggie's father's attitude toward his daughter makes absolutely no sense. As someone who himself experienced discrimination at a young age, he should be more tolerant of someone's ethnicity, religion, or in this case Maggie's sexual orientation! Instead, his reaction is that of compounded intolerance, thinking being gay is worse than being Hispanic. The fact that he condemned and disowned his lesbian daughter should have been a clear indication to Maggie that she has no place for him in her life, but in a way reaching out to him brought some closure.

 

[Christopher]

Maggie's father's attitude toward his daughter makes absolutely no sense. As someone who himself experienced discrimination at a young age, he should be more tolerant of someone's ethnicity, religion, or in this case Maggie's sexual orientation!

But that's exactly it. As he said, he worked hard to build a life where his daughter would be safe from discrimination, so having her turn out to be a member of a different group that faces discrimination makes him feel like he's failed to protect her, or that she's betrayed him and invalidated all his hard work. He loved her so much that being unable to protect her was more painful than he could bear, so all he could do to escape that pain was to send her away, to close himself off from her. He used anger at her to shield himself from the pain resulting from his love for her. It's irrational and unfair and selfish and wrong, yes, but it's a very human reaction.

Besides, the sad truth is, people who have lived with persecution against their own group do not always have more tolerance for different persecuted groups. Sometimes facing persecution just makes people more protective and defensive of what they have and more mistrusting toward other groups, rather than giving them more empathy for others going through the same thing. Often groups that have survived persecution and gain power just end up using that power to persecute others, or at least have gotten so used to protecting their own interests that they never unlearn the habit.


EDIT: By the way, I forgot to say, I loved the bit with Supergirl driving in with the convertible and giving that spiel about taking a wrong turn at Albuquerque. She's been so depressed and closed off these past couple of weeks that it's nice to see her having some fun again (though I wish they'd maintained that tone rather than have her kill a bunch of people a few minutes later).

 

[Romulan_spy]

By the way, I forgot to say, I loved the bit with Supergirl driving in with the convertible and giving that spiel about taking a wrong turn at Albuquerque. She's been so depressed and closed off these past couple of weeks that it's nice to see her having some fun again (though I wish they'd maintained that tone rather than have her kill a bunch of people a few minutes later).

I loved that too. J'onn having a classic convertible was great and the episode made great use of it. Very fun and clever.

 

[Dick Whitman]

I loved that too. J'onn having a classic convertible was great and the episode made great use of it. Very fun and clever.

That was perfect because J'onn first appeared in the comics in 1955. Another nice touch was the father having a chain on his cloak. For many years that was how J'Onn's own cape was drawn. At some point it was abandoned for just the circle clasps alone.

 

[DigificWriter]

People, I think, need to abandon this idea that killing makes a superhero or superheroine less heroic, especially as some sort of 'blanket expectation'.

Kara killing hostile White Martians who are trying to kill her is significantly different, contextually, from, for example, Oliver Queen just sticking arrows in people as his "first resort".

 

[Christopher]

That was perfect because J'onn first appeared in the comics in 1955.

I found it a bit ironic when he said they couldn't transmat between planets without a portal on both sides, since that's basically how the comics' J'onn was brought to Earth in the first place.

Kara killing hostile White Martians who are trying to kill her is significantly different, contextually, from, for example, Oliver Queen just sticking arrows in people as his "first resort".

One can make a case that killing is necessary in extreme situations. But if a fictional character kills and then just grins and makes jokes right afterward, if she kills and it means nothing to her, then that is bad writing. Death should not be a casual, incidental action beat. It should be something that means something, that has weight and impact on the characters and the situation. At least in the Parasite episode, Supergirl looked remorseful and said "I'm sorry" first. We didn't get to see her dealing with the impact of that choice afterward, but at least there was a token acknowledgment that it was not just some casual, easy thing. Here, there wasn't even that. The White Martian who was willing to torture a prisoner a few hours earlier was more troubled by what the weapon did than Supergirl was. That is out-of-character writing. And it could've been easily avoided by having some other character wield the weapon. This is not about whether killing can ever be justified in any story situation. It is a basic logical fallacy to mistake a specific argument for a general argument. This is about how killing was handled in this specific case, and in this case it was gratuitous, cavalier, and badly handled.

 

[Gryffindorian]

Besides, the sad truth is, people who have lived with persecution against their own group do not always have more tolerance for different persecuted groups. Sometimes facing persecution just makes people more protective and defensive of what they have and more mistrusting toward other groups, rather than giving them more empathy for others going through the same thing. Often groups that have survived persecution and gain power just end up using that power to persecute others, or at least have gotten so used to protecting their own interests that they never unlearn the habit.


.

Good point. Just yesterday while I was on my lunch break, I encountered an elderly African-American woman in the street who was spouting some nonsense about kicking some "white kid's ass." Granted, she might have been mentally ill, but then again, maybe not. I have no doubt that at some point in her life, she faced blatant racism and discrimination. Sometimes people can't help being resentful and bitter after going through persecution.

But in Mr. Rodas' (?) case, you would think his beef would be with Caucasians, not LGBT people. I guess this whole time, I was expecting his reasons were religion-based. I'm pretty sure there are parents who have disowned their gay/bi kids although they themselves did not experience discrimination growing up.

 

[Christopher]

But in Mr. Rodas' (?) case, you would think his beef would be with Caucasians, not LGBT people. I guess this whole time, I was expecting his reasons were religion-based.

The thing about prejudice is, it isn't logical. Logic means making the effort to think something through, and most prejudice is the result of failing to think through your assumptions. So lots of people who have faced prejudice against their own group have never really examined their own unconscious prejudices toward others enough to recognize the parallels. It's not just tit for tat against your oppressors, it's the failure to recognize the parallels between your own oppression and somebody else's. There are black people who are anti-Semitic, Latinxs who are homophobic, feminists who are transphobic, all sorts of combinations.

I'm pretty sure there are parents who have disowned their gay/bi kids although they themselves did not experience discrimination growing up.

Nobody's saying that Maggie's father's reasons are the same as anyone else's. That's exactly what made it interesting -- that it turned out to be something more complicated than the simple homophobia Maggie thought it was. It's not that he hates her for being a lesbian, it's that he can't live with the knowledge that other people will hate her for being a lesbian and that he has no power to prevent that. He worked so hard to keep her safe from persecution that when she (in his view) embraced a lifestyle that invited persecution, it felt like a betrayal of everything he'd done to protect her.

 

[Romulan_spy]

It's not that he hates her for being a lesbian, it's that he can't live with the knowledge that other people will hate her for being a lesbian and that he has no power to prevent that. He worked so hard to keep her safe from persecution that when she (in his view) embraced a lifestyle that invited persecution, it felt like a betrayal of everything he'd done to protect her.

Overall, I think your analysis is very insightful. But I think there is more to it. The way the dad stormed out of the bridal shower when he saw Maggie and Alex kiss, seemed like a very homophobic reaction. So I think there might be some homophobia in the character too. Plus, the character should know that there is much less LGBT discrimination now compared to when he was younger. So surely, his concerns would have less merit now.