Supergirl - Season Four

As a show, yeah, I prefer it too. But I wasn't expressing a personal preference, I was making a vaguely humorous comment paralleling two actors' famous AI roles.

 

When Spiner was cast I wondered if there will be a big reveal that his character is secretly the original Brainiac. Boxleitner’s casting could fit that theory to based on previously playing an AI. It’s a huge long shot. But it would be a dramatic reveal that the Vice President who takes the Presidency because the current President is not Human is really an Android. Involving Superman in the crossover would suggest needing a really big villian.

 

Do we even know Superman will be in it?

Maybe Kara will just go to Lois and Clark for info about that article they wrote on the "Bat People of Gotham"

 

I'm glad Superman is coming back, but the last appearance of Superman in the Arrowverse left a terrible taste for me. His only purpose was to be submissive to Supergirl so the writers can make her superior. The politics on Supergirl really brings down the show for me, but to me, if you have to make Superman weak, you are not making Supergirl strong.

That fight with Superman, because it goes against 80 years of history, made Supergirl look weak too, because if you have to dumb a character down to make one character look strong, you only make that character look weak.

It's like winning a game if someone lets you win. You didn't actually win and you look bad for someone handing you a victory.

That's how the Superman/Supergirl fight came off. That fight shouldn't have even happened, and was just terrible writing.

My hope is that they somehow do right by Superman this time.

 

^ Superman was not "submissive" to Kara in that episode. He lost the fight, barely, by one blow, and acknowledged as much. In the process, he showed how a man of character and confidence responds to a strong woman. It's an example some people (you know, nobody in particular) could stand to learn from.

 

Yay! Superman's back!
I know they won't make a TV series out of it due to WB's thing on no supes or bats on teh TV, but just thinking, maybe make a summer series out of it? maybe 7-8 episodes? A Superman Mini Series? Show what his life is like?

And for Branic maybe for the crossover? Definately possible, they teased him at the end of S3 being a big bad in the 31st centery. Maybe he's afer Brainy?

 

Superman is the most powerful hero in the DC Universe--he was made weak losing that fight by a bunch of writers with a chip on their shoulder, writing it in a way so that they can be outraged when people rightfully object to the ludicrous result.

And they compounded it by making sure that Superman told anyone and everyone that he was at full strength and Kara beat him.

What we can learn is that the writers felt that Kara needed a victory like that to validate her, and that required them to dumb down Superman. Kara beating Superman is no less likely than Melissa Benoist beating Tyler Hoeschlin.

There's no shame in Supergirl not being stronger than Superman, but there is shame in a bunch of writers having so little confidence in Supergirl on her own that they had to write this scene.

A man being written as weak and then emasculated as Superman was, running around telling the world that she beat him, is NOT in character.

The whole point of that useless fight was to have Supergirl win so she could be treated as a top dog. And it should also be noted that she arrogantly made a flippant comment about how she beat Superman last season.

And it was the complete opposite of Superman's first appearance, which was a homerun. There were two villains, both with kryptonite abilities, and they helped each other. Superman was not made weak to make Kara strong. A shame the chip on the writers' shoulder and the need to be outraged when people call them out on their dumb decisions ruined that.

Terrible writing, terrible treatment of the character of Superman AND Supergirl, and I hope they do better next time.

Terrible writing, terrible treatment of the character of Superman AND Supergirl, and I hope they do better next time.

 

^ "Emasculated" = no.

Again, Clark wasn't threatened by Kara's victory. I'd say that's a sign of true confident masculinity. Now, flailing about in desperate denial in an attempt to reassure everybody that he can totally beat up some dumb old girl -- that would have been emasculating.

 

Bad enough you're this outraged over this, @Kirk Prime , but at least you shouldn't direct your outrage at the TV writers, but at the guy who actually introduced the idea of Kara being more powerful than Superman, comics writer Jeph Loeb. When he reintroduced Kara Zor-El in the early 2000s, he made sure to habe several prominent DC characters notice that she's even more powerful than Superman. The TV show is just following what the comics established long ago.

 

It's posts like these that make me wish Batwoman kicks the crap out of him too...

 

It was poor writing on every level. Having him be submissive to Supergirl by going around to everyone who could hear him, just to drive home the point as if we didn't get it hammered over our heads, is absolutely emasculating.

Only in fiction would someone like Tyler Hoschlin lose a fight to someone like Melissa Benoist. This is as unrealistic as flying and super strength.

And yes, I am aware of what Loeb does--another liberal writer spewing his politics by weakening a character. But at the same time, it was also explained--something that should have happened on Supergirl.

Clark, from birth, trained himself to hold back to the point where he does it on a subconscious level. Supergirl does not do that. If Clark lets loose like she does, she is no match for him.

As for Batwoman kicking the crap out of him, well, that would surely show that they have no confidence in Batwoman as well, just like they have no confidence in Kara.

There couldn't be more of a blow to feminism than weakening a man to make a woman look strong, which is exactly what they did. What they said is they don't have enough confidence in Kara to stand on her own two feet, so they had to have Superman lose just to say,"see? Supergirl rules."

That fight made Kara look weaker, not stronger.

 

It’s great that Superman isn’t insecure about his masculinity and doesn’t feel the need to prove himself or whine after losing a fight to his cousin.

 

Pity the same isn't true for folks whose masculine identity is crucially dependent on Superman serving as their personal penis enlarger.

 

This is patently absurd. Smaller people defeat larger people in fights ALL. THE. TIME.

 

The only weak thing here is your argumentation.

 

Wow, you really, really hate strong women don't you? Weren't you also bitching about Rey over in the Star Wars section?

 

Maybe Kimberly Leemans could be the Arrowverse's Lois. She already has an audition tape:

 

But ... they aren't at all like the characters they play. The characters can fly, they do have superstrength. So, why can you accept that unrealistic part, but not the supposedly unrealistic other part?

You think Loeb is a liberal?! Have you read "Superman For All Seasons"? I mean, it's a beautiful book, but just compare the portrayal of Lana Lang to that of Lois Lane in that book.
And how was he weakening Superman? He just had the newly introduced Supergirl be even stronger. That's not weakening at all. In fact, the comparison wouldn't work at all if it wasn't already established how powerful Superman is.

Besides, they may not have explained it on-screen, but it's easy enough to come up with an explanation for why TV Supergirl is stronger than Superman. In the comics, specifically The Death And Return of Superman saga, we found out that Kryptonians store the energy they get from the yellow sun, and that their level of power can therefore vary (Superman used up all his stored power to defeat Doomsday and fell into a death-like coma until his cells had absorbed enough solar energy to return to life). The same goes when we see him on several occasion bathing in sunlight to "power up".
Now, on the TV show, Superman has been active for more than twelve years as a superhero, constantly using his powers in many great feats. Kara, on the other hand, has spent the first twelve years of her life on Earth actively trying not to use her powers. Therefore, Supergirl simply has a larger amount of stored energy in her body as opposed to Superman.

There, that should fix your whole problem. Nothing emasculating about it, it's just scifi-physics. Right?!

 

^ There really isn't any need for an explanation, at least for those of us who aren't all twisted up over Macho Man losing to Weakling Girl. It isn't like Kara wiped the floor with him or anything. They were clearly pretty evenly matched, and it was that one last blow that decided it after both combatants had taken a good deal of punishment. It didn't even occur to me to think Clark had been diminished in any way -- at least, not until I got on the Internet and encountered the indignant shrieks of all the offended man-children.

 

As I keep pointing out, the show never said Supergirl is physically stronger than Superman, just that she beat him fair and square in a single fight. Since she has DEO combat training and Superman is presumably a self-taught brawler, it stands to reason that she could have won through superior skill and discipline, which leaves the strength question undecided and really rather irrelevant.

Of course, there'd obviously be nothing wrong with it if Supergirl were stronger than Superman, as she apparently is in the comics. But that's just not something the show has actually established.