The Daring New Blog of Supergirl

Tag: Supergirl (TV Series)

  • Supergirl: Livewire or Thanksgiving Season 1

    Supergirl: Livewire or Thanksgiving Season 1

    One of my favorite parts of the CBS/CW Supergirl show was that they seemed to always have a Thanksgiving episode and season 1 is no exception. This episode does seem to hit a lot earlier than I remembered however, just being the 5th in the series, but it is pretty important in the lore since it is the first episode that really explores Helen Slater as Eliza Danvers.

    This episode opens with Supergirl in the DEO facing off against a “Lady-Beast” that had broken out of custody. After subduing the beast, we then head back to Kara’s loft where her and Alex discuss that their mother, Eliza, is coming into town for Thanksgiving. The plot of this episode can mostly be broken down to the Kara plot and the Supergirl plot, Kara’s plot focuses on her hosting a Thanksgiving get together at her apartment and the Supergirl plot focuses on Livewire.

    Getting into Livewire first; Leslie Willis was a character first introduced in Superman the Animated Series before later showing up in comics and other external media often associated with the Superman family of characters. This version of the character is a radio host for CatCo who has her own show “Leslie Willis in the Morning” and we get to know her soon into the episode where she talks about Supergirl in a rather crude manor. Leslie talks about her distaste for Supergirl’s costume, insinuates that no one wants to be with her, and even suggests she might be a lesbian. Cat Grant, after hearing this broadcast, demotes her from radio host to traffic copter. Unfortunately her first night out in the traffic copter was during a storm. Nearly crashing, Supergirl rushes in to same Leslie and the pilot from an untimely death, but in the process Supergirl and Willis get struck by lightning. This unfortunate accident first puts Leslie in a coma before she awakens to having power over electricity.

    Taking a quick detour over to the Kara plot, We’ve already met Eliza who has come into the city for the holiday, but after hearing that her best friend doesn’t have any plans, Kara too invites Winn Schott. Kara also tries to invite James Olsen to the get together but he has already made plans to spend the Holiday out of town with Lucy Lane. Alex is convinced that Eliza will be furious at Kara for taking up the role of Supergirl, and she’s partially right, but Eliza is instead mad at Alex for “allowing” Kara to do so. Thanksgiving turns into Eliza and Alex having a lot of tension between them, Kara trying to help everyone play nice, and Winn unfortunately being caught in the middle of everything just doing his best to be a good guest. It creates a pretty hilarious scene that is tragically interupted by James giving Kara a call right when Winn was about to tell everyone what he was thankful for. Thanksgiving devolves into a shouting match between Alex and Eliza and Winn leaving early without any food.

    An emergency at CatCo brings Kara back to the office, where Cat is struggling with some electrical issues that are soon revealed to be Livewire. Cat tells Kara to go fetch Security which gives her a perfect opportunity to change into the girl of steel and start duking it out with Willis. With the help of Hank Henshaw, Supergirl now has a trap she can use in her next face off with Livewire. Teaming up with Cat, and her Livewire trap, Supergirl heads out for a final faceoff with Livewire. Somehow, Kara’s battle cry at the start is “shut up you mean girl” which does nothing to strike fear into her foe, but thankfully Supergirl is still able to save the day even without her trap, instead opting to use water to take out the electrical menace.

    After storming out before, Alex returns to Kara’s apartment to make sure Eliza is still safe with the city-wide blackout. This leads to a pretty great Alex and Eliza scene where Eliza does tell her daughter she’s proud of her, and the pair seem to be on better terms than they were before. Kara, after dealing with Livewire, finds Winn at work the next day and gives him an impressive amount of Thanksgiving leftovers, and Winn reveals that what he is thankful for is Kara. The episode ends with Eliza changing her stance a bit on her approach to mothering, and gives Kara a stern bit of criticism, and then reveals to both the girls that their father, Jeremiah, was also a member of the DEO working with Hank Henshaw.

    As I mentioned up top, it’s great to see so much of Helen Slater in this episode. She is of course the first person to bring the Girl of Steel to life when she stared as the titular character in Supergirl (1984) and her as Supergirl’s adoptive mother is a great way to pass the torch. We get a lot of scenes with her in this episode both during the Thanksgiving holiday as well as some flashback scenes where we also get to see more of Dean Cain’s Jeremiah Danvers. I feel like Slater does a wonderful job as these girl’s mother and really shows how hard it can be to be a mother and that parents can sometimes make the wrong decisions. Eliza would continue on in the show and this was a great place for the audience to learn more about her. Getting more backstory about Jeremiah Danvers and his role at the DEO and opening a mystery about Hank Henshaw’s possible role in his untimely death also generates intrigue going further into the season.

    Also, since this is Supergirl season 1, we have some great and iconic Cat Grant scenes delivered by Calista Flockhart. Hank Henshaw shows up at CatCo after the Livewire attack and Cat mistakenly refers to him as “Mulder” which is of course a reference to The X Files. Cat learns in this episode that Kara is adopted and this opens the door for Cat to start learning more about Kara’s personal life. There are a couple instances in this episode that point towards Cat knowing that Kara is Supergirl, especially when she sends her away to fetch security after the Livewire attack or when mentioning to Kara that she’d like to talk with Supergirl and if she can go ask the FBI if they can contact her. A plot line later this season does explore Cat thinking that Kara is Supergirl but she is able to be mislead thanks to the Martian Manhunter’s help, although in season 2 it is revealed that Cat knows that Kara is Supergirl.

    I’ve been rewatching Supergirl over the past couple weeks after finding a complete series dvd box set and I’ve been having a lot of fun and knew I would have to do a Thanksgiving post for this episode, and perhaps I’ll make it a tradition to do so every year with the show’s other Thanksgiving episodes so you have something to look forward to next year!

  • Supergirl Season 1, Episode 1: Pilot

    “I’ve always felt the need to help people and tonight I finally got that chance”

    Supergirl is a show that first aired on CBS in 2015 starring Melissa Benoist in the titular role. Along with Melissa Benoist as Kara Danvers, the show also stars Mehcad Brooks as James Olsen, Chyler Leigh as Alex Danvers, Jeremy Jordan as Winn Schott, David Harewood as Hank Henshaw, and Calista Flockhart as Cat Grant. This episode, and most of the series, takes place in the fictional city of National City, California. Episode 1, titled Pilot, aired on October 26, 2015. The brief plot synopsis, provided alongside the dvd release of season 1, reads; “Superman’s cousin, Kara, finally embraces her superhuman abilities to become the hero she was always meant to be”. While this synopsis covers the basis for the plot, it leaves out a lot from this densely packed episode.

    The episode starts with a monologue by Kara Danvers as she explains her life from the day she left Krypton up until the present day, this origin includes her being trapped in the phantom zone, her arrival long after her cousin, the introduction of Jeremiah, Eliza and Alex Danvers, and her “normal” life of being Cat Grant’s assistant. The episode then shifts to a day in the life for Kara as she navigates being Cat Grant’s assistant and coworker to Winn Schott. She then meets new employee James Olsen who gives her a print of the first ever photograph of Superman. We cut to later in the day as Kara is getting ready for a blind date with the help of her sister Alex who is about to leave for a flight. On Kara’s (poorly matched) blind date, she overhears a news story of a plane about to crash and she realizes this is the plane her sister is on. While somewhat of a bumpy ride, she does successfully save the day and enter the public’s eye as Supergirl. Kara is ecstatic at the thought of saving lives and helping people, but her sister doesn’t think so highly of it and a brief fight ends the night for these 2 sisters. Cut to the next morning and CatCo is a buzz with the news of a new superhero in National City. Cat Grant’s is instructing her team to find out anything the can about this new heroine and afterwards Kara takes Winn up to the roof to reveal to him that she was the girl who saved the plane. We then go into a montage of her and Winn working on her costume and her preforming heroic deeds. As this is going on we’re introduced to Vartox, the villain of this episode who witnesses the saves of the maid of might and sets out to go attack her. We then jump to Kara suiting up as Supergirl to go save the day when suddenly she is taken down by kryptonite. Kara wakes up in the DEO and is met with Director Hank Henshaw. To Kara’s surprise, she also sees that her sister is part of this organization that hunts down aliens. Kara is once again told to stop fighting crime as Supergirl, but she refuses and storms off. She then hears a high pitched message that only her superhuman ears can hear and she follows the message to meet and face off with Vartox. Vartox easily takes out Supergirl, but before doing so, he informs her that he was a prisoner of Ft. Rozz and was sentenced there by Kara’s mother Alura. Before Vartox is able to make the killing blow, the DEO steps in to get her to safety. Back at the DEO, they study a shard of Vartox’s axe that got stuck in Supergirl’s arm. Feeling defeated, Kara returns to her apartment and is ready to give up the heroic life when Alex shows up with a Kryptonian hologram of Alura. This message from her mom gets Kara fired up and ready to go back into action. In the rematch fight, Kara is once again overpowered, but with a plan formed by Alex and the rest of the DEO, she is able to take Vartox down. The next day after her success she meets with James Olsen who informs her that he knew she was superpowered and tells her that her cousin Superman sent him to National City to check up on her. James also comes with a gift of the blanket that Superman came to earth in. This extra bit of motivation further elevates Kara to know that she’s doing the right thing in being a hero.

    There is quite a lot in this episode and it very easily could’ve been spread across a few episodes, maybe the first episode would just be her saving the plane, then an episode of her and Winn working together on a costume and doing small saves, and then the Vartox episode. While this approach would’ve worked and I think it could’ve been good that way too, I’m glad it’s all in this first episode because it really helps give a feel for the series. All of the main cast is given something to do and they all play a part in the progression of Kara becoming Supergirl. Winn is a huge support with Kara starting out as a hero, James is mostly keeping to the sidelines but casually supporting Kara stepping up, Cat Grant is Kara’s boss but also helps Kara by often giving her words of advice and speaking up for Supergirl, Alex starts off rather wary of her sister stepping into danger but eventually gets more comfortable and sees that together they can make great things happen, Hank Henshaw seems the most underdeveloped in this episode and is mainly just there as the hard edged and disapproving military agent trying to keep Supergirl out of the skies.

    I really love how this show approaches the girl of steel and I feel like Melissa Benoist really nails the role. The idea of a girl sent to protect her baby cousin but getting there too late and not having a purpose in life is an interesting approach to the character. Kara is shown as someone who really wants to be a hero and save lives but doesn’t know how. This lets us see a superhero who is just starting out, but isn’t new to her powers like so many other superhero shows of the time were doing. Instead of learning how to fly, we see her learn how to save the day.

    I really enjoyed revisiting the pilot to this series and it made me really want to dive in and look back at the rest of the show. If you enjoyed my thoughts or have anything to add to the discussion feel free to send me an email at daringnewblog@gmail.com. Thanks so much for reading!