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It’s time! The Supergirl pilot has officially aired and it’s finally time to talk about it. The first episode of the season kicked off on Monday October 26 at 8:30/7:30C on CBS and not only won the night on network TV, but pulled in the highest viewership for any new fall TV premiere. As we are podcasting about this show, these numbers are very exciting. But it’s equally exciting to see a female superhero TV series get the kind of attention that this one has pulled in so far. Neither Karen nor I would call ourselves feminists, but as women we are encouraged to see the effort the producers and writers of this show have put forth in order to inject a depth of realism into its female characters.
The Bechdel Test
Also known as the Bechdal-Wallace Test. This test describes three rules to gauge whether a piece of fiction incorporates “active female characters” into its premise. There must be at least two women who talk to each other about something other than men is basically what the test comes down to. A horrifyingly low number of films currently meet this requirement. Whenever a subgroup of individuals are overwhelmingly reduced to a generalized activity, their contribution to the overall product is limited. Their purpose isn’t to support, but rather to enable, the plot.
Ironically, I was reading this article about Aziz Ansari’s explanation of why he won’t do an Indian accent on screen this morning and realized that this same test could be applied to many other subgroups of people. Stereotypes help us to compartmentalize and process data, but they are also a significant crutch that our culture relies on in order to tell stories. My hope is that Supergirl can help break the mold for women in TV!
Cougar’s Comic Corner
This week, The Scarlet Cougar (Karen) recommends [[[Many Happy Returns by Peter David]]]. Check out the link to get your own copy!
Next Week
Season 1 Episode 2 “Stronger Together”
Feedback
Thank you to all who sent in feedback for the pilot episode of Supergirl! If you want to participate, it is SUPER easy! (See what I did there?) Go to our feedback page and type up an email, upload an audio file, or record a message with our Speak Pipe widget. We record our podcast on Wednesdays following each new episode of Supergirl, so the deadline for feedback submitted to the podcast before recording is 6/5C on Wednesdays!
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Do you think you’ll cut down on the intro bit? It is cute don’t get me wrong, but it’s really long.
Hopefully they’ll include the commentary on any DVD sets for the series. The pilot was very good; I liked the “origin story” rating add on. The acting was good, the characters were interesting, the story was solid, the CGI and fight scenes were great, and I loved they introduced things in this that aren’t even in “Man of Steel” yet such as kryptonite. It’ll be interesting if they have the DC shows affect the movies even in a small way like this; it would be a refreshing take from Marvel who do more movies affect the shows than shows affecting the movies. I would have liked to have seen them use the name Clark in the pilot rather than the thousand “him” and “my cousin” stand-ins but that’s a small nitpick.
It was a nice touch having Dean and Helen playing Kara’s parents. I love they had Winn sewing the costume because why couldn’t he; sewing is not just for one gender. I definitely think it was clear Alex was worried about Kara more than herself, yes there might have been some jealousy but the scene to me read as concern for her sister. There are some great sister moments in this series so far and they’re one of the best relationships.
Speaking of Kara’s heat vision, did they explain why hers is blue because I though it was red like Clark’s. Amanda Waller would be an interesting player to see especially given her ties to the Galatia JLU plot. General definitely gave me Zod feelings. I love how they did the fights scenes, Kara got her butt kicked at the start because she’s not a fighter starting out but she also gave some great shots as well; the fights felt accurate to Kara’s abilities and I’m glad they had the bad guys trying throw her through objects and not holding back because she’s a girl.
I love they had Alex getting into the fights as well and not having Hank come down like might happen in most shows; it really deepens the bond between Alex and Kara and adds to their dynamic while allowing Alex moments as well because she’s a field agent on top of being s a scientist so it was cool seeing her come down the rope. I’d rather see a HG Wells show than Claudia one. Nice “Kim Possible” shout out. I didn’t like Winn making it seem like Kara looked better without glasses, as was said I don’t think he meant it the way it came across but because they didn’t have that scene of him explaining himself it makes it seem like he does find her less attractive with glasses and that doesn’t sit well. Again I am not a big Winn fan because of replies; I don’t know if they’re meant to be cute and funny but they come off as mostly smartallicy to me and the character just rubs me the wrong way.
I’m totally still calling James Jimmy majority of the time. Cool tidbit at the end. No major spoiler bits please.
Thank you for the feedback on the intro music. I went back and listened to the intro and didn’t realize it wasn’t until the end of the 2′ before we said ‘Hey!’ We are going to splice it down.
Good point about using something like sewing to break down another stereotype/gender role. I hadn’t thought of it that way, but it’s a cool combination… Winn is both a tech head and a tailor.
I don’t think they explained the color of Kara’s vision, but based on the second episode, it doesn’t look like it’s just her. It kinda looks cool to me. I wonder if they’re trying to go with a degree of “heat”, as in, blue flames are hotter than red.
I’m looking forward to having your comic insight 🙂 In addition to Karen’s.
Good point about the heat vision; maybe Kara hasn’t used hers as much so it went back to being blue, sort of like they did Liz from “Hellboy” – she was blue to show her base power in the first film and then yellow to shoe control in the second. Or it could be just to make Kara different from Clark.
I’m no Karen, unless Helena Bertinelli shows up. 😉