Review 446: Supergirl (Season 2)

Still evolving in its sophomore season, Supergirl continues to entertain. Deftly blending, action, humour and drama.

After leaving her job as Cat Grant's (Calista Flockhart) assistant at CatCo Worldwide Media to take stock of her life and plan her future, Kara Danvers (Melissa Benoist) continues to work with J'onn J'onzz (David Harewood) and her sister Alex (Chyler Leigh) at the D.E.O.
There, she can be her true self - Supergirl - using her ever-increasing powers to protect National City while searching for her missing adoptive father Jeremiah Danvers (Dean Cain) and the secret, shady, research lab, Project Cadmus. Along the way, she teams up with her Kryptonian cousin and fellow Superhero, Kal El/Clark Kent/Superman (Tyler Hoechlin) to battle new and exciting villains.
In her spare time, she balances friendships with James Olsen (Mehcad Brooks) and Winn Schott, Jr. (Jeremy Jordan) while negotiating an exciting new romance to boot.

With this season, Supergirl moves from CBS to joining its fellow Arrowverse shows on The CW and the improvements are very apparent. This season benefits from much stronger production values and more confident and sure footed storylines compared to the procedural format it followed in its first season. It ditches the former and embraces more serialised storytelling

An excellent creative decision on the showrunners part is splitting the show into roughly two halves. The first half follows Kara and the DEO as they go to war with the Anti-Alien Organisation, Project Cadmus which was teased towards the end of the first season.
The second half focuses mostly on the arrival of the Daxamite Royal who come to retrieve their Prince (you can guess who it turns out to be) and the impact it has on Earth as well as Kara and Mon-El’s relationship.

Whilst airing on the same network as Arrow, The Flash and Legends of Tomorrow, Supergirl continues to feel held down by those constraints, thanks in no small part to being set on a different Earth than those shows and it still manages to remain its own beast.

How does Supergirl become Kara? Can Supergirl have it all? Those are the questions that Supergirl - Season 2 poses.

New to the show as some fresh characters who bring out the characters inner selves and breath fresh air into the show. These characters include but not limited to: Mon El (Chris Wood) a Daxamite refugee whom Kara seeks to turn him into a hero in his own right and eventually falls for (of course).
Maggie Sawyer (Floriana Lima) a street smart police det. for the NCPD whom Alex grows close to.

Starting out as a good natured but indifferent, carefree and laid-back playboy who loves to party, Mon-El slowly but surely, with a little help from Kara and her friends, becomes a much more honourable, noble and heroic character as the season progresses.
Wood also has this incredible charisma which is impossible to resist. His friendship with Winn was a fun little side story that never felt out of place. The relationship that developed between them, mainly through Winn being his guide to Earth's social scene and pop culture references, was rather sweet. 

This season seems to be about coming into one's own and becoming who you are: This theme is reflected in a lot of the characters i.e. Winn by joining the DEO, J'onn by embracing his Martian Manhunter persona which he's spent 300 years concealing, but no longer has to now, James becoming the Head of CatCo in the absence of Cat as well as his decision to become the vigilante Guardian, and Mon El trying to be his own man without too much interference from Kara.

The bromance between James and Winn is also developed over the course of the season, as they begin to work together to protect the city on their own terms and examining the challenges it presents for their partnership.

While not part of the Season, Supergirl's participation in the Annual Arrowverse Crossover Invasion which occurs mid-season was a definite highlight as well as an absolute joy to see her interact with her Arrowverse peers Stephen Amell, Grant Gustin, Caity Lotz and Brandon Routh among others.

Directors Glen Winter, Rachel Talalay, Larry Teng, James Bamford, Kevin Smith, Rob, Greenlea, Millicent Shelton direction is   the cinematography is splendid and captures the beauty and splendour of National City, the action scenes are exciting  the score by Blake Neely is excellent,

Melissa Benoist continues to shine throughout the season as the titular heroine. One of the highlights of the season is seeing Kara move forward in her life at CatCo. Come on, we didn’t really think that she was going to be Cat’s assistant for the entirety of the shows run did we?
Being a reporter fits in with Kara’s desire to spread the truth and gives her a reason to run towards danger and is hence a very natural progression for her character.

Initially, Kara is so eager to fashion Mon-El in her own image that she doesn't stop to think about what he might want from a life on Earth.
And he shows that he's not afraid to stand up to her.

We also meet Supergirl's version of Clark Kent/Superman (Tyler Hoechlin). With this season of Supergirl, we're presented with a Superman who basically plays second fiddle to his cousin and he's as classic a take on Superman as you can get, from the nerdy-looking, mild mannered Clark Kent to the inspiring Superman we all know and love.
Superman in this show is more like the Mr. Miyagi to Supergirl's Daniel, he's interesting but not the focus of the story. He's very much everything that Kara wants to be: the more experienced hero.
It's pretty easy to see why she looks up to him and holds him in such high
His chemistry with Melissa Benoist is very palpable, their interactions are funny, exciting and they work very well off of each other.

This season gives a lot of development to James Olsen thereby giving Mehcad Brooks plenty of room and opportunities to shine. James has always played second fiddle to Superman in particular and starts to feel powerless when he becomes the victim of violence in Ep. 5: Crossfire.
While there may be heroes out there with special powers who save the day on a daily basis, James just cannot sit by and watch innocents suffer so he takes it upon himself to become a hero in his own right and become his own man. Throughout the duration of the season, he essentially plays the Daredevil to Supergirl's - Superman really. Over the course of the season, it becomes abundantly clear that he's not inspiring hope the same way that Supergirl does and that people are more afraid of him as opposed to somebody who can inspire them.

Lillian Luthor (Desperate Housewives’ Brenda Strong). She's very much a Lex Luthor stand-in. Mama Luthor blames Superman for the propaganda that turned the world against her "brilliant" son. Strong helped to elevate the material with her own steely, enigmatic performance.

Assiting Lillian in her alien hate campaign is Hank Henshaw/Cyborg Superman (David Harewood), the latter wasn’t as compelling in the long run. While the initial prospect of seeing the original face of the DEO was intruiging,  He always seemed to serve Lillian, only appeared in a handful of episodes and generally came across as something of a one-note character. Not helping matters was that Harewood never felt comfortable in the role.

I honestly never thought I'd see the day when Teri Hatcher plays, not only a terrible mum, but an evil intergalactic matriarch to boot. But she plays them so well in the role of Rhea, Queen of Daxam.
I never knew Susan from Desperate Housewives could be so vindictive.

Rhea is very much the Big Bad for the second half of the season. The Queen of Krypton’s sister planet, Daxam and Mon-El’s mother. She initially comes to Earth seeking her son, Mon El, an admirable quest, after escaping Daxam after Krypton’s destruction rendered it inhospitable and tries to convince him to come home to rebuild their empire. Yet she refuses to leave him when tell her and his father that he's perfectly happy with his new life on Earth with Kara and inspite of this being made clear, she blames her for “poisoning” him
Someone so arrogant, selfish and vindictive to the point of being unreasonable that she refuses to compromise against anything that goes against her way.

She thinks that by committing all these heinous acts that she'll get her son back and can't understand why anyone would be angry that she invaded Earth and threatened thousands of innocent lives and she thinks she's so in the right that she thinks that killing her sons girlfriend will somehow snap him out of it.

After her initial attempt at getting Mon-El to return to her failed, she begins working with Lena to further her goals for her races survival. They strike up a fascinating mentor-mentee/mother-daughter relationship through working together. Both of them have been rejected by people they want desperately to accept them (Rhea by Mon-El, Lena by her mother, the difference lies in that they were on the opposite ends of toxic relationships). Watching Rhea take Lena under her wing and accept her in a way her mother never did helped to humanise her.

The one recurring character I didn’t particularly care for is Lyra Strayd (The Tudors alum Tamzin Merchant), a Valerian refugee whom Winn develops a romantic relationship with.

 

Supergirl soared in its sophmore season thanks to a winning blend of superhero action, topical themes and character drama, 4.5/5.

 

The Anonymous Critic