Stream It or Skip It? ‘Supergirl’

Here at Decider, we’ve committed ourselves to watching the fall pilots for you and reporting back to help you prioritize your viewing using our super-scientific rating system. Below, we tell you everything you need to know about Supergirl.

A Guide to Our Rating System

Opening Shot: The opening of a pilot can set a mood for the entire show (think Six Feet Under); thus, we examine the first shot of each pilot.
The gist: The “who, what, where, when, why?” of the pilot.
Our take: What did we think? Are we desperate for more, or engaging in a desperate, Faustian bargain to get those 43 minutes back?
Sex and Skin: That’s all you care about anyway, right? We let you know how quickly the show gets down and dirty.
Parting Shot: Where does the pilot leave us? Hanging off a cliff, or running for the hills?
Sleeper Star: Basically, someone in the cast who is not the top-billed star (Sorry, Rob Lowe!) who shows great promise.
Most Pilot-y Line: Pilots have a lot of work to do: world building, character establishing, and stakes raising. Sometimes that results in some pretty clunky dialogue.
Our call: We’ll let you know if you should, ahem, Stream It or Skip It.

Supergirl

Opening Shot: Like any good superhero saga worth its weight in kryptonite, Supergirl starts by mythologizing its central character. We learn — through voiceover — that Kara Zor-El is sent to earth to look over her cousin (you might know him as Superman). But when her pod is knocked off course into a black hole where time stands still. By the time she gets to Earth, it has become very clear that her cousin doesn’t need anyone to protect him. He places her with the Danvers family and she commits herself to a normal existence … or does she?
The gist: In Supergirl, 24-year-old Kara Zor-El (Melissa Benoist), who was taken in by the Danvers family when she was 13 after being sent away from Krypton, must learn to embrace her powers after previously hiding them. The Danvers family teaches Kara to be careful with her powers until she has to reveal them during an unexpected disaster, setting her on her journey of heroism.
Our take: Superhero TV shows have long been a boy’s club, relegating the female characters to love interests or moms or villains that are easily disposed of. Supergirl is pretty explicit in its desire to explode those roles. We don’t get one badass female hero; we get two. And we get a supporting cast chock full of other interesting ladies: Calista Flockhart as a vapid media mogul! Laura Benanti as — well, we’ll get to that in a bit. But the show’s creators are smart enough to know that using a show as a vehicle for a specific social agenda is a recipe for a car crash. In the pilot, aside from a conversation between Kara and her boss about the semantic differences between supergirl and superwoman, the show doesn’t make much of its feminist ethos. If you can’t accept a world in which a woman can fly around and kick ass, or be a CEO, or a scientist, or a criminal mastermind — well, then, the show seems to posit, that’s your concern. The acting is great, the pacing is confident, the special effects are … special effects on a TV budget, and the music could easily underscore any superhero film franchise out there.
Sex and Skin: Kara shows off a few rejected costumes — which make her look more like a college cheerleader than the hero charged with saving the citizens of National City. Jeb Bush, eat your heart out.
Parting Shot: In some diabolical underground lair, we finally meet the mastermind of the alien operation aimed at bringing Kara down. Does she look familiar? That’s because she’s Kara’s mother’s evil identical twin! The plot thickens! We get another strong female character! Cut to black!
Sleeper Star: America, you shall know Laura Benanti. The Tony-winning Broadway actress was one of the only reasons to watch NBC’s live broadcast of The Sound of Music, but I don’t imagine there’s much crossover in the audience for that and the audience for this. I can’t wait to see her sink her teeth into whatever the show’s creator, Greg Berlanti, throws her way.
Most Pilot-y Line: “You think I’m the threat?” crows Vartox, this episode’s villain. “You have no idea what’s coming next.” Given that Krypton’s maximum-security prison was sucked into the same vortex Kara was and the worst of the worst are now roaming the Earth, we have a feeling he’s right.
Our call: Stream It!
[Where to stream Supergirl]

Brett Barbour is a writer who lives in Brooklyn and is prone to binge-watching.

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