Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Stargirl’ On The CW And DC Universe, Where A Teenager Fights The Forces Of Evil With Her Stepdad And New Friends

Stargirl (not to be confused with Stargirl, the Disney+ movie that came out less than 3 months ago) is the first of an interesting partnership between corporate cousins The CW and DC Universe: DCU will stream episodes of the series every Monday, and the same episode will air on The CW on Tuesdays, edited to fit in the broadcast network’s commercials. This review is of the DCU version of the first episode, which runs about 9 minutes longer than it will on The CW. Wherever you watch it, though, you’re in for a fun and, dare we say, hopeful ride. Read on for more…

STARGIRL: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: “A Golden Age of Heroes protected the world for decades. Ten years ago, that Golden Age ended…” We see a darkened light bulb come on, and Bruce Springsteen’s “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town” plays as a vintage car speeds down a town’s main street.

The Gist: The man driving the car is Pat Dugan (Luke Wilson). He’s also known as “Stripsey”, and he’s the sidekick of a superhero named Starman (Joel McHale), aka Sylvester Pemberton. Starman and the rest of the Justice Society of America are in trouble fighting a group of powerful villains. Pretty much all the heroes get killed, but Starman looks like he might prevail, but he gets mortally wounded. Pat flies his friend out in his vintage car (yes, it flies), but as Starman’s life ebbs away, he tells Pat to keep his staff until he finds his rightful successor — though he makes of point of saying “Definitely not you” to Pat. Elsewhere in Los Angeles, a little girl is upset that her father isn’t home for Christmas Eve and her mother has to go to work.

Ten years later that girl, Courtney Whitmore (Brec Bassinger) is now 15 and getting ready to move with her mother Barbara (Amy Smart) to Blue Valley, Nebraska. Her mother has remarried, to none other than Pat Dugan; the two met in Blue Valley as she was selling her parents’ house and he was there “looking for something,” in his words. What the Whitmores, and even his son Mike (Trae Romano) don’t know, is that he’s spent those ten years looking for the villains who laid waste to the JSA.

Blue Valley is very friendly — everyone says hello to the Whitmore-Dugans — but Courtney is decidedly out of place on her first day at the local high school. There’s no gymnastics team, and it feels like even the teachers aren’t on her side as she’s shuttled to the “loser” table with the likes of Beth Chapel (Anjelika Washington) and Rick Tyler (Cameron Gellman).

She gets so frustrated, mostly by Pat’s attempts to be a father to her, she goes downstairs and kicks one of the crates that he moved into the basement. There she sees his files, and a picture of the JSA, with a vaguely familiar face in the picture. Then the crate with the staff lights up, opens up and directs her towards where the evil in the town is… her high school. It eventually leads her to the local drive-in where popular kid Henry King, Jr. (Jake Austin Walker) and his buddies are tormenting people in their cars. With a lot of help from the staff, she beats the boys senseless and blows up Henry’s dad’s vintage car.

At this point, Pat is forced to tell Courtney about Starman and the JSA. When she sees the face of her father in her locket, she starts to think that Starman is her father, even though her father went by a different name. Pat is skeptical, and has no idea why the staff activates for her. But he doesn’t want her to use it and endanger herself and others. When Courtney asks her mother if her father was a superhero, she tells him that he only saw her once a year then abandoned them on that Christmas Eve ten years prior.

Henry tells his father, Dr. Henry King, Sr. (Christopher James Baker) about the attack, and Dr. King immediately dons his Brainwave costume. The staff comes to life again and flies her to the town’s tire factory, where Brainwave is waiting for her.

Our Take: Stargirl is a personal project for Geoff Johns, who runs the series with Melissa Carter for Greg Berlanti’s superhero factory. He created the Stargirl comic series based on his late sister Courtney, who died in the 1996 TWA Flight 800 crash; the idea here is that, as the show’s Courtney figures out her powers with Pat’s help and assume the Stargirl identity, she’ll form a new group of heroes to defeat the evil that has settled over Blue Valley.

As with most shows in the DC television universe, the story evolves slowly, not content to have Courtney in control of her newly-discovered powers right away. But it at least does establish that she knows about Starman and he may be her father, which is why the staff comes alive for her, and that she has some ability to fight the town’s simmering underbelly of evil.

Like much of Berlanti’s DC shows, Stargirl tries not to take itself too seriously, but we appreciated just how funny the first episode was. Some of that has to do with Bassinger, who we can tell will already will give Courtney/Stargirl an irreverence that teenage superhero should have. But a lot of the show’s humor has to do with Luke Wilson, who plays his usual self-effacing “aw, shucks” persona to the hilt here. He’s so guileless that he doesn’t even realize the nickname “Stripesy” sounded silly until Courtney points it out to him. And, for some reason, he can’t fathom that his buddy Sylvester was a deadbeat dad.

Wilson’s persona, with an assist from Bassinger, is what makes the first episode of Stargirl so entertaining. But the idea that Courtney is going to put together a new JSA to fight evil will also be fun to watch.

Sex and Skin: This show is very much aimed towards teens, and so far there’s not much in the way of sexy stuff.

Parting Shot: While fighting Brainwave at the tire factory, she’s helped by what turns out to be a giant robot. Inside that robot is Pat, who says “I told you not to take the staff!”

Sleeper Star: For some reason, Trae Romano, who plays Pat’s son Mike, feels like a character out of Our Gang, complete with a vague New Yawk accent. But for some reason, we like it. We also like that he melts marshmallows in the microwave.

Most Pilot-y Line: We have had just about enough of the “new kid walks down the hall of his/her new school and sees everyone at their lockers” scene. Courtney’s first scene inside her new school is like this and it’s completely predictable. Oh, so are “the new kid gets shunned in the cafeteria” scenes.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Stargirl is a fun ride, and the performances by Bassinger and Wilson make the first episode keep a lively pace.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company.com, RollingStone.com, Billboard and elsewhere.

Stream Stargirl On CWTV.com

Stream Stargirl On DC Universe