While Mark Zuckerberg will argue much of it as fiction, the cinematic telling of his Facebook story did make one thing abundantly clear: getting there first is everything. When you’re the first, you create the brand identity and define people’s expectations. Anyone that follows you will always face direct comparisons to your more established state, expected to be as good as you from the start, making their job infinitely harder. This is the problem of expectations we see Supergirl facing this week. After just one week on the job, people are already expecting her to be as good as her decades experienced Kryptonian cousin.... and unsurprisingly she’s not. Not yet at least.
Stronger Together – After a few mishaps in her first week of being a superhero, Kara/Supergirl sees the press labelling her as the real disaster. With the help of her friends, her sister and the DEO, she learns becoming a real hero will take a lot more time and practice. Meanwhile, Cat Grant is adamant about getting an interview with Supergirl and tries to force James into making something happen.
After last week’s soaring premiere the biggest concerns people rose was that the show and its hero are trading to heavily off the name and reputation of the more familiar man of steel. Hopefully after this episode they will have realised that was exactly the point; they are creating the similarities to show the differences. At one point, we even have Kara telling a deflated James Olsen that she doesn’t want to be Superman. The focus of the red-caped character differentiation stems from the idea of teamwork as the title would suggest. Just as Kara’s late entrance to the party lets her learn from Superman’s success, it also lets her do the same from his mistakes she remarks that he’s been flying solo for so long, he doesn’t know any other way, but she doesn’t want to be alone. She doesn’t want a Fortress of Solitude, she wants a family. This is shown on the smaller scale of James and Winn (whose “super best friend” competitiveness is just hilarious) helping Kara hone her skills and understand how to use her powers by talking her through a series of smaller scale acts of heroism. The earpiece setup feels a welcome familiarity to Catlin and Cisco steering Barry Allen over the radio. This section also delivers some good lighter entertainment, especially the classic rescuing of “fluffy” from the tree. Then by contrast, we have the larger team picture from Kara’s work with the DEO. The opening desert missile exercises feel like a nice nod to 1983's Superman 3, but the whole idea of the testing develops into a nice undertone of equality. While Kara and Hank make the early obvious joke about the DEO not having confidence in her because she’s a girl (or an alien), through the use of her sister Alex’s character, we see that she’s in fact being treated the same as any other potential field agent, being out through hell in training to give her the best chance of survival in the real thing. Like last week, the show makes good use of Kryptonite being an established commodity to let Alex and Kara spar as equals and unsurprisingly, Alex’s superior training and fighting skills see Kara getting well and truly owned. The idea of natural talent or abilities not being a substitute for training is a simple enough message but the episode does a great job to show Kara’s process of understanding: that the DEO and many others in her life can help her just as much as she can help them.
There’s a nice echoing of the teamwork vibe in the villain camp. After last episode’s reveal of Astra as Kara’s aunt/her mother’s identical twin sister as the main antagonist, here we get to see more of her in action. In fact, she’s even the first to name check the episode title (which turns out to be the House of El family motto) as we learn, she’s been trying to unite Fort Raas prisoners since they crashed. We also get a lot of very curious teases after her grand plan. We know that will involve taking National City but not to destroy but to save and protect, “I let one planet die I will not do the same again”. This would imply some sort of military state occupation. It’s most likely the classic “saving us from ourselves” motive but could it also be that the Earth will soon be facing an unknown bigger bad? Laura Benanti (Eli Stone, Nashville) does a great job in her dual roles, delivering as a compassionate mother figure and an ominous villain. There’s a brief glimpse of her human villainous counterpart, Maxwell Lord (Peter Facinelli – Twilight, Nurse Jackie), as an influential businessman in the city in keeping with his comic persona. His public spin about National City not needing Metropolis’ problems (like regularly being an alien battle ground) feels like a very logical reaction and even a nod to Man of Steel’s mass city destruction in the battle with General Zod. Hellgrammite fulfills the villain/alien of the week duties. His initial wall-crawling CG effects look a bit ropey, but he ultimately becomes a good play of the misunderstood monster card when he’s labeled as a terrorist bomber despite a much less harmful agenda.
The surprise hero of this week’s episode is Casita Flockhart’s Cat Grant. Not only is she brilliantly funny in her uncaring approach towards Kara or anything but the success of her media empire (like improving Supergirl’s PR just to make her a better story), but this week we get some nice expanding on her character. Her monologue about starting from the bottom and working your arse off to the top is both enjoyable, and in keeping with the central theme, as we see that in her own way Cat is becoming a strong female role model for Kara. It’s interesting to learn that Cat started out as Perry White’s assistant at the Daily Planet (like Kara is to her) which explains her determination not to be outdone by her old employers.
Second episodes can often look a bit dimmer compared to their bigger budget preceding premiers, but Stronger Together succeeds by not trying to repeat itself in terms of sheer spectacle but strengthen its character muscles to make them just as hard hitting. The whole show still has the wonderful feel of an updated take on the Christopher Reeve era of Superman films. It’s fun and entertaining at heart while still touching on heavier subject matter. If the show keeps this form up the sky really is the limit.