Ok, this one is a long time coming…six months in fact. I’m just going to say it quickly and rip it off like a band-aid. I love Supergirl, or at least what you used to be, but you and I are having some ‘complications’ of our own right now. Supergirl, let me count the ways in which I love you, the old you.
You used to be all about strong women helping each other and building each other up. You used to be about a young woman leaning on other women around you for support (instead of a piece of stale bread). You used to be about sisters who stood together against all odds. You used to be a show where accepting your weaknesses and asking for help was praised and seen as a sign of strength, you know ‘el mayarah’ and all. You’ve always been about a feminist icon, but you seem to have forgotten all of that.
I mean ‘el mayarah’ does make for a lovely tattoo, but I’m biased.
I feel indebted to you. You are a show about an alien who has lost her family and is having to begin again on a new planet and find a new family. This is something I completely relate to. I moved to a new country, a whole other time zone, and left everything and everyone I knew behind. Seeing Supergirl create her own little family showed me that you don’t need to be blood to be a family, that you can create your own found family. This is something the show did so well in season one, but not so much since then. Watching every Monday has started to become a chore and it seems that an episode lasts 84 years. I’ve lost what it feels like to be excited about watching an episode, and it’s been missing since around Christmas. I need to feel the excitement again in the lead up to the episodes, I need to feel the anticipation in waiting all week for a new episode again.
I just want to say, before the ranting begins, that Chris Wood is a great actor, but the character of Mon-El zaps me of any energy I have. In season 2 he constantly belittled Kara and made her into less of the hero we all know she is. It’s not Chris Wood’s fault. It’s the way the character is written (just in the way that Bella Swan is such a sucky and boring character because that’s the way she was written, not in Kristen Stewart’s portrayal of her). Sure he did apologize, and sure Kara did eventually chew him out over it (while under M’rynn’s anger outburst but that’s a WHOLE other issue) but I still haven’t been seeing much improvement in the character. Mon-El does have the nickname ‘Frat Boy of the Universe’ for a reason, and that isn’t going to change overnight. Oh, and let’s not get me started on the fact that he is married but abandons his wife to go and ‘help’ Kara save earth when she is perfectly capable of saving it herself and has been doing it without you.
I don’t hate you, I just don’t particularly like you Mon-El because Kara Zor-El Danvers is a strong, independent woman who can take care of herself!
Something else I think is wrong is the complete breakdown in the relationship between Alex and Kara/Supergirl and Lena. These are the three smartest and amazing women on the show and have amazing relationships with them yet, Kara abandoned Alex in her time of need to go off to Argo because Kara said she belonged there after less than a day, giving up everyone who loved her and taking soggy fish stick with her instead of her sister. And with Lena, the relationship between Supergirl and Lena has broken down to the point where they only involve each other as a professional courtesy. Remember when Lena thought of Supergirl as a hero before she became jaded when Supergirl went off the rails about Lena making Kryptonite? I sure do! And how did that work out for you Supergirl? Hasn’t Lena’s Kryptonite turned out to be one of the only things helping- from keeping Reign contained for a period of time to Alex using it against the Dark Kryptonians?
I MISS THE DANVERS SISTERS AND THEY ARE IMPORTANT TO ME DOT TUMBLR DOT COM
You’ve lost your feminist touch Supergirl. When Cat Grant left, we never really seemed to get that back fully. Yes, Lena Luthor is a feminist (and lesbian and Lenasexual) icon, but she isn’t the one who Kara/Supergirl goes to for advice on how to do better, how to be a better hero. We lost that voice, and I need it back again. I miss the chats Kara and Cat would have in the office with Cat telling Kara that Supergirl wasn’t being everything she could be, but please listen to us fans when we tell you this.
We need a strong female presence again that Kara can turn to for advice about being Supergirl
There are so many things right now that I am disappointed in, mainly that Supergirl has been sidelined in her own show to make way for a truck-load of man pain that no one asked for. I know this show can do better, can be better. If I didn’t feel so indebted to this show and wasn’t so obsessed with Chyler Leigh and Katie McGrath (what you didn’t know that? Have you seen my Twitter lately?) then I would turn it off. I’m not against doing that, I know when I outgrow a show and when it’s time to stop. But this show is so much more to me! It has literally become a part of me! I have the tattoo to prove it! But if there’s no improvement in season 4 then I think our love affair will be over, and that’s the part that makes me sadder. You have so much potential. Be the show I needed when I was a kid again, and be the show that I need now.
Supergirl, you’re not you when you’re hungry. Have a snickers and get back to being yourself!
-Written by Christine
fangirlden.com 