- Nobody questioned how out of touch with plebian reality Mon-El was? Did no one wonder "how is a royal guard unable to do any kind of work, like he's never had to for a single day in his life?"
- Kara is back to being chummy with AI mom despite the anger over mom's role in the destruction of Krypton. She sure forgave her quickly. Destroying an entire planet out of political inaction is less terrible than actively causing domestic terrorism I suppose. (/s) Now add her father to the mix too LOL.
- All that awful tension with James over S1 built up to... literally nothing by the first episode. We had to sit through an entire season of awkward pining, James going full Mako, just for Kara to suddenly change her mind??? What was the point of that?? Her near-death experience propelling Fort Rozz off doesn't suggest it was the catalyst for her reevaulating life choices. The "you can't have everything" does not feel like it was impactful enough for her. Cat's life lesson of "dive" and "lighthousing" really amounted to nothing, then. Cat doesn't even get credit for Kara's choice to be a reporter because that was alllllll Lena. The only reasonable explanation I could think for this shocking swerve is that writers decided giving her a love interest in the first season happened too fast, and they needed to milk the "will Kara get the guy" for a couple more seasons. Or the writers for S2 are completely different and didn't like the romance arc. Or they thought this would be a convenient way to make little fuckboy Mon-El a contender for Kara's affections. Mon-El is even worse than James so I don't know why they think this could be a good idea.
- Lena with the amazing double cross on Lillian to stop Medusa. She's convincing enough to fool everyone. The only other person who has any semblance of acting skills is Alex, who's honestly not great at it. Of course, with benefit of hindsight, Lena is always the good guy - ignoring the breakup arc - but I really hope she continues to exploit the ambiguously evil vibes everyone believes she has while helping Superfriends. It's so refreshing to see good characters who can are guile. More 赵敏 and 黄蓉 please (AND both ladies won the love interest contest which Lena would have too if CW didn't decide to queerbait).
- The final sentence in the above point makes me want to do an informal comparison between western superhero stories and Chinese wuxia. They're pretty much each other's cultural equivalent: doofus all-loving protagonist, way too many love interests, and too many damn remakes that nobody asked for or wanted. Wuxia does win out in having fewer bland samey good characters and not being afraid to take big plotline risks. Yes, yes, wuxia is closer to western fantasy than superhero media, but the comparison should still be worth examining.
- The utter irony between Kara's near-death experience vs. Maggie's. Kara who has been obsessed with James decides (very unexpectedly) that he isn't the one afterward. Maggie who has been adamant about not dating baby lesbians decides she should shoot her shot. Kara: 0 Alex: 1
My player lagged right as Mon-El backs away from kissing Kara right on the frame they have the worst duck faces. I will never take kissing scenes seriously again.
- Dangers in the show have 0 stakes. Very few losses on the heroes' side are ever permanent except for Kelly the office skydiver. Kara's stint with red kryptonite only matters for a few episodes, and J'onn's blood transfusion goes wrong only to be magically cured by the conveniently timed Medusa MacGuffin. Consistently building up dramatic tension only to have a resolution in which nothing changes gets really old.
- Alex gets frustrated because protecting Kara takes precedence over anything she ever does. She gets the girl AND the wedding AND a cute little kid for herself at the end. Meanwhile Kara gets... nothing, because CW insists she and Lena are just friends.
- In line with my complaints about doing Winn dirty in S1, nobody continues to respect Winn in S2. Everyone drags him along to their plans, nobody takes his concerns seriously, and no one really cares about him until they need something from him. Winn deserves better.
- Kara's level of deflection is incredibly unhealthy and it doesn't appear she makes any improvement on this flaw in S2. Denial, overeagerness, unfunny hysterical laughter, breaking things, etc. Add in being helpless in basic life skills and needs to be nannied by Alex with clothing choices and Cat's telling her how to unstuck herself. Why does no one call her out on this? Emotional regulation and self-awareness is not one of Kara's strong suits, and it only creates more problems in the middle of a conflict she can't just punch through. I really hope Kara gets character development in this area.
- For someone who's full of sunshine and so cheerful, Kara is also, no surprise, shockingly bad at having important conversations and oblivious when it comes to reading the room. This is part of the poor emotional regulation written above. She gets mad, gets defensive, refuses to listen to any other viewpoint, lashes out with comments going from 0-100 without buildup whatsoever, which ends up with everyone leaving the conversation unhappy. She also has the bad habit of doubling down on a viewpoint, thinking about it, and immediately switches to the opposite viewpoint with no verbal discussion. After an argument, she stews a little, thinks that she has to do everything by herself because she's the only sane person, calms down, and going back to apologize for what she says. This behavior is exactly the same in S1 and S2. Getting stale here. The lesson-of-the-week never sticks either; Kara would be stubborn, get into trouble because of doubling down, and then give some trite comment about her change of heart at the end. This is worse than just formulaic writing because everyone enables Kara's behavior and never force her to reflect by excusing all her bad decisions on "you were trying to do the right thing, and nobody can blame you for that." How's Kara supposed to develop if everyone is perfectly fine with her stagnant character?
- Kara demolishing the cement blocks when nobody believed in Lena's innocence has to be the most frustrated I've seen her at any perceived injustice. The fact that Kara feels so angry over a friend with so little screen time is funnier if you're looking for Supercorp fuel. I'm also surprised Lena barely showed up in S2, but she killed her scenes. Lena's promotion to main character is completely deserved, but it's clear writers tried to unsubtlely add her presence into the script after S2 aired. Lena is the only character in the show to have any continuous off-screen interactions with the cast. The kombucha date, the tiny mentions about past cancelled meetups during the brunch, those were never mentioned before. Really makes me wonder exactly how close they've become, since we didn't get much scene time with the both of them in S2.
- Unbelievable how Mon-El has had absolutely 0 change in character development except getting a job and Kara still manages to fall for him. James and Winn weren't it, but Mon-El was?? She clashes with him over the most basic problems with respect and his stay-in-the-kitchen sexist attitude, but still manages to look past that. I am questioning exactly what angle writers were trying to accomplish with making unlikeable fuckboy the love interest. Show Kara has shit taste? No interest in mostly decent men, yet go for the moron. Reminds me of below tweet. I don't have any explanation for why she likes him beyond his pickup lines and good looks. Good sex? :V (Kara's shit taste in guys is obviously writers' faults but it is so bad I am almost rooting for single Kara over Supercorp because she does not make me feel like she deserves a happy ending with this braindead move.)
- I am shocked that literally everyone got hold of the Idiot Ball when Jeremiah returned just so they could pull the most obvious secretly-working-with-villain (but still secretly good) trope. Make Mon-El extra shitty (after getting a home run with Kara, no less, wow) so no one wants to believe him. The fact that Alex, most suspicious and serious person on Earth, unconditionally believed everything, is the strangest part of all. Sure she's floating in sapphic bliss and is even happier that daddy is back, but I still have a hard time believing that's all it took for her to not question things. It still feels too out of character. Also, how did the med bay exams not catch Jeremiah's cybernetic arm?
- Going off the above point about the secretly villainous trope, this show has really done nothing original with any of the typical superhero tropes. Everything is bland and all the plot points are played straight. How does CW expect to make Supergirl profitable if there is nothing to differentiate it? The only proper subversions I can think of (excluding moments of clearly clueless writing like breaking up with James) is Lena betraying Lillian and Medusa, M'Gann being a White Martian, and Mon-El staying a disgusting fuckboy and still managing to hook Kara.
- I approve of Jimmy-Winn bro time. I'm also happy Winn finally got the girl.
- Alex and Maggie didn't discuss kids before the marriage. They talked about getting a dog before getting a kid. To be fair, Alex asks Maggie right after the closest end-of-the-world invasion so the proposal wasn't particularly well-thought out and didn't come with a lot of serious discussion on logistics and the future. Very representative of real life? Yes. Still bad writing? Yes.
- Mon-El never finished Romeo and Juliet. That's ok, why read fiction when you can live the real thing? This kind of heavyhanded metaphor dropping is something I expect out of a third grade homework assignment.
- Overall I really loved the intrigue that Lillian and Rhea brought to the plot. Rhea was too hammy for my liking but both did great jobs in adding color to the otherwise dull main cast. I wish Lillian showed up more often to steamroll through the group of Lawful Good. Villainous schemers are just as important as interesting protagonists, and right now the evil people are carrying the boring main characters' corpses across the finish line.
- Alex's kidnapping by Ricky tried really hard to bolster the "people who know Supergirl's identity are at risk" and once again only strengthens my argument that it's 掩耳盗铃 bullshit. Ricky didn't choose Alex because she knew who Supergirl was, she was chosen because she was closest to Supergirl. Would villains bother filtering targets out based on whether the targets knew Supergirl's identity? That's ridiculous. Kara Danvers is the liability here, not Supergirl. If Kara truly wanted to protect people, she'd stay away from them as Kara.
- While I'm talking about the episode that spurred the above comment, the opening for that episode was a missed opportunity to actually explore unconventional storylines: Maggie's mention of "the Supergirl defense." It's clearly become an issue if people are able to use it and escape on technicalities, and it's the first time the show lampshades negative consequences of Supergirl's heroing on the wrongdoers' side. Instead of trying to understand this nuanced issue, Kara dismisses it with her "I'm Supegirl" card. The show then transitions from this briefly mentioned legitimate criticism into a pissing contest between good cop and bad cop. Writers really have their priorities straight with what stories are worth focusing on.