Distributor: Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.
Episodes: 20
Duration: 42 min (per episode)
Supergirl: Season 1 (Blu-ray) – Series Review
The last few years Marvel is amping up their movie releases, with several ones per year, further building upon a well beloved comic book universe. DC is slowly following Marvel’s example, but they have the lead when it comes to DC Universe series, such as The Flash, Arrow and DC Legends of Tomorrow, and of course, Supergirl. The latter has known a rather big delay when it comes to its physical release in Belgium, and while many fans of the aforementioned series will probably already know of the girl of steel, we finally had the chance to take a look at the Blu-ray set of the first season, and while some parts of the series may be considered a ‘mess in a dress’, we overall enjoyed the experience.
Kara Danvers (Melissa Benoist) is a seemingly normal girl, working an average assistant job for Cat Grant (Calista Flockhart), who is considered to be the queen of all media, especially in National City. Nonetheless, Kara carries a rather big secret, as she is the niece of the man of steel, a.k.a. Superman. She has learned to suppress her powers, as the world already has a hero, and thus her adoptive family wanted her to be a normal ‘human’ girl, even though she is a lot more than a mere human. When her sister Alex (Chyler Leigh) gets into trouble when her airplane’s engines are failing one by one, Kara has to come out of her shell and use her powers in order to save her beloved adoptive sister. This is the first step for Kara to become a new superhero, which is later dubbed as Supergirl by Cat Grant, who clearly has a lot of hope for the young girl.
Overall, that’s pretty much the idea of the first season, safe for the fact that it follows the same formula as Arrow, The Flash and so on, where one case is tackled each episode, which means a lot of villains will pass the revue, all tied together with a red thread that has to serve as the main plot. The main plot also becomes apparent rather fast, as more survivors from Krypton, and other planets, roam the Earth, but sadly they don’t have any good intentions for our planet, as they are all escapees from an intergalactic prison that only housed the worst in the galaxy. Things remain fairly simple for this first season, where the main villain for this season is introduced, but also the longtime enemy, or at least ‘counterpart’, such as was the case with Superman. In here Maxwell Lord (Peter Facinelli) is clearly somewhat of a Lex Luthor for Supergirl.
Casting wise, some interesting choices have happened, especially in terms of the ‘side-characters’. Melissa Benoist is a great Supergirl, not only in terms of appearance, but also in charm. It’s clear that this young actress has found a great role for her to explore further. Calista Flockhart is again forced to play a very quirky character, like she was in Ally McBeal, but she is actually a very pleasant addition to the cast, that kind of grants a certain comical note to what’s happening, as she gets a lot of screen time. The rest of the cast also does a very great job in providing qualitative acting performances, but one cameo, namely the one by Dean Cain, who plays Kara Danvers’ adoptive father is very fun for those who used to watch Louis and Clark, as Dean Cain portrayed Superman in the nineties for roughly six years in a row.
While series like The Flash and DC Legends of Tomorrow also rely a lot on special effects, it feels as if Supergirl relies even more on them, and truth be told, they’re not always as convincing as you’d like, even worse, sometimes they look horribly cheap, which is a shame as Arrow, The Flash and DC Legends of Tomorrow will certainly have already earned enough revenue to add a bit of extra budget for the special effects.
Safe for the typical deleted scenes, you’ll get a fair amount of fun extras on this Blu-ray version of the first season of Supergirl. You’ll get to watch a fun gag reel, the 2015 Comic-Con panel, a small documentary about the ‘Martian manhunter’, and a short featurette about Krypton, and why they couldn’t explore Krypton any further in for example a Superman series, as they would in this series about the girl of steel. While the overall special features don’t span that long in length, they are quite fun to watch when you’re done with the first season.
Conclusion
Supergirl: Season 1 is a fairly decent series, and if you’re already into Arrow, The Flash and DC Legends of Tomorrow, you’ll certainly find this one equally as qualitative. While this series relies a bit more on special effects, which aren’t always done as good as you’d like, the overall acting experience is quite good. The story may be a bit more bland than the aforementioned series, but it’s still fun to watch this first season of Supergirl.
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