All this, so far, is explained in about the first five minutes of the pilot episode, with Kara providing a narrative voice-over supported by flashback imagery. As far as superhero origins/exposition goes, it feels pretty rushed. But this leaves us the rest of the first hour of the series to build up to the moment when Kara "comes out" as Supergirl – saving a plummeting airplane on which her foster-sister Alex is a passenger. Alex is soon revealed to be an agent of the DEO, the Department of Extranormal Operations, a covert government agency devoted to protecting the country from aliens. It turns out that Kara wasn't the only one who found a way out of the Phantom Zone 12 years ago; an alien prison named Fort Rozz came with her, crash-landing in the Nevada desert and spilling out a load of super-powered bad guys and gals. Among them are Kara's own Aunt Astra, twin sister to the Kara's mother, who put her and many of the other inmates away; Uncle Non, a next-level-up villain as evidenced by his British accent; and quite a few other weirdos who soon put Kara's developing powers to the test. By day, she runs to fetch Cat Grant's coffee; after hours, and increasingly often during unscheduled breaks during the work day, she hunts alien baddies as a DEO operative.
The cast is pretty good. Melissa Benoist is becoming a star, playing the beautiful and vivacious Kara/Supergirl. Calista Flockhart, who made the big time as "Ally McBeal," plays Cat Grant with a delicious touch of The Devil Wears Prada. There's also a tall, strapping, black Jimmy (I mean James) Olsen, moving over from Metropolis to watch over his super-bud's cousin – though, I'm sorry to say, the ongoing tease of a romance between him and Kara never comes to anything; a short, funny-looking, techie sidekick named Winn Schott, who immediately struck me as the Supergirl universe's answer to The Flash's Cisco Ramon (only with Anglo-Saxon roots and a serial killer for a dad); a certain Lucy Lane, kid sister to Lois, who at different times serves as Cat's legal counsel, as a stooge to her xenophobic general father, and as the director of the DEO; while the guy who normally plays that role is revealed to be a shape-changing, mind-reading Martian Manhunter named J'onn J'onzz (John Jones?).
One of the "Three Things That Make It For Me" in this season is the stunt casting of various guest roles, including living references to other fantasy/comic book classics. Playing the earthling couple who raised Kara after her crash-landing are Helen Slater, who played Supergirl in a 1984 movie, and Dean Cain, who played Superman in Lois and Clark. Playing semi-villainous tech mogul Maxwell Lord is Peter Facinelli, who led the Cullen clan of vampires in the Twilight movies. Jenna Dewan-Tatum, here playing Lucy Lane, has starred on American Horror Story and Witches of East End. Glenn Morshower, who plays General Lane, has made lots of guest appearances on Star Trek, appeared in X-men and Transformers movies, and is best known as the sheriff on the original CSI. There's a colonel in a few episodes played by Eddie McClintock of Warehouse 13. Playing one of Cat Grant's two sons is Levi Miller, who was Calvin in the recent A Wrinkle in Time movie. And Laura Vandervoort, who plays the villainess Indigo/Brainiac 8, played Kara Zor-El/Supergirl herself on Smallville.
The second Thing etc. is practically every line that comes out of Calista Flockhart's mouth, including (roughly quoted): "I'm a writer. It's like riding a bicycle and severe childhood trauma; you never really lose it." And then there's the time she tells a group of young adults that they look like the attractive but unthreatening, racially diverse cast of a CW series. If I didn't spew a mouthful of soda when I heard this line, it was only because I was between sips. Thing No. 3: The crossover episode with The Flash, which not only filled in something I was missing from watching the corresponding season of that show, but was also pretty darn fun.
Overall, maybe it's a sad reflection on the season's quality that a crossover episode was one of its high points. Themes of distrust vs. acceptance of aliens, saving the planet from human-driven climate change, and girl power were handled with an obviousness that sometimes crossed the boundary into shrillness. With a wealth of opportunities for superhero-vs.-supervillain action, it's a telling fact that the most dynamic character was a non-powered media executive, followed in descending order by a recurring (not regular) inventor/tech magnate, a shock jock who becomes electricity personified, a blue-skinned cyber-villain, a crazy auntie with a skunk stripe in her hair, and either of Cat Grant's sons, each of whom in his own way (depending on his age) crushes on either Supergirl or Kara.
It's a pity most of those characters weren't developed further, and that any hint of romance involving Kara didn't get past being lightly teased before she killed it for totally implausible reasons. Maybe I didn't notice it when the same thing happened in Arrow or The Flash, but this series devotes an awful lot of screen time to talky hand-wringing about whether the superhero(ine) should or shouldn't. And other than Supergirl's skirted costume looking rather fetching on Melissa Benoist, the sex-appeal quotient seems to be a bit lower than in the other ongoing DC series. I'm not saying it wasn't fun; for the reasons I mentioned above, and more, it was a gas. But what I'm saying is, it could have been a much more volatile gas.
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