Peggy: "…we've received no contact from the Soviet government—or anyone claiming to be affiliated to Leviathan—asking for your release."
Dottie: "This is my surprise face (◕_◕)."

I've read criticisms about how this show turned into a cartoon. A number of people were expecting this to be more like the movie in terms of tone, so there's been a bit of a backlash to the goofiness. The series premiere pandered quite a bit to the serious expectations (some scenes were direct mirrors of movie…

Well, yes, that was the fantasy's narrative, but I'm saying that the boy is an unnecessary element in it. Others have offered the idea that the boy represents her final promise to her parents, and thus it's an important part of her subconscious, but I disagree (since she's had a decade to accept Clark Kent's life, and…

I know this show has broached fire as a psychological vulnerability (it causes him to flashback to the immolation of his wife and daughters), but are they all-in with it being his physical weakness as well?

Yes, I know, and that's the complaint: it's not necessary to include Supes into her series, when the series is actually restricted in how they use the character. Supergirl has her own stories, her own supporting cast, and her own raison d'être; I feel it's best to build on her individuality, rather than return to the…

It's not impossible to not mention someone. Has anyone mentioned Leslie Willis lately? I feel it's counterproductive to include Superman into the story, when the lead character has already expressed a desire to disassociate her adventures from his reputation. Addressing their connection has already been done (and is…

I think that was what they did with the 1984 Supergirl movie, didn't they? Was that the joke?

Those are the names I've heard Cat Grant use over the course of the season. As someone else pointed out previously (sorry, can't remember which person it was, and there's no search function in Disqus), it's a very passive-aggressive way to diminish a person. I was trying to make a parallel between that behavior and…

… I'm not actually sure what this is addressing. Is this to say that Superman doesn't actually show up, so it's fine that the show keeps reminding us he exists? I mean, my problem is the actual name-dropping, which I feel is unnecessary, especially when the main character is trying to build an independent narrative.

Well, I'm gonna presume that Kara looked through Clark's photo albums at some point. She knows what he looked like as raised by the Kents, even if she didn't grow up with him. As for the globe thing, I think it's less an actual memory, and more of a wish-fulfillment scenario of having him living with her (she…

I understand that; I really do. I just feel that is not in keeping with the Kara Danvers of the present time. It's been at least a decade since she realized her baby cousin is now a grown man. She's become a grown woman in the interim. The Black Mercy Kal-El only really works if this happened within the year after she…

I feel that's regressive. She gave up that mission when she decided to live out the teenage life of Kara Danvers. She realized back then that Kal-El is a man named Clark Kent, and that Superman is more experienced at the superheroic life than she was.

I understand there's a narrative conceit for Kal-El's presence. I should be clear that my complaint is that the writers constructed a situation that brings Kal-El into the story. They do this for no reason, since Kara should not be regressively viewing Kal-El as her ward by this point in her life.

No, what's weird is that she infantilized a grown man into a boy for her fantasy. Kara did not just wake up from her spaceship yesterday. She's had about a decade to process the fact that her baby cousin is now biologically older than she is and has a full life on Earth.

Yep, as @disqus_Zt4JAKoGQ8:disqus mentioned in a separate thread, Astra's threat to cut him should have been a meaningless danger to Martian Manhunter. In the time it took her to mumble her threat, J'onn should have just phased out of her grasp and/or let the blade slide through. If he's quick enough to phase through…

This was a decent-enough closer for the initial 13-episode order. If this was the season finale, I'd have been good with it. That brief combat sequence with Martian Manhunter phasing through Astra's attacks was worth the slog of the laughable "Kryptonian attack" that the show apparently did not have the budget to…

I believe that the crowd that wants an Asian Iron Fist is also peeved about Tilda Swinton. I personally can't handle either side of those arguments, because neither Asian Martial Mystic nor Mighty Whitey is working for me. I'm just gonna wait and see how it all shakes out.

Well as @avclub-7aefa9e2af18cd9e2fde628a5e813aa5:disqus mentioned, it's not the white savior trope that's the problem here, it's the mighty whitey trope. Fortunately, Brubaker and Fraction already provided a potential solution to the issue by introducing previous Iron Fists. If the upcoming series invests time into…

No, I agree with you. I was simply pointing out that Iron Fist's origin is as problematic as some people are saying. That stems from his inception: he was meant to appeal to the kung-fu movie audience, but swapped in Rich White Dude in place of Exotic Asian Mystic stereotype. It's just really cringe-inducing in both…

I'm ambivalent about casting (in order to avoid the mighty whitey trope, you'd end up adopting the Asian martial artist trope), but I definitely agree that the upcoming series needs to take on the line of succession in the Iron Fist lineage. It needs to be very clear that Danny is only the most recent in a long…