SUPERGIRL: Playing It Safe Keeps Her From Soaring

OVERPRAISING A FRUSTRATINGLY FLAWED PILOT DOESN’T DO TV VIEWERS (OR FEMALE SUPER HEROES) ANY FAVORS

AIRS MONDAYS AT 8PM E/P ON CBS

The good news: SUPERGIRL doesn’t totally suck. It’s no ARROW or THE FLASH but it is more fun than that torpid Marvel clunker AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D. The bad news: SUPERGIRL is on CBS. Everything has been run through their de-fanger and given a sanitizing scrub-a-dub; a process perfected by the official network of “TV That’s Never Thinky.” It’s not quite DC-CSI, but the opener plays it too safe and isn’t worthy of the overpraise being heaped upon it by some critics.

While everyone is certainly entitled to their opinion, we’re all spinning our pearls of wisdom off the same pilot. It was “leaked” online months ago and subsequent episodes have not been made available for review. So, right off the bat, let’s stop pretending SUPERGIRL is the first coming of She-Christ or a significant feminist milestone. It is neither of those things and ignoring a host of frustrating flaws does a disservice to an audience hungry for a series with a fully-realized female super hero at the helm. SUPERGIRL is the right gender for the job, but she’s trapped in a vehicle that refuses to let her soar.

As we’re reminded repeatedly in hour one, Supergirl (aka Kara Zor-El and Kara Danvers) is Superman’s cousin. Originally sent here to watch over Kal-El, she ended up getting sucked into the Phantom Zone en route and arrives years later than planned. By the time Kara does touch down on Earth, the citizens of Metropolis are already in thrall to the powers of Superman, a development that renders her original mission obsolete. She’s shipped off to be raised in safe anonymity by the Danvers family. Jump to present day. Twenty-something Kara is now living in National City where she toils away as the put-upon assistant to media mogul Cat Grant (Calista Flockhart).

If almost none of that sounds familiar to fans of the DC Comics heroine, that’s because series creators Greg Berlanti, Ali Adler and Andrew Kreisberg have jettisoned almost the entire Supergirl backstory. Absolute purists are never going to be happy with TV adaptions of their beloved favorites so trying to please them is a pointless exercise in frustration. Besides, as we’ve seen with ARROW and THE FLASH, when something is re-imagined well, it doesn’t really matter how much you tweak the source material. The problem with SUPERGIRL? For every creative master stroke there’s an even bigger misstep.

To be fair, part of the blame for what doesn’t work here has to be attributed to licensing issues. Superman is a big-screen character and it’s quite obvious CBS was not granted permission to use him for much more than cursory mentions. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like the producers got the memo about necessity being the mother of invention. The whole Superman/Supergirl thing is awkward and messy throughout the first episode. The writers end up contorting themselves so much that you can almost hear the multi-layered legal vetting process chugging along in the background.

Speaking of writers, though Berlanti, Kreisberg and Adler share credit for the pilot script, way too much of what ended up on screen sounds like the words of the latter. Ali Adler joined the writing staff on GLEE in season three. That’s about the same time things started to go downhill fast at William McKinley High School. The series went from infectious to insipid and never recovered. Adler also teamed up with her GLEE co-conspirator Ryan Murphy to create THE NEW NORMAL, one of the absolute worst television comedies of the past twenty years. She’s one of those lazy wordsmiths incapable of thickening her thin treacle with anything that might stick to your mental ribs. That could explain why big chunks of SUPERGIRL feel more akin to WONDER WOMAN circa-1975 than they do a primetime drama debuting in 2015.

What saves SUPERGIRL from its own creative Kryptonite is the one-two punch of Melissa Benoist in the title role and Mehcad Brooks as James “Jimmy” Olsen. The pair have delightful on-screen chemistry and do some pretty amazing things with what amounts to a script full of empty calories . They’re the reason you’ll come back for seconds.

Benoist oozes charm and charisma. If you’re not rooting for her, you’re a hard ass with no heart. She deserves every bit of the effusive advance buzz you’ve been hearing. There’s so much more to her exuberant performance than perkiness and pluck that it’s a real bummer every time she’s swatted down by a shaky plot thread or weak writing.

Brooks has finally been cast in a role that lets him shine. He brings a potent combination of good looks and gravitas to the proceedings. His portrayal of Olsen is modern and refreshingly mature. Both he and Benoist will be among the biggest break-out stars of the fall TV season. That says more about them as actors than it does the vehicle they’ve arrived in.

Elsewhere on the call sheet, Flockhart and Chyler Leigh (playing Kara’s adoptive sister Alex) don’t fare so well. Riffing off limited range, Leigh gives us a slightly less annoying take on her Lexie Grey. It’s an unwelcome nostalgia trip that also results in unintentional laughs. You see, Alex Danvers is a doctor and scientist who (wait for it) also works as a secret government agent. She’s on staff at the Department of Extra-Normal Operations, a group tasked with keeping tabs on interplanetary aliens living among us. FYI, none of it comes off any less asinine on screen. The reveal of Alex’s double life is handled in such an off-hand manner that I’ve chosen to take it as tacit admission by the creators of their epic casting fail re: Chyler Leigh.

Fans of bitchy dialogue and hammy acting will probably love whatever it is that Flockhart does with the role of Cat Grant. Personally, channeling Alexis Carrington seems out of sync with the sunny-bright tone of the series. The “powerful woman as uber-witch” meme is also the kind of lazy stereotyping SUPERGIRL should have avoided. Oddly, whenever a “girl-power” message does slip out, it usually comes from Grant. If I had a daughter, I’d prefer she not take life lessons from a one-note character played by someone who looks like she chews more scenery than she does food.

Action sequences are wildly uneven and run the gamut from bang-up (like a thrilling passenger plane rescue) to bust. Taken as a whole, this incarnation of SUPERGIRL plays very young and runs the risk of alienating as many genre fans as it might attract. While there’s absolutely nothing wrong with appealing to teen and pre-teen girls, don’t expect the whole of the 18-49 set to stay engaged long term if fisticuffs between hero and villain continue to look like they were filmed and choreographed by alumni from the MIGHTY MORPHIN POWER RANGERS.

When something like SUPERGIRL comes along, there’s a tendency to overstate the role it’s supposed to play in the pantheon of television milestones. While it might be wrong to burden a piece of pure entertainment with the task of correcting all the wrongs and slights that came before, it is more than fair to expect a series to walk the walk of its own PR talk. CBS has not been shy about parroting the mush-gush of delusional critics (like Daniel Fienberg from The Hollywood Reporter) who have convinced themselves that what amounts to the TV equivalent of a Katy Perry song is also a significant leap forward or progress of some kind. Sorry, it isn’t. Want further proof? Check out the atrocious companion website for the series. It’s an embarrassing crap hole of cheap looking creative, shameless network synergy (“The 12 Hottest Bad Boys On CBS”) and vapid “mommy and me” content (“15 Mom Superpowers We Will Always Appreciate”). The headless close-up of Supergirl’s chest in the sidebar is especially tacky.

Just as women should receive equal pay for equal work, they should also be depicted as complex, multi-dimensional characters in popular entertainment. On that front, SUPERGIRL does a face plant. Sure, it takes more work to inject some substance into frothy style, but our mothers, sisters and daughters are more than worth the effort. They certainly deserve better than what is currently just a cutesy flight of fancy masquerading as the next big thing in superhero lore.

 

 

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TV REVIEW: THE CRAZY ONES [CBS]

IN TWEET: ROBIN WILLIAMS RETURNS TO SERIES TELEVISION IN “THE CRAZY ONES.” HE SHOULD HAVE STAYED AWAY A LITTLE LONGER.

I didn’t expect to be bowled over by the new CBS workplace “comedy” THE CRAZY ONES (Thursdays at 9PM E/P on CBS). The show certainly lived up to my lowered expectations but also left me scratching my head. It’s one of the most confounding of a weak slate of new single camera half hours.

Simon (Robin Williams) and Sydney Roberts (Sarah Michelle Gellar) run a father-daughter advertising agency in Chicago. He’s a once-great but now broken man (thanks to bad marriages and stints in rehab) who must be “handled” by his younger and more grounded progeny. This should be where the sparks of conflict come from, except nothing ever really catches fire here. It’s like someone took the pieces of a puzzle, lost a few and assembled the rest totally wrong.

I’ll get to Williams in a moment but, blame for the lackluster foundational elements of the show must be shouldered by writer/creator David E. Kelley. THE CRAZY ONES has all of his requisite touches: a workplace that would never exist in the real world, overly precious and wholly unremarkable writing, quirky characters who are quirky “just because” and female roles filtered through the mind of a man I am convinced doesn’t have a very high opinion of women. How else to explain the character of Lauren (Amanda Setton), an assistant at the agency who exists pretty much so Simon can smell her hair. I kid you not.

Kelly is the guy who convinced America that Ally McBeal was a  great role model. I’m one of those he duped back in the day. Watching the show now, I feel nothing but shame for allowing myself to be suckered in. Unlike McBeal, Sydney is no train wreck. Unfortunately, she’s the female voice of reason here so Kelley positions her as the punching bag. When Sydney isn’t being steamrolled or undermined by the infantile antics of her father, she’s easily one-upped by subordinate Zach (James Wolk) and humiliated in public by Kelly Clarkson (random guest star of the week) for no real reason. It’s more than a little depressing to see Gellar reduced to this kind of crap. Buffy would put a stake in it without hesitation.

I’m not one who goes ga ga for Robin Williams. His shtick gets very old, very fast. In fact, had he never graced the small screen again, I would have been a happy camper. Still, for a show with “crazy” in the title, Williams has dialed it down quite a bit. Unfortunately, that reveals all of his weaknesses as a series lead. Why hire PATCH ADAMS if you don’t want his rubber nose and balloon animals? Here, he alternates from madcap to crashing bore with no rhyme or reason. I don’t believe for a minute that his character is an ad man, much less the head of an agency that could land business from the likes of McDonald's.

Luckily, someone had the inspiration to cast Wolk. He’s flown under the radar with consistently great work in a diverse array of TV gigs, including LONE STAR, HAPPY ENDINGS, MAD MEN and the criminally underrated mini-series POLITICAL ANIMALS. Wolk is the only thing that makes THE CRAZY ONES somewhat tolerable and he easily steals every scene he’s in. His musical duet with Clarkson (also faring nicely, by the way) is a highlight as is the scene where he pitches her with Simon. While Williams falls back on his “same old, same old” manic crutch, Wolk shows real comedic chops (try saying that ten times fast).

THE CRAZY ONES doesn’t have enough comedy to qualify as a sit-com or enough gravitas to make it an hour-long series. It’s an oddball “thing” that feels less like a complete show than it does a half-hearted concept pitch. Thanks to a lead-in from a record breaking season premiere of BIG BANG THEORY, a lot of people sampled THE CRAZY ONES. The show moves into its regular time slot this week and won’t have the benefit of a hand-delivered audience too lazy to turn the channel. I try my hardest to avoid openly rooting for the failure of a show but, THE CRAZY ONES does not deserve to be a hit.

RONTHINK GRADE: D+

TV REVIEW: MOM [CBS]

IN TWEET: ANNA FARIS AND ALLISON JANNEY SHINE IN THE BAWDY SIT-COM “MOM”

Typically, I don’t cover CBS programming in large part because network president Les Moonves is not what I would call a friend of digital content distribution. He’s also an arrogant gas bag who never met a cookie-cutter procedural he didn’t get hard for. Unlike ABC, NBC, Fox and The CW, CBS makes it difficult to watch their shows anywhere outside of the traditional broadcast model. My response: why give free publicity to a network that doesn’t play nice with viewers?

With that said, I watched the new Chuck Lorre series MOM, laughed my ass off and decided to give CBS a little love. Of the half-dozen or so new fall comedies I’ve screened, it’s the only one that feels like a fully developed show. It’s definitely adult and uptight media watch dog groups will hate everything about it. No matter, MOM is undeniably hilarious and handles some very sensitive subject matter with deft skill.

Anna Faris plays Christy, a hard working single mom who waits tables at an upscale restaurant. She had her two kids very young and is also grappling with the reality that she’s an alcoholic. When we first meet her, Christy is just shy of four months sober (118 days, to be precise).

In short order, we are introduced to Christy’s married boss Gabriel (Nathan Corddry), fussy restaurant chef Rudy (nicely played by French Stewart in a pointed “homage” to Food Network staple Ted Allen), her semi-trampy and full-on resentful teen daughter Violet (Sadie Calvano) and adorable younger son Roscoe (Blake Garret Rosenthal).

Violet is already sexually active with her doofus boyfriend Luke (a strong, well modulated turn by Spencer Daniels) and Christy is having an affair with Gabriel. Oh, did I forget to mention that his wife’s father owns the restaurant?

As if all of that family drama wasn’t enough for Christy to deal with, it’s in her AA meeting that we first meet Bonnie (Allison Janney), Christy’s mother and fellow recovering addict. It’s also readily apparent that mom was into a lot more than wine and liquor:

BONNIE: (To a waiter) Can I trouble you for some water without ice. Ice isn’t good for my digestive system.

CHRISTY: Really? Ice? I think your digestive system has seen worse than ice.

BONNIE: Excuse me?

CHRISTY: Mom, I’ve watched you lick cocaine crumbs out of a shag carpet.

BONNIE: It’s not a sin to be thrifty, dear.

The script pulls no punches when it comes to drugs, sexuality and the rather loose morals of just about everyone in sight. Still, in the hands of Faris and Janney, the laughs come fast and furious and things never move into that skeezey, mean-spirited  territory occupied full-time by TWO AND A HALF MEN (another Chuck Lorre series). This is a show where the writers like the characters, warts and all.

Janney plays Bonnie with admirable restraint, a wise choice given how horrible of a mother she was. Resisting the temptation to take the character over the top makes Bonnie likable enough that you don’t root for her to fall off the wagon and drop dead. She’s still blissfully ignorant of the damage she’s done but in her own bizarre way Bonnie is trying to cobble together a relationship with Christy. As always, Janney is spot on.

I’ve always liked Faris but this is definitely her most grounded and earnest performance. She has comedy chops to spare but it’s her sweet exasperation and genuine heart that make the show so enjoyable. Even if you can’t relate to her addiction or family situation, most Americans can identify with her financial struggles. MOM does an admirable job of not avoiding economic realities, something most other sit-coms don’t touch (yes, MODERN FAMILY, I’m talking to you).

MOM really shouldn’t be this funny or, dare I say, sweet but somehow it is. The lion's share of the credit must go to Faris, Janney and that part of Chuck Lorre’s brain that gave us a great show like BIG BANG THEORY. MOM is well worth your time.

MOM airs Mondays at 9:30PM E/P on CBS.

RONTHINK GRADE: B+