A review of the "Supergirl" pilot

In a shrewd and ballsy move by CBS, the pilot episode of "Supergirl" has been "leaked". Set, originally, for release in October of this year, two versions (one HD, one less than HD) showed up online a few weeks ago.

And I watched it.

Here are some thoughts:

Way to wrap up the origin in two minutes (Man of Steel, I'm looking at you...). Although I'm sure we're going to see it again. And again. And again.

Both Laura Benanti and Malina Weissman have great "cry face" acting, the former more so than the latter.

Dean Cain! Woo!

Getting a ridiculously strong Felicity Smoak vibe from Benoist. "I have glasses! I can't be hot! Look the the glasses!!!! And I bump into people!!!!!!!!!! Because of the glasses!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Eight minutes and we already have a romantic interest. Ugh.

And eleven minutes in and they're already spoon feeding us details they brought up nine minutes in. Kreisberg must really think his audience is a huge flock of magpies with ADD standing next to an exploded tinsel factory.

May that be the last not-really-funny-in-the-90's-yet-somehow-still-rehashed-twenty-five-years-later-"I-thought-you-were-going-to-say-you-were-a-lesbian!!!" lesbian joke we ever see.*

Puffy mouth bad guy, Vartox, has too much air in his tummy! Get it all out, Puffy Diddy!

The DEO angle is interesting, but I assume it's going to be 30% of every episode. The rest will be a balance of awkward exchanges between Kara and Jimmy, Cat Grant being a strong, competent, stereotypical bitch, and, I don't know, popular music? This was sort of my issue with "Alias".**

Flockhart's heavy-handed "defending the word 'girl' " speech is a bit much, but, as Kreisberg has already illustrated, he thinks he's writing for distracted birds. Perhaps he also thinks the birds are stupid.

Regarding the emotional and revealing speech Alex gives through the door of Kara's apartment…neighbors? Hello?

There are four actors worth of acting coming out of Harewood's Hank Henshaw. He really needs to rein it in.   

One positive: I'm glad that there's only a very small number of people who don't know who she is; less time wasted with those inevitable, awful speeches about trust and putting people in danger and so on. This is the first upside to having Kreisberg write a third show in this universe: even he's getting sick of his worn out formula.

Of the four shows currently being written by Andrew Kreisberg, this is the least annoying***, but it still feels so goddamn much like "Arrow" and "Flash" that I can say, with confidence, that a lot of people will watch and enjoy this show, but that I will not be one of them.

There is an infinitesimal chance that, since CBS is using fan reaction from this "leak" to change aspects of the show before its release this Fall, that we might get something better, but, like I always say, less diarrhea is still diarrhea.

* It will not be.

** The TV show, not the Bendis book.

*** Obviously, I haven't seen any of "Legends of Whatever", but I have a strange feeling that, since it's "Arrow" and "Flash" having a stupid family of badly written idiots, that that'll annoy the piss out of me as well.