Supergirl

[Ternaugh]

Checking out the viewership on wiki, I am quite surprised by the total volume of viewers. I didn't realize the show garnered almost 13 million viewers for its pilot nor the nearly 9 million for the second episode. Those are powerful numbers. Gotham never achieved 9 Million - not even for its pilot. And Gotham did great compared to The Flash which garners 3.5 million but is on cable. Granted, each series is pocketed into different expectations because one is cable, one is broadcast, and one is a semi-broadcast station. Still, I imagine if Supergirl can maintain 8 to 9 Million an episode it will be staying around for some time to come. 

 

Foreign Orchid. 

 

7 day numbers for the Supergirl pilot were expected to reach 18 million, through DVR and streaming. The Flash isn't a cable show, it is on the CW, which is a broadcast network that generally has ratings behind the three majors (NBC, CBS, ABC). CBS is a part owner of the CW (the "C" in its name), with Time Warner as the other major partner (the "W"), and the network was formed by merging the failing UPN and WB networks some years back. CBS, on the other hand, has been high in the ratings, but many of their shows skew older with the demographics. Supergirl is an attempt at skewing younger in the demographics, and does appear to be working.

[zslane]

The drop in viewership is hardly surprising. When the writing is as bad as this, a 30% drop is to be expected when you don't have The Big Bang Theory as the lead-in guaranteeing aritificially high numbers.

 

It continues to irritate me that she refers to herself as the world's second superhero. I really don't need the title sequence reminding me every week that I'm not watching a show that takes place in the DCU, but rather some wierd Elseworlds universe where a quarter decade after Superman began superheroing not a single other superhero appeared to join in the action.

 

The fight scenes are an odd mixture of high-speed impacts and hilariously embarrassingly bad wire work. And her flight poses need a lot of work. They should take some notes from how Nathan Petrelli flew. And don't get me started on some of the atriciously bad CGI used for characters like the DDT-eater (though the Reaver mouth was pretty well done, I guess).

 

And, right, tearing apart the tanker makes sense but only in a non-Superman universe. Massive objects can be lifted and moved and stopped and whatever, all without losing structural integrity, because otherwise Superman can't be a hero. Ever. If that tanker rips open when being slowly pulled away from port, then the airplane she saved would have been ripped apart when she grabbed its fuselage from underneath and tried to slow it down to a survivable impact speed. But the writers expect us viewers to be as dumb as they are and just look the other way in the name of superhero entertainment.

 

I still like Melissa Benoist. And I still like Mehcad Brooks. Everything else is so lame I won't be surprised to see another 30% drop off...

[Andrew_A]

The drop in viewership is hardly surprising. When the writing is as bad as this, a 30% drop is to be expected when you don't have The Big Bang Theory as the lead-in guaranteeing aritificially high numbers.

 

It continues to irritate me that she refers to herself as the world's second superhero. I really don't need the title sequence reminding me every week that I'm not watching a show that takes place in the DCU, but rather some wierd Elseworlds universe where a quarter decade after Superman began superheroing not a single other superhero appeared to join in the action.

 

The fight scenes are an odd mixture of high-speed impacts and hilariously embarrassingly bad wire work. And her flight poses need a lot of work. They should take some notes from how Nathan Petrelli flew. And don't get me started on some of the atriciously bad CGI used for characters like the DDT-eater (though the Reaver mouth was pretty well done, I guess).

 

And, right, tearing apart the tanker makes sense but only in a non-Superman universe. Massive objects can be lifted and moved and stopped and whatever, all without losing structural integrity, because otherwise Superman can't be a hero. Ever. If that tanker rips open when being slowly pulled away from port, then the airplane she saved would have been ripped apart when she grabbed its fuselage from underneath and tried to slow it down to a survivable impact speed. But the writers expect us viewers to be as dumb as they are and just look the other way in the name of superhero entertainment.

 

I still like Melissa Benoist. And I still like Mehcad Brooks. Everything else is so lame I won't be surprised to see another 30% drop off...

 

I haven't seen the episode, so I won't comment too much, but didn't Agents of SHIELD also experience a huge ratings drop? It's still around, so who knows?

 

Then again, this is CBS. I don't have a lot of faith in them.

[zslane]

Agents of SHIELD probably benefits from a number of related things: tie-ins with the (very successful) movies, the success of Agent Carter, being part of the MCU as a whole (which allows Daisy to be from the same orphanage as Matt Murdoch from Netflix's Daredevil, etc.), and improvements in writing and plotting. That last one might not have had a chance to boost the show's survivability if it weren't for some of those others, but it is definitely making a difference now.

 

Supergirl doesn't really have ties to anything it can benefit from other than the Superman brand in general. It will largely have to succeed on its own. The quality of the writing had better rise quickly.

[Christopher R Taylor]

SHIELD lost me by mangling and turning everyone against each other for a nonstop misery fest of betrayal and horror.  Supergirl at least looks happier.

[Andrew_A]

Agents of SHIELD probably benefits from a number of related things: tie-ins with the (very successful) movies, the success of Agent Carter, being part of the MCU as a whole (which allows Daisy to be from the same orphanage as Matt Murdoch from Netflix's Daredevil, etc.), and improvements in writing and plotting. That last one might not have had a chance to boost the show's survivability if it weren't for some of those others, but it is definitely making a difference now.

 

Supergirl doesn't really have ties to anything it can benefit from other than the Superman brand in general. It will largely have to succeed on its own. The quality of the writing had better rise quickly.

 

Well the showrunners want to do a crossover with Arrow and the Flash, but the network isn't too keen on the idea. We'll see.

 

BTW, I just watched the latest episode (and Global sucks for online viewing. Thanks for wasting my time with constant crashes.). I liked it. It was way better than the leaked pilot. I found myself warming up to the various characters. Even Cat Grant and Henshaw weren't as annoying as before. The special effects were about what I'd expect from a TV show. The Flash and Heroes have better sfx, but I grew up watching Star Trek and Doctor Who (the original versions of both), so my expectations in that department aren't high.

[Andrew_A]

SHIELD lost me by mangling and turning everyone against each other for a nonstop misery fest of betrayal and horror.  Supergirl at least looks happier.

 

SHIELD lost me by being boring in the first season. I think I got as far as episode 13 before I said, "It's called Agents of SHIELD, but I'm not seeing any." I liked what one vlogger called it: Interns of SHIELD.

[Pattern Ghost]

Agents of SHIELD has improved a lot. It's worth taking a second look. The first season seriously suffered from poor planning. They had a lot of time to kill before Winter Soldier came out and didn't handle it right.

 

I confess though, that I don't know what gave you the "interns of SHELD" impression, even early on. Skye was the only new recruit, everyone else were veteran, high-level agents. I didn't like Fitz & Simmons early on, but both have changed for the better. (As far as being interesting characters. They're seriously damaged, so not better from their own POV.)

[Bazza]

SHIELD lost me by being boring in the first season. I think I got as far as episode 13 before I said, "It's called Agents of SHIELD, but I'm not seeing any." I liked what one vlogger called it: Interns of SHIELD.

 

Agents of SHIELD was a little handicapped in the beginning as they couldn't mention the big reveal from Captain America The Winter Soldier. Once that cat was out of the bag, the show went pedal to the metal, and the current season, they have gone up another gear. 

 

As Patten Ghost says, they could have improved the first season until the crossover with Captain America The Winter Soldier. 

[Starlord]

Kryptonite darts, Kryptonite knife, Kryptonite emitters!!!!  Way too much!!!!!  Kryptonite should be unbelievably rare!  Half the world's supply should be in a ring on Lex Luthor's finger.  If it were this common, Superman should be dead years ago.  Grrrrr....

[Greywind]

They're getting it by the truckload from the Smallville supply.

[BoloOfEarth]

Maybe Lex Luthor went back in time and traveled to the destruction of Krypton just to set up some sort of deep-space mass driver to collect chunks of the shattered planet and chuck them in Earth's direction.  It would explain a lot.

 

("Hmmmm... can't just kill Supes as a baby because of causality.  But I can make sure there's a continuous supply of kryptonite to make his life miserable...")

 

Given that it's TV, I don't expect movie-level SFX from Supergirl.  But if they dip into the level of, say, Greatest American Hero, I'll start complaining.  Overall, I'm happy that they're showing plenty of powers use, instead of making it a mind-numbing melodrama with minimal power use.  The SFX, flight poses, and wire work didn't bother me at all. 

[Hermit]

Kryptonite darts, Kryptonite knife, Kryptonite emitters!!!!  Way too much!!!!!  Kryptonite should be unbelievably rare!  Half the world's supply should be in a ring on Lex Luthor's finger.  If it were this common, Superman should be dead years ago.  Grrrrr....

All I know is that if I were playing Superman at this point, I'd be telling the GM that I'm not getting enough points for my susceptibility and vulnerability complications

[Starlord]

All I know is that if I were playing Superman at this point, I'd be telling the GM that I'm not getting enough points for my susceptibility and vulnerability complications

 

Superman character to GM:  Yeah, ummm, can I switch to playing the green Martian guy?

GM:  What?  Why?

Character:  Fire seems much less common.

[BoloOfEarth]

All I know is that if I were playing Superman at this point, I'd be telling the GM that I'm not getting enough points for my susceptibility and vulnerability complications

 

"Hey, you were the one who said it should be 'Common' because, and I quote, 'Hey, I'm from Krypton, so it should be, like, common for me.'  Maybe next time you'll think twice before you munchkin your character.  You're almost as bad as Joey and his 'powers don't work against the color yellow.'  I mean, honestly, guys?"

[Hermit]

"Hey, you were the one who said it should be 'Common' because, and I quote, 'Hey, I'm from Krypton, so it should be, like, common for me.'  Maybe next time you'll think twice before you munchkin your character.  You're almost as bad as Joey and his 'powers don't work against the color yellow.'  I mean, honestly, guys?"

*FLIP Table, storm off*

[Andrew_A]

Agents of SHIELD has improved a lot. It's worth taking a second look. The first season seriously suffered from poor planning. They had a lot of time to kill before Winter Soldier came out and didn't handle it right.

 

I confess though, that I don't know what gave you the "interns of SHELD" impression, even early on. Skye was the only new recruit, everyone else were veteran, high-level agents. I didn't like Fitz & Simmons early on, but both have changed for the better. (As far as being interesting characters. They're seriously damaged, so not better from their own POV.)

 

Well the "Interns of SHIELD" thing isn't mine. I wish I could take credit, but it isn't mine. I guess my problem is that the lead characters - with the debatable exception of May - lacked a certain amount of badassery. They didn't feel like larger than life comic book superagents to me. To illustrate, if you were running a third edition Super Agents campaign, would the group look like them? (I am, of course, referring to how they were in season 1. Maybe I should check out the show now?)

[Starlord]

Superman character to GM:  Yeah, ummm, can I switch to playing the green Martian guy?

GM:  What?  Why?

Character:  Fire seems much less common.

 

GM:  I said 500 pt campaign and you hand me this 3,000 pt monstrosity.  No backsies!

Character:  Hey, what if I play the Martian but his shapechange only allows him to change to Superman?

GM:  You have to have this weakness.  Otherwise, these other idiots (dismissive gesture towards other players) who went with 'smart and determined guy dressed as bat' or 'skilled with bow and friggin arrow' will have nothing to do.

Aquaman's character to Superman's character:  Dude, at least you're not vulnerable to air.

[zslane]

Arrow, Flash, Constantine, Legends of Tomorrow. They all benefit from being on the same network, The WB. The network owned by the principle IP holder of DC comics in fact. Supergirl, on the other hand, is on CBS and so I don't think "crossover" is on anyone's lips at either network.

 

And while Arrow and Flash have acknowledged Ferris Air, neither of them have mentioned Green Lantern, or Gotham City, or Metropolis. Likewise, I wouldn't expect the Supergirl show to acknowledge Central City, Star City, Coast City, Gotham City, or any of the heroes that operate (or came from) any of those places. Supergirl is only Earth's second superhero. She says so right in the title sequence. The rest of the DCU basically doesn't exist from what I can tell.

[Pattern Ghost]

Well the "Interns of SHIELD" thing isn't mine. I wish I could take credit, but it isn't mine. I guess my problem is that the lead characters - with the debatable exception of May - lacked a certain amount of badassery. They didn't feel like larger than life comic book superagents to me. To illustrate, if you were running a third edition Super Agents campaign, would the group look like them? (I am, of course, referring to how they were in season 1. Maybe I should check out the show now?)

 

Let's see... early season1 lineup was Coulson, May, and Ward for field agents. Then Fitz/Simmons for tech backup, and Skye was recruited. Coulson's a badass, as seen in the short they did for the movies where he stops the gas station robbery. But he's in charge, so he doesn't get involved in the action too much. May's a badass. Ward is on her level in hand to hand skills and also pretty devious, but that's not shown until a bit later. (I'd say she's slightly better at hand to hand, though.) The rest are all support characters, though Skye starts training as a field agent later on. I never played in a Super Agents campaign, just Top Secret SI back in the 80s. Coulson, Ward, or May would crush an average TS:SI agent, and be very experienced agents IMO.

 

Post-Winter Soldier, we get another faction of SHIELD that pops up. Coulson and his team think they're the only loyal remnants of the organization, and so does the other group. The Inhumans plotline also gets going strong. Mockingbird is introduced, along with two (as far as I know) non-comic characters. Skye is trained up to a decent level of competence. This gives the team a more fleshed-out feel as far as having a good number of capable field operatives. We also get to see more of the larger organization, as the team moves from being a special operations unit to being the core of the organization. IMO, it takes on more of a SHIELD as an agency -- albeit a broken one -- feel in Season 2. The end of Season 2 is pretty epic, and Season 3 is off to a good start. The show has a much better sense of itself than it did at the beginning, and at this stage has pretty decent world building that isn't reliant on waiting for the next movie to hit the theaters for something to happen.

[Pattern Ghost]

Arrow, Flash, Constantine, Legends of Tomorrow. They all benefit from being on the same network, The WB. The network owned by the principle IP holder of DC comics in fact. Supergirl, on the other hand, is on CBS and so I don't think "crossover" is on anyone's lips at either network.

 

 

Supergirl is from the same producer as Flash/Arrow, and the "C" in CW is for CBS. So, the crossover possibilities are there. Unlikely, but it's been mentioned.

 

Here's a quote from a Screen Rant article:

 

 

 

Later in the afternoon at his other office on the Warner Bros. lot, Berlanti meets with fellow producer Ali Adler and Oscar-winning costume designer Colleen Atwood to go over looks for their upcoming revamp of Supergirl. The show will follow 24-year-old Kara Zor-El, Superman’s cousin, and with a twist that that could melt fanboy brains, Berlanti says it’s possible this Supergirl could enter the worlds of Arrow and The Flash.

 

Very tenuous, but Berlanti has at least considered it.

[zslane]

The producer/production company is subservient to the network. It will be a very tough sell to the network execs of both CW and CBS, I think. I doubt they will see synergy. I doubt the shareholders will either. And not because there is no synergy to be enjoyed, but because network execs and shareholders tend to have a very myopic view of the business.

[Andrew_A]

Arrow, Flash, Constantine, Legends of Tomorrow. They all benefit from being on the same network, The WB. The network owned by the principle IP holder of DC comics in fact. Supergirl, on the other hand, is on CBS and so I don't think "crossover" is on anyone's lips at either network.

 

And while Arrow and Flash have acknowledged Ferris Air, neither of them have mentioned Green Lantern, or Gotham City, or Metropolis. Likewise, I wouldn't expect the Supergirl show to acknowledge Central City, Star City, Coast City, Gotham City, or any of the heroes that operate (or came from) any of those places. Supergirl is only Earth's second superhero. She says so right in the title sequence. The rest of the DCU basically doesn't exist from what I can tell.

 

From the Supergirl Wikipedia page.

 

 

In November 2014, Berlanti expressed interest in Supergirl existing in the Arrowverse, the same universe as his other series Arrow and The Flash,^[76][77] and in January 2015, The CW president Mark Pedowitz revealed that he was also open to a crossover between the series and networks (due to Berlanti executive producing all three and The CW co-owned by CBS). However, CBS Entertainment chair Nina Tassler stated that month that, "those two shows are on a different network. So I think we'll keep Supergirl to ourselves for a while."^[78] In August 2015, Tassler revealed that while there were no plans at the time to do crossover storylines, the three series would have crossover promotions.^[79] Pedowitz later revealed he regretted passing on the series when presented it in mid-2014 saying, "We hadn’t launched The Flash yet, we weren’t ready to take on another DC property. In hindsight we probably should’ve gone that direction… Sometime you lose great shows."

 

In short, it's probably never gonna happen, but who knows? They could change their minds.

[Greywind]

Whedon was able to do crossovers between Buffy and Angel when they were on separate networks.

[Andrew_A]

Whedon was able to do crossovers between Buffy and Angel when they were on separate networks.

 

Not exactly. The first time he did it, he had to be sneaky and he couldn't mention Buffy by name on Angel. The second time he did it, he had Angel appear on Buffy, not vice versa. By the time season 5 of Angel rolled around, Buffy (the show) was gone so he could do whatever he liked.