I was a huge booster of Greg
Berlanti’s reimagining of the DC universe in its early days. But the longer
many of its series stayed on the air they became more political (which didn’t
bother me) and less enjoyable (which did). By the end of last year, I was so
frustrated with it that I didn’t even bother to look at Black Lightning or Batwoman
or engage with the final episode of Arrow.
But being locked in quarantine
makes one desperate for entertainment, so last week I reluctantly engaged with Stargirl, a superheroine even more obscure than the
one’s Berlanti started with nearly a decade ago, and who (apart from a few late
episodes of Smallville) I knew
nothing at all about. So I watched, and became hooked within the first thirty
minutes – a lot quicker than any Berlanti show ever did.
Courtney Whitmore seems to be an
average fifteen year old. Her father abandoned her and her mother Barbara (Amy
Smart) ten years ago. In the opening episode, her new stepfather Pat (Luke
Wilson, never more appealing) takes her and her family to Nebraska for a ‘new job opportunity’.
Courtney doesn’t seem able to blend in with her new high school, and doesn’t
know what she’s doing here. Then she goes into the basement, and finds this
heavy staff. And it reacts to her. Then the fun begins.
I’ve seen a lot of superheroes over
my quarter century of watching TV and movies; I haven’t seen any that make the
training part so much fun. The Cosmic
Staff is alive – and though it recognizes her, it is very temperamental. Most of the fun of the opening episodes is
watching Courtney try to control a staff that frankly has a mind of its
own. It turns out that Pat was a member
of the Justice Society (actually he was a sidekick – and he clearly has resentment issues about
that) He spends most of the first two episodes trying to persuade Courtney not
to pursue her destiny. When she suggests that Starman, a critical character in
the Justice Society, was her father, he won’t even entertain the idea, and he
spends much of the first episodes trying to get her to stay away from the
staff, clearly indicating that he has very little experience with teenagers in
general.
What separates Stargirl from so many of the superhero shows on the CW – at least
so far – is that it doesn’t seem to have a real agenda short of being
entertaining. That may change as we get to know most of Courtney’s classmates
and their families, but so far, there’s none of leaning towards politicizing
when it comes to casting or issues. It’s a very retro show, and I mean this in
the best possible way. Pat seems to have a transformer built into his eighties
model car, and not saying a word has more character than anything Michael Bay
has even tried with a far bigger budget. The major villain Brain Wave was one
of the most unsettling heavies I’ve seen in any CW series in quite some time.
And newcomer Brec Bessinger as the lead has the same kind of star quality that
so many of the leads of the Berlanti verse to, only because she’s so much
younger there’s an enthusiasm that so many of them were missing even in the
early episodes.
Oh, I admit I’m wary. I have been
down this road so many times with so many CW shows that I spent almost the
entire two episodes waiting for the heavy-handedness to start weighing the
series down. But there’s been a leaning towards flatout comedy that so many of
the other series on the network don’t even try anymore. Not campiness or
slyness, genuine humor as in the scene where Courtney tries to sew her father
costume into something she can use in the Home Ec room – and ends up destroying
pretty much every sewing machine in the process. I just hope the showrunner
have the good sense to keep Stargirl away
from the Arrow-verse for as long as
possible. This series is in such a different universe as The Flash and Legends of
Tomorrow that I hope no portals open
up to make her grow up way too fast.
My score: 4.5 stars.
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