While many blogs were devoted to CW’s PR passion for Superman before the season started we all should have been more worried about Supergirl’s new beau, Mon-El. Chris Wood infuses secret prince Mon-El with tremendous charm, and plays the transformation from space-bro to woke dude with entertaining gusto. And he’s an enormous problem.


Crying Mary Sue has become a great way to identify yourself as sexist. The idea that only women write super perfect badass characters that everyone loves is obvious bullshit if you’ve ever seen a story starring Batman, Wolverine, or Moffat’s Sherlock Holmes.




But before the term was bastardized to mean any highly capable female character, a Mary Sue often referred to characters inelegantly inserted into existing narratives and feel as though they were written by a very young writer—like ones who usually indulge in penning fanfiction.



And Mon-El is starting to feel that way. To date the character has:

Magically appeared just after the heroine inexplicably dumps the guy she’s been crushing on for a year for no reason.

Immediately integrated with all the characters.

Proven to be the “cool” one that teaches everyone to drink and has zero issue with gay people.

Been revealed to be super strong and super fast and generally a badass.

Is secretly the prince of an entire world.

Fallen madly in love with the titular character.

Had titular character return those feelings even though she is incapable of giving one reason why she likes him besides “he tries hard” and is attractive.

Immediately determined a long lost father was evil while everyone around him went FULL stupid and walked right into evil dad’s trap.

Saved the day because he was calm and collected and persistent about evil dad while the ladies were too weepy to notice the obvious bad guy in their midst.

I once read a 400,000 word Buffy and Angel and Highlander and X-Files crossover with a self-insert lead character who magically woos Buffy and is super rich and best friends with everyone and super good at fighting and stuff and it was more believable then the nonsense Supergirl has delivered unto its audience with Mon-El.

Assorted Musings:

Evil Jeremiah Danvers copied all of the DEO’s databases by putting a 3D plastic sticker on a screen—then to cover his tracks he shoots the screens. For a super genius you’d think he’d know how to shoot a damn server rack.



Kara’s eye glows before turning on her heat vision were super choice this week.

This Mon-El issue has arisen in the same season that Kara’s sister has found love, which means that the end of the episode has the two sisters, who would battle cyborgs, travel into nightmares, and through space for each other, seeking the comfort of romantic partners instead of chatting with one another. Okay.

J’onn is psychic but doesn’t bother trying to read Jeremiah’s mind until more than halfway through the episode. Okay.

Alex is a crusty spy jerk who trusts no one, but immediately trusts her dad’s miraculous return and goes ride-and-die for him. This would be out of character but she’s ride-or-die for anyone in her family so this is actually pretty in character.

Eliza Danvers shows up and sort of breaks up with her husband who has been missing for 10-15 years because they’ve been apart for a while and Jeremiah is like “cool.”

This episode was a shitshow.

However, Chyler Leigh and Melissa Benoist sold all their rare scenes together.