Mindy Newell: DEATH OF A SUPERGIRL?
I don’t know what the hell goes on in the minds of the CBS suits, or why the hell they are dragging their heels about Supergirl’s future.
But it doesn’t look good.
Monday night at 8:00 I turned the television on to CBS, only to see that Big Bang Theory was on for the entire hour. This isn’t the first time the network has done this; so have other networks for other shows, and it’s almost always a sign that the show is struggling for life, that its ratings are not satisfactory enough for the suits to keep the show on the air.
CBS is not a network noted for niche or cult programming, or a network geared towards the “coveted” 18-34 slice of the Nielsen ratings. Their programming has been dominated by police procedurals (NCIS and its many spin-offs) and soapy dramas masquerading as law procedurals (The Good Wife, Madame Secretary), and reality shows (The Amazing Race, Survivor) with sitcoms eating up the rest of the airtime. And the sitcoms are pretty standard fare; Big Bang is—im-not-so-ho—an outlier on their schedule. I really don’t know how that series ended up on CBS, it’s so out of the box for them.
Buffy, The X-Files, Twin Peaks, Star Trek, The Walking Dead, The Sopranos were all the “little shows that could.” All started out incredibly low in the ratings—Buffy lost out to Seventh Heaven initially, and only showed up as a truncated mid-season replacement its first year—but slowly became powerhouses through word-of-mouth. But the networks to which they belonged all gave them a chance. It may have been because there was nothing to replace them with; it may have been, like Star Trek, because of massive fan letter campaigns in that pre-internet dark age which in 2016 would equal or surpass the number of e-mails on Hillary’s private server. Or, and I think this is the most important reason these shows stuck around to gain fan-atic followings, it may have been because there was at least one executive who championed it, who really believed in it. I just haven’t read or seen that happening at CBS. Rather, I think they simply wanted to jump on the bandwagon of the CW’s Arrow and Flash, and ABC’s Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. There was no one who really loved Supergirl for herself and the show’s potential.
I admit, I was not all that happy with Supergirl when it first premiered. (You can check out my initial complaints here.) But followers of this column know that I have slowly been changing my mind, and I’m here to say—in-my-no-so-ho—that the second half of the series has really started to come into its own.
For too long a time the supporting characters—Hank Henshaw/J’onn J’onzz, Alex Danvers, Cat Grant, even Max Lord, Winn Schott, Jimmy Olsen, and Lucy Lane—were developing and growing and becoming people we cared about. Meanwhile Kara Zor-el/Kara Danvers/Supergirl was stuck in Barbie doll land—and then sometime around the
Episode 13, “For the Girl Who Has Everything,”—which I admit had some problems—the “doll” showed some cracks and wear and tear. And with Episode 16, “Falling,” when her Freudian moral super-ego becoming subordinate to her darker and selfish id, Kara Zor-el was a Barbie no more; like Pinocchio, she was no longer moving to a puppet master’s strings, always dancing and singing and play-acting, but suddenly self-aware. Was it ugly? Sure, but it was human, and suddenly the audience could identify with her.
As of April 4th, and with the success of the Supergirl/Flash crossover—which absolutely rocked!!!! (and which was a big flip of the bird to that other team-up currently gracing movie screens)—giving the show a much-needed ratings boost, the series is still in renewal limbo, although Les Moonves, CBS’s president, has said that “all freshman shows are likely to be renewed.”
Not much of an endorsement, is it?
Hey, Moonves, let the girl fly!
Who knows for real…but Variety just posted this story: http://variety.com/2016/tv/news/supergirl-renewed-cancelled-cbs-les-moonves-freshman-shows-1201725184/
Hi Mindy, new here, I remembered your name from your Catwoman mini-series, my all time favorite comic book character. Yeah, I don’t understand what is going on with CBS, every single other comic book based show on other networks have already been announced as renewed, even Lucifer. And every other show on CBS gets reruns on off nights, and sometimes even get a Saturday night spot. Even ones in the ratings crapper like Hawaii Five-O. Meanwhile we get stuck with stale Big Bang reruns, which don’t seem to garner that great a ratings as a replacement anyway.
Hi, Dennis! SO glad you found me, and thanks for the CATWOMAN ego-boo! Selina is one of my all-time favorite characters, too!
Hope you stick around!
It will be stupid if CBS doesn’t renew Supergirl. It’s attracting a different age group and pushing a style that’s no longer just some NCIS or CSI franchises. The publicity for Supergirl is also extremely positive for the network. Everyone is saying the rating isn’t good but what people failed to see is that the worst rating Supergirl ever had was 3x more than Flash and Arrow. It’s doing far better than most super hero shows out there. And the online streaming is really high, which again, is attracting a younger generation who doesn’t watch everything on TV right on the dot. Supergirl’s awesome rating only appears mediocre because it’s competing with established shows at CBS. Flash and Arrow are renewing every year because other CW shows aren’t doing as well. The old shows at CBS got renewed first because of syndications. It’s just so frustrating to see all those crap shows like 2 Broke Girls got their renewal. I really wish CBS can give Supergirl more time to develop. Supergirl is probably the only show that’s episodic!!! I need to watch it every week unlike other shows at CBS.
Yes, IamNERD, TWO BROKE GIRLS was one of the shows that was on my mind when I wrote about about the sitcoms on CBS. Just hoping that Moonves isn’t a complete ass stuck in the 60’s.
Someone posted me, I forget who, that CBS renewed SUPERGIRL. Did anybody else hear this?
Someone posted me, I forget who, that CBS has renewed SUPERGIRL.