Happy 20th Birthday, Buffy! - Now Supergirl Slays (W/ SPOILERS)

     This past March, we celebrated the 20th anniversary of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In April, Entertainment Weekly reunited the cast for a chat about the show's impact. Star Sarah Michelle

Buffy explaining her relationship with
Angel - via GIPHY

Gellar and creator Joss Whedon agreed that their literal manifestation of "high school is hell" often played on multiple thematic levels and that their portrayal of happy relationships were far and few between. Gellar looked radiant sitting next to the still-hot David Boreanez, who played the sensitive soul-cursed vampire Angel. She admitted her personal choice would be for Buffy to live happily ever after with Angel instead of Spike (James Marsters), a bad vampire that gained his own conscience after falling in love with Buffy in the later seasons. Boreanez and two other cast members, Alexis Denisof (Wesley) and Charisma Carpenter (Cordelia) left he show after the 3rd season for Angel's spin-off, where the vampire "moonlighted" as a detective and saved L.A. from demons and lawyers. Carpenter incredibly looks as young as she did when Angel began filming 18 years ago. Denisof's rugged looks won him the hand of another cast member, Alyson Hannigan. The couple married in 2003.

The wisdom of 'Oz' via GIPHY

     There were deeper issues to discuss in the reunion than choosing a side in the Spike/Angel debate. Actresses Amber Benson (Tara) and Hannigan (Willow) spoke about their beautiful lesbian relationship on the show and how it pushed the boundaries of what was acceptable on TV as little as 15 years ago. As Hannigan's other major love interest, Seth Green spoke more in this interview than his entire time on the show as laconic musician/werewolf, Daniel 'Oz' Osbourne. He offered to host cast potlucks! The loveable duo  Nick Brendan (Xander) and Emma Caulfield (Anya) agreed their characters would have stayed together if Anya hadn't been killed in the final episode.  By the end, Caulfield performed a dramatic then performed a eulogy for her character, who despised bunnies.

'The Body' - Season 5 via GIPHY

     The effervescent Kristine Sutherland (as Buffy's mom Joyce Summers) spoke about her role as the clueless mom and how she slowly became a mother to all of Buddy's marginalized friends, her ball of energy fake sister Dawn (Michelle Tractenberg), and some demons (Clem!!). This sometimes came at the expense of getting kidnapped or knocked unconscious. Sutherland spoke highly of the cast and their commitment to telling stories with multiple levels. Sutherland's character's unexpected death in the 5th season had a dramatic impact on the season, and I would go as far as to say, the course of the last two seasons of the show. Whedon addressed the story (Buffy's mom had first a brain tumor that made her see demons, and after healing, was found unconscious from an aneurysm.) and Buffy's absolute helplessness. There was nothing she could kill or beat up to help her mom, and she went through all of the feelings of grief  in one scene. Whedon also shared his mother passed away when he was a teenager. As he worked through his feelings, the writer found a catharsis and was grateful for fans to share their own experiences of losing a parent too young.

My signed postcard from
Sarah Michelle Gellar, 1999.

     In my 90's Buffy binge haze, something has become abundantly clear to me. While some of the fashion fuzzy sweaters camisoles over t-shirts, knee socks) and  Xander's dialogue is questionable, the messages and themes still hold up. The lessons are timeless and the gains are huge.  Buffy has very heavily influenced the current CW show Supergirl. Read on as I discuss both shows and the continuing legacy of kick-ass female superheroes.

Image from Comic Vine

TROPE: The Dual Identity
     This is pretty obvious, so I won't spend too long on this point. Gellar's Buffy always looked chic, and in the early seasons, Buffy seemed to own an unlimited closet of trench coats and leather jackets for all of her lurking.Buffy spent her high school career sorting through pencils and stakes in her bag and running from math class to stakeouts to graveyards.  She struggled to hold down a job after dropping out of college, although construction work seemed promising given her super strength.  While she didn't often get a restful night's sleep, being the slayer is her calling. She doesn't have a choice. She's lied to her family, dates, hospitals, police, and the entire town. In the end, her graduating class knew there was something funky going on and awarded her the class protector award.

Image from GIPHY

     As you may know, Melissa's Benoist's  Supergirl has a disguise. I'm not saying it's clever, but taking off the suit and throwing up a messy bun and thick glasses transform the hero into plain old Catco Media worker Kara Danvers. I am seriously in love with her red Supergirl boots! In her daily life, Kara dresses pretty boring, classic sweaters and button down shirts, trousers and pencil skirts. A casual game night will land her in some jeans. In her demure persona, Kara get bullied by both of her bosses. First, as an assistant to Cat Grant (Calista Flockhart), she gets shade for the the long coffee runs end with defeating aliens and warming up the coffee with her eyes.

GIF from Timblr

     In season 2, she moved up to the rank of  magazine reporter (yes, that's still a paying job in National City). At times Kara stands up for herself to her Editor-in-Chief Snapper Carr, but writes way too many basic pieces about her buddy, Lena Luthor. She, like Buffy, fired. Then like Buffy, she saves the world, stops an alien registry (so timely with politics), gets re-hired by Catco. Cat reveals after a traumatic battle that she knows Kara (often purposely called Kira by Cat, like in Devil Wears Prada) she's Supergirl. Cat had a great friendship with Sueprgirl over the course of season 1, but was always tough on Kara. On top of all of this, Kara is a super hero because she's an alien that crash landed on earth. She was supposed to protect her baby cousin, but she got lost on her way to earth, and he was grown up and fighting bad aliens off his new planet by the time she arrived. With her powers from her homeland and parental-instilled sense of right and wrong, Kara can't sit by and watch other aliens bring chaos and destruction.

TROPE: The adopted sister/Protecting Family

GIF via FanPop

     Buffy was an only child until some  monks with no eyes combined a dimensional portal into a human body (season 5). They called the teenage girl 'Dawn' and wrote her into everyone's memory. This was an interesting plot choice and became the key arc of season 5. A demon (Hell-God if we're being precise) named Glory (Clare Kramer) was trapped in our dimension and wanted to go home. The way out was a portal with a special key, which was running through Dawn's veins. This led to the phrase "Dawn's kidnapped? It must been Tuesday night."  A super creepy guy named Doc (the legendary Joel Grey) finally lured Dawn away and put her up a big tower in  a junkyard as her blood began to open the portal. In order to save her sister and the dimension, Buffy jumped in to use her blood to close the portal, killing herself in the process. Buffy's sacrifice (in the 100th episode, titled The Gift)  is one of the most devastating season endings of any show. Joss broke the rules by killing off his heroine (twice), during a time of network uncertainty and a season already marked by Joyce' death weeks earlier. The show was cancelled by the WB after contact renewal discussions and "The Gift" ended with a sappy title card from the network thanking the show for 5 years.

     Buffy didn't take things lying down. The show was quickly acquired by UPN and lived on for two more seasons. (Ironically both networks merged a few years later to form the current CW). Whedon also found loopholes to bring Buffy back after both deaths, however damaged she might be. Both times, Buffy's friends jumped in to rescue her. If she was a typical slayer, Buffy have no friends and would have probably died the second she arrived in Sunnydale. But as the every-woman slayer of the 90's/2000's, Buffy made connections with friends that were committed to save the world. As Xander once said, "Here to help. Want to live..." 

Kara and Alex celebrate a rough day. - via Tumblr

     Supergirl had a different family structure from the start. Alex Danvers (Chyler Leigh) became Kara's big sister when the young alien landed on earth and met up with her cousin, now known as Superman. Kara's cousin placed her with the Danvers family because they protected and raised him.  This new family struck Kara odd at some points but provided her a foundation for being a normal kid.  Sure she could melt things with her eyes and fly, but she was asked to keep those under wraps. As the younger sister, Kara always wants to please Alex. First, she saved Alex's commuter plane,  revealing herself to the world as a superhero. In their many adventures with the Dept. of Extraterrestrial Operations (DEO) Alex has dram jumped and done many stupid things for a human, all in the name of saving her much-powerful sister. The girls became very close to their mother as teens, much like Buffy and Dawn, although for much different reasons.

     The Danvers girls were told their father died on a professorial mission, which was a lie because it was  a mission for his secret DEO work and he is very much alive, minus a hand. Read my take here. The Summers girls were a product of divorce. Buffy's unpredictable all-night slayer schedule and school trouble for 'fighting' put a strain on her parents' already-fragile marriage. Mom moved the girls to a new town and their dad just stopped showing up after a few years. Even Angel came to Joyce's funeral, but Mr. Summers was off on an island (allegedly with his secretary).

     In both cases, the girls became close to their mothers out of necessity. In the season 2 thanksgiving episode, both sisters were trying to outbid each other to out themselves to their mother. Kara planned to come clean about being Supergirl (where has her mom been living by the way? How could she not notice or suspect?). and Alex about her newly discovered feelings for a woman, Maggie. The Danvers girls found a great amount of respect from their mom when everything resolved, which took a lot longer for Buffy. In late season 2, she began letting her mom in on more things, explaining her creepy (vampire) ex was not invited inside the house anymore. The season closer finally brought Buffy, Joyce and Spike to a conversation where Buffy declared herself a slayer. "Did you every try not being one?" asked Joyce. While the subtext for a different coming out is here, Joyce represented the 90's parent, much more naive and willing to believe her kid was out doing good instead of bad. But after a summer, [Buffy ran away to be a vampire-free waitress (possibly the longest non-slayer job she ever had] she returned home again and was welcomed in with a new sense of understanding and maturity.
   
Other Future Tropes to Discuss:

• "GIVE ME SOMETHING TO SING ABOUT!" -Musicals
• The Surrogate Father
• The Delicate Balance: Romance Vs. Saving the World
• The Scoobies vs. The Justice League

Supergirl: Daddy’s Home

Some comic book humor
 from Instagram Search Meme

     In a brilliant casting turn, last year’s Supergirl pilot brought in former TV Superman Dean Cain playing Kara’s earth father, Dr.  Jeremiah Danvers. Of all the parents that face their grown children in this show, Dr. Danvers is by far the one with the most baggage (see comparison below). In a convenient plot twist, Dr. Danvers appeared in a few flashbacks because he died in an “accident.” Later in the first season, Kara (alias Supergirl, played by (Melissa Benoist) and her adoptive sister Alex (Chyler Leigh) discovered their dad was still alive, held captive for over 13 years by a top-secret organization called  Cadmius. I had to look it up, but Cadimus is a top-secret genetic engineering project, for those of us not up on our comic book lore.  The women also learned that their dad was part of the same alien protection agency (DEO for short) that the sisters joined to protect earth from bad aliens. Kara, recently kidnapped by Cadimus to drain her powers, was freed from the compound by dead old dad. It was only a matter of time before we saw him again. This week, Jeremiah escapes the organization's convoy and comes home.

     Dr. Danvers is eager to jump back into his family life. A family dinner was called with wife Eliza, the girls, and their beaus, Mon-El (Chris Woods for Kara) and Maggie (Floriana Lima for Alex), Mama Danvers makes things very clear to her estranged husband. He’s been missing for a decade and  half, and they can’t just pick up where they left off.  Dr. Danvers is also physically limited from his previous work. He is missing a hand, a punishment for helping Kara and Mon-El escape.  Dr. Danvers asks to come back to the DEO, and his old friend Director Henshaw (the delightful David Harewood)  invites him back with open arms. The two have a very interesting past.*

     The gentleman working at the DEO ( Mon-El and Kara's friend Winn) both are overly suspicious that Dr. Danvers is a spy. The sisters refuse to believe their dad would betray them, even though he was held captive and possibly brainwashed  for almost 15 years. For those of us that loosely understand the Superman folklore, Cadimus is evil. The group wants to rid earth of aliens and it's run by the mother of all baddies, (literally) Lillian Luthor. The big action is that Cadimus was supposed to be transporting a chemical bomb when Dr. Danvers escaped. The bomb used Kara's power from her captivity and it will blow up the whole city if the DEO can't stop it. Of course, Dr. Danvers was corrupted by Cadimus and is stealing information from the DEO to help Cadimus. Most importantly, he accesses the master list of all aliens on earth. I'm sure the same list could be put together just walking into the local alien bar (which reminds me of  Angel's demon karaoke bar Caritas). In the last minutes of the show, Kara stops a train from crashing, after the bomb blew up the train track over a ravine. (Back to the Future much?) Alex confronts her father for stealing from the DEO, but lets him escape because she cannot deal with bringing him in for punishment. It's heartbreaking, it's real, and it's not over yet. Tonight we should get more closure on the issue, but I cannot see how Dr. Danvers will ever be a good guy again.  Here is how Dr. Danvers fares against other parents on the show:

Kara’s real alien parents:

     Kara Zor-El’s mom and dad were wise rulers back on the planet of Krypton. Kara held them in high regard and would reach out to their holograms in season 1 when she found trouble on earth . Being sent away from her home as a pre-teen, Kara had issues opening up to people. She finally had the opportunity to get together with her pal James (Jimmy) Olsen (Mechad Brooks)  toward the end of last season, but she abruptly changed her mind and walked away. I’m going to chalk this departure up to psychological trauma and abandonment issues.  Despite her lovely earth family and the resilient Mrs. Doctor Danvers, Kara formed a close parental attachment to her boss, Cat Grant (Calista Flockhart). Ms. Grant called Kara by the wrong name, sent her on stupid assignments and chastised her for disappearing in the middle of the day. Secretly, I think she knew Kara was always a bit distracted because she was out saving the city. Ms. Grant took an abrupt sabbatical from her company at the beginning of this season, ruining everything. She promoted Kara from assistant to reporter and Supergirl has been super lost all season. 

     In other disturbing family news, Kara’s alien prison escapee Aunt Astra (Laura Berlanti) came to earth last season to bring eco-terrorism! Through many fights, Kara’s feeling about her parents got taken down a peg. Were they as perfect and just as they claimed to be back home? It also didn’t help that Astra was Kara’s mom’s identical twin. It gave me enough of the heebie jeebies, I imagine it was a head trip for Supergirl as well. In last season’s battle royale, Alex killed Astra, leaving her adopted sister with no other blood relatives. This messed with Kara’s head to the point that being trapped in delusion of being on her home planet sounded better than reality.  Astra’s creepy husband came earlier this season for revenge, and the group had to take him down as well. This left me with big questions: 

What is the Zor-El side of the family tree like? 

Will we ever see Supeman’s alien parents? Are they nice?

Is Kara's dad named Zor-El Zor-El? 

General Lane, Dad of Lucy and Lois:    
     General Lane is not a nice man, much like the real Hank Henshaw. He is an army general with a heart of steel. He made life for Supergirl very difficult, vehemently opposing aliens and refusing to accept her help in taking down some very bad creatures. We are left with the impression that he barely speaks to eldest daughter (and Superman's gal) Lois. His younger daughter Lucy (Jenna Dewan Tatum) joined the family practice, becoming a lawyer for the army. He forced Supergirl to fight an army-created android, and took over the DEO, torturing alien prisoners. When Lucy learned Kara was Supergirl, she wanted her dad to lighten up, but he could not change his thinking about aliens. These daddy issues made things between Lucy and James rough at a time when we were all rooting for them to break up and James to declare his love to Kara. By the time it happened, Kara's issues got in the way and Lucy left the gang.

Winslow Schott Sr., Winn's Dad    
     Winn's dad is a literal mad scientist. The brilliant Henry Czerny (Revenge) played the jailbird with ease. Also known as Toyman, Winn Sr. weaponized toys to make them do evil things. He tried to get Winn to help him, but he turned him down and helped capture him. 

Cat Grant, Adam's Mom
     Cat revealed to Kara that she is the mother of two sons. Kara gets stuck babysitting the precocious tween Carter while Cat goes out of town, but she later learns Cat has another son. Cat gave up Adam for adoption when she was about 20 and she has always felt bad about never reaching out to her son and building a relationship with him. Kara tracks down Adam and reunites the pair, and the begins dating Adam. It all ends badly, the pair break up and Cat goes back to being tough on Kara.

Lillian Luthor, Lena and Lex's Mom
     Two episodes ago, we got a deep dive into the backstory of the Luthor family. Off-screen Lex Luthor (a known nemesis of Superman) is criminally insane and rotting in jail. His younger sister Lena (new to the cast this season)  and has taken over the family business Lexcorp to try to rebuild and re-brand. It was revealed that Lena was an illegitimate child, taken in and raised as a proper Luthor. Lillian (Brenda Strong) was against the idea, and she always cared more for her biological son than her adopted daughter.  Lena was offered her mother's love once this season, but turned it down and helped put her in jail for her sketchy criminal activities. Remember, this woman is the head of Cadimus. Lena was recently framed for breaking her mother out of jail, but Supergirl helped prove her innocence because the two have developed a sweet friendship. Kara and Lena also have a lovely reporter/subject relationship that has developed, which may take the place of Lena's crappy family.  

The Henshaw/Danvers connection:
* Dr. Danvers and the real Hank Henshaw were members of the Department of Extra-Normal Operations. The pair went out to retrieve a martin as part of their DEO assignment. Henshaw, a cruel human that hated all aliens, died on the mission. The martian (J'onn J'onzz) assumed Henshaw's physical form, bringing about a friendlier DEO. From then on, the DEO set out not only to capture aliens, but to assist good aliens like Kara and her cousin Clark.

Why Peggy Carter Was the Best TV Superhero

"If I'm working with him (Vernon Masters*) to take down a woman

 killing people with black space goop, the I'm in."

 -Chief Souza (Enver Gjokaj) to SSR Director Thompson 

* Vernon Masters is Kurtwood Smith, Eric's dad from That 70's Show, just to assist in this visual).

Image from Google

     Did you ever have one of those dreams with singing and dancing that was supposed to bring clarity to a decision you had to make? British-born SSR Agent Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell)  did, after getting swift knock in the head and thrown in a van on its way to the desert. After that, she tried to escape put of the desert with loyal friend (and recent attempted murderer) Mr. Jarvis. Good thing Agent Carter wore a pantsuit before this mission. How did she come to arrive here? What will she do next? It's not such a simple story.

     Season 2 of Agent Carter was poorly sandwiched between breaks of Agents of the S.H.I.E.LD., a show that one must watch religiously if they want to understand each Marvel Avengers movie. The second round picked up shortly after the season 1 capture of Russian spy "Dottie." The SSR (Strategic Scientific Reserve) is a post-WWII, CIA-type organization that evolves into the S.H.I.E.L.D. organization. In closing  the Dottie case,  NY office member Daniel Souza is sent to head up a new branch in Los Angeles, fronted as a talent agency.  When a woman turns up frozen in a lake, Chief Thompson (Chad Michael Murray) sends Peggy to Hollywood,  where she settles into old pal Tony Stark's (SR., not Ironman) mansion and gets into some good old-fashioned spy work. This eventually lands Carter and Stark's butler Jarvis (James D'Arcy) in the desert, captured and plotting escape.

     Why is Peggy Carter such a badass? I've never been much for superhero stories, but I think part of the character's appeal is that she is a positive female role model. To be honest, I started watching this shoe because I missed Chad MM, but I stayed for the likable heroine. She doesn't have super powers like Supergirl or Buffy or any of the powers-driven Avengers (I'm still trying to figure out if  Scarlett Johanson's (Black Widow) super power is disapproving, pouty stares) but she is out fighting bad guys, breaking codes, and sneaking into dangerous parties to save the country. Plus, she is doing this all in the 1940's  when most women were at home having babies and riveting to help the war effort. Agent Carter is part of the actual war effort! She chooses her career over love (time and again) and she may not always be rewarded, but she fulfills her deep commitment to duty and to her home country and adopted home of the U.S.A.  Agent Carter was introduced in the first Captain America movie, which I could not watch all the way through on T.V. tonight (it got a little boring). Peggy takes a liking to Steve Rogers (Chris Evans), a test subject in a  super soldier program, who becomes Captain America. But Peggy is not doting or wallowing too much when she loses Capt. into the ocean (2nd Capt. America movie). She is out fighting Nazis and Russians with the best of them while she moves on with her life. Plus, she looks like Carmen San Diego in that flowy trench coat.

     Agent Carter and Mr. Jarvis get out of their predicament and prevent total chaos in a studio back lot. In a nutshell, a delusional scientist-turned-actress Whitney Frost (played by Wynn Everett, and what a nice name for a villain) has accidentally dosed herself and Carter's possible love interest Dr. Jason Wilkes with a substance called Zero Matter*. Zero matter gives you a ghost-like quality and some weird powers. See below for some more clarification. Frost ( tries to take all the Zero Matter for herself and feeds the evil inside her, destroying anything that gets in her way. Bodies start to pile up as Zero Matter further falls into the wrong hands and the secret government committee that once OKs it gives up. Frost tries to open up a time rift and the gang gets a gamma ray to zap all of the Zero Matter into another dimension. Crazy Frost is partially deformed and locked up in a mental institution. Chief Souza thought moving to L.A. would help him get over Peggy, and he gets dumped by his fiancee because of how much her still cares for Peggy. Mr. Jarvis's wife is shot over the whole Zero Matter fiasco and in her the recovery, discovers she can never have children. Peggy is more confused than ever over choosing Jason (now corporeal again) or Chief Souza (freshly jilted).  Finally, Director Thompson steals an incriminating file on Carter from baddie Vernon Masters and gets shot as the episode closes.

     Where are we now? The show has been cancelled, so we are lost. Technically, nothing is ever over in this crazy T.V./Movie Marvel universe, but it's unlikely people will go back in time and spend much time with this lovable gang of (misfit) spies without some major retooling and selling the story off to someomone like Netflix.  But the fan support is still there. We need more shows like Agent Carter. There's  such a strong reliance on technology in modern-day adventures that it's refreshing to see characters using their resources like their knowledge to help solve a problem (pre-Google era, everybody). The themes present in Agent Carter and other stories of its time also ring true to today's society. America is fighting many foreign threats that may destroy the way we live. The enemy may change, but the bravery of a hero is s story that will live on. Also, Peggy and her friends show us that even super spies cannot always leave their feelings at the door, and a true hero uses emotion and instinct to get results.

*Zero Matter per Wikipedia: 

"It is a powerful, extra-dimensional energy that can be manipulated in slightly different ways by a handful of beings that are attuned to it. There are slight yet inconclusive hints that it may be a corruptive influence of some kind (at least to Cloak, possibly to Darkhawk as well) and perhaps even a sentient entity." 

6/2 UPDATED: Star Hayley Atwell would love to play Peggy again.

Ryan Reynolds- Superhero and Super Harvey

     Today marks the release of hottie Ryan Reynolds' new superhero movie, Deadpool. This is Reynolds' second movie as a comic book hero, and truth be told, his previous attempt at saving the world in  The Green Lantern was rough to watch.  At least he got Blake Lively as his wife (eventually) out of that flop. From what I've seen, Deadpool is a head-to-toe masked  fighter who was disfigured. He covers himself up, hiding behind his slick moves and sarcastic wit. And important to note, has a naked fight scene, which might be worth the price of admission.



 
  However, my favorite Ryan Reynolds role will always be the first Harvey Kinkle in the TV movie that launched the show Sabrina the Teenage Witch. He was a total babe in a tracksuit this 1996 movie with Melissa Joan Hart. Unfortunately, he didn't make the jump to the show, as he was replaced with Nate Richert, who looked better in the 90's than he does now. Accodring to MJH's book , (Melissa Explains It All) they were lip locking back then. Sigh!