Law & Order is back for season 22 with new episodes airing Thursday nights at 8 PM ET. While covering the Law & Order Season Premiere red carpet, I had the opportunity to interview Camryn Manheim, Sam Waterston, Hugh Dancy, Odelya Halevi, and Mehcad Brooks.
Continue reading “The Cast of ‘Law & Order’ on Bringing Back the Iconic NBC Series”
When Supergirl returns later this year to wrap up its sixth and final season, we’ll see a new hero become National City’s Guardian.
Continue reading “‘Supergirl’ Reveals National City’s New Guardian”
In this episode, we discuss systemic Anti-Black racism, how it crops up in MENA communities, and how we should address it. We discuss how we can start important and difficult conversations with friends and family, and how we should show solidarity with the Black community in the fight for racial justice.
We’re joined by Nawal Rajeh, a community organizer and activist who co-founded and runs the non-profit By Peaceful Means, which works with youth in East Baltimore, MD around issues of peace and justice.
Continue reading “The Middle Geeks Episode 14: Addressing Anti-Black Racism in MENA Communities”
One of the more enjoyable parts of Supergirl’s inaugural season is the refreshing and bold decision to place this National City hero squarely in the present as a Millennial. The bright and optimistic (and inclusionary!) perspective is drawn clearly in Kara’s idealistic worldview and personified by the bright and hopeful characters she has chosen to surround herself with (more on that in a minute). If Arrow is about the fight against a cold cynicism with The Flash about overcoming tragedy via the love of family, then Supergirl is about staring down the challenges of life with hope and optimism.
Continue reading “NOC Recaps Supergirl: A New Kind of Hope”
It would be an understatement to say last week’s Supergirl was the most anticipated episode of the season. Not only did it follow what was arguably the series’ best ep to date, episode 14 — titled “Truth, Justice, and the American Way” — was directed by the NOC’s favorite director Lexi Alexander.
Am I the only one who thinks Supergirl came back sooner than expected? Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy that one of my favorite shows is back on the air, but since the other DC shows — namely Flash, Arrow, and Legends — don’t return until the week of January 19 I assumed Supergirl would be joining them then. Also doesn’t help that there isn’t a new episode next week either. Still, Supergirl is back — for this week, at least — and they pick up right where they left off before Christmas.
Continue reading “NOC Recaps Supergirl: Blood is Thicker Than Kryptonite”
Still playing catch up on our recaps, but I didn’t want to go into the holiday break without talking about what was easily the best episode of Supergirl to date. And that’s saying a lot considering how much I enjoyed the last episode. But the mid-season finale — called “Hostile Takeover” — took things to a whole new level and I can’t wait to see what they have in store once 2016 rolls around! Not to mention the fact that NOC-favorite Lexi Alexander will be helming an ep in the new year.
Welp. We’re down seven episodes on CBS’ new Supergirl series, and I can now definitively say that not only does it suck, but it’s also a drag.
Let me clarify: TV shows can suck and still be worth watching. They can feature horrible dialogue, break characterization for cheap plotlines, deploy so many reversals that situations and relationships become meaningless, flub the acting, swell the dime-store music, and commit any number of fundamental visual storytelling sins… while still being hella fun to watch.
Full disclosure: I wasn’t really looking forward to last night’s Supergirl. After the big cliffhanger in last week’s excellent entry into the season — in which Kara cuts herself on a piece of glass, demonstrating her loss of powers — I was disappointed the show was already going the no powers route so soon. This trope gets explored in nearly every iteration of the Superman/Supergirl story. But boy was I wrong! “Human For a Day” might be my favorite episode so far!
Continue reading “NOC Recaps Supergirl: My Favorite Martian”
After a couple of weeks of out-of-order continuity, we finally got back on track with “Red Faced,” the latest episode of Supergirl. In addition to the live action debut of Red Tornado — and despite the internet’s jokes when the look was revealed earlier, the Red Tornado actually looked pretty good in action. Still wish they kept his blue cape, though — the episode probably delivered the strongest storyline of the season so far.
The fifth episode of Supergirl on CBS finally aired last night, and now we know how the continuity glitches from last week’s episode would be resolved. In case you didn’t know, the episode “How Does She Do It” was scheduled to air last week, but was postponed after terrorists attacked several sites in Paris and Beirut. Instead, they aired the Thanksgiving episode that introduced Livewire, but also picked up a couple story threads that weren’t woven until last night. So was the delay worth it?
After the horrific attacks in Paris and Beirut over the weekend, CBS decided to postpone the already scheduled episode of Supergirl — which apparently centered around a terrorist attack in National City — and instead aired the Thanksgiving episode that was slated for next week. This shuffle in the schedule could have led to some continuity gaps, but apart from a weirdly resurrected Jimmy/Lucy relationship, it didn’t feel too out of place. So what did we think of the latest incarnation of Livewire’s origins?
With each passing week, I’m becoming more and more impressed with Supergirl as a series. Sure, the pilot was already strong, but last week’s episode definitely raised the bar. Now with episode three in the can, the sky’s the limit for Supergirl to blaze its own trail. It’s just too bad the ratings are not keeping pace with the quality of the series. Come on, America! Tune in because this show could use your eyeballs!
After a strong debut last week, the second episode of Supergirl’s inaugural season took a bit of a ratings hit, losing 30% of the audience that tuned in for the premiere. And that’s too bad because those people who decided not to come back missed a really strong follow-up episode and a better indication of what kind of show Supergirl will be. Still, nine million viewers is nothing to sneeze at. To put those numbers in perspective, The Flash and Arrow get a total of about six million viewers a week. Combined.
Continue reading “NOC Recaps Supergirl: Strength in Numbers”
It feels like we’ve been riding the Supergirl hype train for more than a year now. Now that the show has finally arrived — behind a massive marketing campaign that made it the most watched new show of the season! — the rest of the general public is finally beginning to see what we’ve been saying since from jump: Supergirl, the show, is legit and the best thing to happen to live action superhero adaptations since The Flash debuted — which also stars a Glee alum and is produced by the same folks, coincidentally.
Continue reading “NOC Recaps Supergirl: This Show Flies Up, Up, and Away”
Last night, CBS and Warner Brothers television released a six-and-a-half minute sizzle reel for Supergirl, this fall’s hotly anticipated entry into Greg Berlanti’s DC television dominance universe. Starring Glee alum Melissa Benoist as the eponymous hero, the preview exuded a sense of fun, joy, and lightness often missing from DC’s live action comic adaptations — not including CW’s The Flash, of course, coincidentally a show also starring another Glee alum.
But how did the internet respond?
Continue reading “If You Perceive “Girly” Superheroes as Lesser, isn’t the Problem You?”
The ever-expanding DC Universe on The CW just got a little bigger. Relative newcomer Ciara Renee has been cast as Kendra Saunders, aka Hawkgirl, in the still-unnamed Flarrow spinoff that will also star Brandon Routh and Caity Lotz from Arrow and Victor Garber and Wentworth Miller from The Flash.
What’s unmistakable about this casting, though, is the fact that Hollywood producers have once again gone “ethnic” when casting a traditionally redheaded character from the comics. So I have to ask, has the pendulum swung too far? Is this too much of a good thing?
Continue reading “Orange is the New Black: Racebending Redheads”
It looks like Greg Berlanti is trying to own all of superhero broadcast television. He’s involved in two of the five current DC Comics TV shows (ahem, his shows are doing the best too — is Constantine still on the air? Sorry Constantine fans.) with a few other shows on other networks (like Mysteries of Laura on NBC). His latest venture will be Supergirl over on CBS, co-produced with Ali Adler (Chuck, The New Normal, No Ordinary Family).
Melissa Benoist (Glee) will be playing Supergirl, but as much interest as I already had in the show (knowing it’s a part of the Flarrow universe), I became about 1000% more excited when I learned that Jimmy Olsen will be played by Mehcad Brooks. A lot of people know him from Necessary Roughness or Desperate Housewives, but I am just excited that they’re casting a person of color in a lead role. A lead romantic role, if The Hollywood Reporter’s description reigns true (though I have a bone to pick with a part of it — more on that later).
Continue reading “Blerd Boost for Supergirl: Mehcad Brooks Cast as Jimmy Olsen”
