Tuesday, October 27, 2015

Last Night's TV: Supergirl, Dancing With the Stars, and More (SPOILERS!)

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Entertainment Weekly
SPOILERS AHEAD!
Last Night's TV PRIME TIME
THIS ISSUE: Supergirl, Dancing With the Stars, Gotham, Fargo, The Voice
TOP MOMENT OF THE NIGHT
Was It a Bird? Was It a Plane? No, It's...
CBS
BECAUSE: The much anticipated Supergirl premiere! You know Supergirl, a.k.a Kara Zor-El? She's the cousin of Kal-El, a.k.a. Clark Kent, a.k.a. Superman... the Krypton alien raised on Earth by Eliza and Jeremiah Danvers (played by former Supergirl Helen Slater and former TV Superman Dean Cain!). Oh, you don't know about her? Well, you're about to because this pilot was fun.
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Supergirl
CBS
WHAT HAPPENED: Kara is just your average girl/woman/alien: She has an unfulfilling job fetching coffee for media guru Cat Graham, an overprotective but beloved sister, and a mysterious cousin who shoots laser beams out of his eyes. Kara was sent to Earth from the doomed planet Krypton as a 13-year-old, charged with protecting her baby cousin, Kal-El. But Kara's ship became lodged in the Phantom Zone, and she arrived on Earth 24 years later, still as a 13-year-old, once her cousin had already become Superman. Despite having the same powers -- bullet-proof, laser beam eyes, flying, the works -- Kara decided that one superhero on Earth was enough, and that's how we find her in National City, wearing sensible layers and working for Calista Flockhart. All of that is explained in voiceover in the first 10 minutes, leading EW recapper Chancellor Agard to call the Supergirl pilot, "a bit clunky thanks to enormous amounts of exposition," while also being, "fast-paced, charming, fun, and incredibly self-aware." And that's much in thanks to...
WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING: Leading lady Melissa Benoist, mostly only seen before on Glee, is this show's own personal superhero. The A.V. Club raves, "Supergirl wouldn't work nearly as well as it does without the radiant turn from its star Melissa Benoist... Much as Supergirl carries a plane on her back, Benoist singlehandedly elevates this show with a performance that's bubbly and bright with a core of inner strength." That plane carries Kara's adoptive sister Alex, and the thrill of saving it takes Kara from "just wanting to be normal" to "just wanting to save the world." Alex works for the Department of Extra-Normal Operations and organization both targeting and being targeted by The General (Laura Benanti), evil twin sister (!) of Kara's mom. The baddies and DEO are two points that YahooTV say could use some work, but Supergirl, both the character and series, is starting off on a positive, red-booted foot: She has a kickass cape, two pals/future love interests -- loveable techie sidekick Winn and confidant of Superman, James-not-Jimmy Olson -- who already know her secret, and it's exciting to find a superhero who's... excited to be a superhero. Supergirl might just be the hero we need.
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Dancing With the Stars
ABC
WHAT HAPPENED: "Spooky! Scary! Sparkly!" These are exclamations used by EW recapper Maggie Freemont to describe the Halloween episode of DWTS. That on top of the "gorgeously grotesque costumes, legs that don't quit, and fog -- so much fog," and it's obvious that Dancing With the Stars was made for Halloween, even if the dances were only 25 percent visible. Bindi and Derek got another perfect score, Artem returned to the ballroom to school Alek in intensity, there were two monster-themed group dances, and Marc got to dress up like Edward Scissorhands -- all is as it should be in the land of the Mirrorball. Except...
WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING: Sweet, temporarily-bearded Hayes and his best friend Emma were asked to exit the Hellmouth, eliminated after what TV Line called, "a perfectly lovely and elegant routine." Hayes is a talented and natural dancer who exceed everyone's expectations (at least those who didn't know what a "Vine star" was). What he lacked in the ability to get a driver's license, he made up for in graciousness, taking his last moments in the ballroom to say, "All those guys, they're brilliant people ... This has meant so much to me -- it's been really life-changing." Well, at least we know we can still find him on Vine, along with his 4.1 million other subscribers.
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Fargo
AMC
WHAT HAPPENED: In Monday night's episode, we've got asphalt burials, a daughter fit to take over the family mob business, a shady typewriter salesman, and actual rabbit-in-a-hat magic going down, but for the people of Fargo, everything always seems to boil down to the already deceased, coked-out nutter -- littlest Gerhardt, Rye. So says EW recapper Kevin Sullivan: "It is so perfectly Fargo that the police and two competing criminal organizations are all searching for the same man, all while that man is a pile of ground meat somewhere." And just as perfectly Fargo (re: bizarre/fascinating/risky/entertaining-as-hell): that all of this is underscored by what seems to be shaping up to be... a UFO subplot.
WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING: Season 2 of Fargo has everyone talking about the infamous attitude of those who hail from the Midwestern states, the one that Mike Milligan describes not as nice, but more as a polite unfriendliness in regard to his tense encounters with Lou Solverson and Hank Larsson. Thrillist recently published a whole article about "the most sincere, malicious, enriching, and suffocating set of behaviors found in the English-speaking world," a.k.a., Midwestern Nice. It's this regional behavior that Fargo has so mastered in all of the franchise's iterations. As The New York Times says in its recap of Monday's episode, "The odd names and funny accents of the Fargoverse are good for a punch line, but they serve an important thematic purpose, too, in making the Upper Midwest seem like a country within a country ... and within the criminal underworld, there are codes that must be understood and respected, the law be damned."
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One More Thing...
Give That Woman a Spinning Red Chair!
NBC
YOUR GIRL RIRI: The Knockouts finally commenced on Monday night's The Voice, and while there are plenty of melodic reasons to be tuning into this round, we really just have one word for you: Rihanna. (Okay, we'll add a few more: Rihanna... in a denim jumpsuit and curls, giving dynamite critiques as season 9's Special Advisor.)
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