This week's episode Stargirl did two things. Progressed one of its characters into something interesting with a major reveal while also fully establishing my one and only problem with the series so far. Still, I thought this was a pretty solid episode overall setting up some intriguing elements to explore in the future and delivering a pretty decent fight scene to hold us over after last week's standout battle. As with most of my highlight driven episode discussions, I will miss out a few things that I didn't put high up on the priority list like Mike's issue with Courtney and Pat's shady and obviously secretive bonding and Barbara's business trip away from the family. Both interesting things to keep in mind for future episodes, but for this particular episode discussion, these were my personal highlights.
A Knight In Shining Armor Reveals Himself
-The mysterious janitor finally gets to shine as officially being someone from the Golden Age of heroes (although not named yet) as he is shown to have a knight's sword in his closet and a horse calendar which was met with a subtle audio cue of an actual horse galloping and neighing. Was the janitor some sort of knight of sorts in the past which would go along the “there are dragons in the waters” line that he said in a previous episode? Which Golden Age heroes do we know have a knight themed persona. Wait a second…Knight…Ted Knight?…okay probably not. Heck do I know but I am very curious to see what they reveal down the line about him. Our "Knight in shining janitor attire" eventually saved the day knocking down our villain of the episode and saving our hero while acknowledging that he knows Pat as "Stripesy". Hmmm. Perhaps we'll get some more awesome JSA/ISA lore with this character's grand debut in a future episode. Can't wait.
Stargirl's Greatest Strength: Lore Building
With our new set reveal which I'll just label as "Pat’s cheaply thrown together training arena", I loved the ISA training dummies being random items cobbled up together from scraps and trash. There's a certain charm to it all that I enjoyed establishing how not so sophisticated our new JSA is compared to the ISA and assuringly the old JSA. I actually kinda like the idea of our heroes having to start off in such a location giving off sort of an rising underdog vibe when they have to face the more advanced opposition. They'll perhaps work their way up to Pat trusting them enough to use the actual JSA headquarters. At least I hope that's where we're going with this. Now I mentioned lore building before, and it's in this scene with the training dummies that we get more awesome history detailing of the Golden Age era. Pat tells the team that Sportsmaster was arguably the best fighter out there having taking on both Wild Cat and Green Lantern in the past. This was an interesting piece of character mythos as I never would’ve expected Stargirl’s universe to give the Sportsmaster villain such a high regard in combat skills. We also got to actually see the original Fiddler for a brief second when Pat speaks about him before Courtney interrupts to correct him in stating that it's the principal now.
Stargirl's Greatest Weakness: Stargirl
It's during Pat's villain breakdown (which I wish continued on as I was enjoying the interesting info before he was cut off) that we get one of my favorite character moments from the episode. Courtney acts her typically impatient and stubborn self wanting to rush through everything by showing off her attacks on all of the ISA stand-ins only to end up making herself look like a jerk to the rest of the team who actually wanted to train. Their frustrated reactions to her overconfident boasting were utter perfection visually conveying my thoughts exactly. I honestly don’t know how many more slices of humble pie this character needs to eat during every single episode until she explodes from inflation and learns some semblance of a lesson.
Unfortunately, it’s now finally starting to get on my nerves a little after constantly giving it a pass thinking "Okay..THIS must surely be the moment where our hero learns a very crucial lesson in patience and discipline right?". After last week's episode where they barely made it out fighting Sportsmaster and Tigress without Pat coming in to save them, I thought Courtney finally got somewhere major with her character progression. She literally had a conversation about exactly these issues with Pat implying that she now understood her flawed sense of direction which this episode just seems to have thrown out the window. I'll dive into more on that humble pie feast later with what happens to her in this episode in the end, but it's just nice to at least see the JSA team now recognizing this problem calling her out on it. This forces her into a place of full on accountability which she has to start maturing out of. Well...at least I hope that she does at any rate.
The Dragon King's Lair
Let's talk about my favorite setting of the series so far which is Dr. Ito’s lair. Some of you may know from the Dragon King debut scene in a previous episode discussion that I've been clamoring to see more from his character and possibly his secret lab which this episode offered up to my pleasant surprise. I absolutely loved the production design of this new location showcasing Ito's silent, twitching, and covered up servants on the side with him working in the center of what looks like some temple of sorts. It was the perfect set design to fit what I've stated as being an incredibly executed villain costume that looked as though Dr. Ito was plucked right out of an awesome retro science-fiction/adventure series and into a superhero show. I also really like how the setting has both the aesthetics of some ancient cult temple with candles and columns while also having technological elements such as the Shiv suit and whatever lab gear was shown on his work table. I seriously hope we get to revisit this set in future episodes. Seems like the perfect visual foundation for an awesome climactic action scene. Just saying.
Ever since both Fox's Gotham and Syfy's Krypton got cancelled, I've been missing the days of comic book TV shows putting love and production values in its sets and atmosphere. Dr. Ito's lair is officially that welcomed sensibility resurfacing for me once again.
More Than A Clichéd Bully
Entering Dr. Ito's workspace is Cindy who visits her father following a pretty weird "Stepford Wives" confrontation with her stepmother which we learn was one of Ito's experiments. We get to see more of the Dragon King's parental side during this scene as this father figure who experimented on his daughter to protect her with inserted abilities seeing her as his "greatest experiment" (there's some layers to unpack with that phrasing). Cindy gets an interesting reveal here as someone who impatiently wants to join the ISA showing off her hidden wrist blade to kill off one of Ito's assistants. This is our first parallel between Cindy and Courtney as this power move/tantrum perfectly mirrored Courtney's similar move with the cosmic staff during the team's training day as a forceful way to show off her worthiness. Ito informs her that it takes two weeks to condition his assistants making her attack just a waste of his resources which can be another nod to Pat taking time to set up the ISA dummies only for Courtney to demolish them without consideration.
Cindy then complains that she basically dominates the school over the principal as all the kids listen to her which Ito reminds her, and reveals to us, that she only needs to focus on Henry Jr. The idea of Cindy being in this forceful feeling relationship with Henry just to see if his powers will ever surface as a Plan B if Brainwave doesn't wake up was interesting. What appeared to be a somewhat distracting piece of relationship drama for the show on the surface now being an ISA related mission from Dr. Ito gave the Cindy character a whole new layer of intrigue. I gotta hand it to the writers for surprising me with that one. That's two things in this episode that they completely switched around for me in a positive and fascinating way. The first being Cindy's relationship with Henry being a thing that we should legitimately keep an eye on and not question why it's taking up screen time.
There’s also some interesting language during her tantrum with her father saying that she "can’t take being a teenager anymore". Now, this could be taken either literally due to the nature of Dr. Ito as a mad scientist or figuratively if we're taking the angle of a frustrated teenager thinking they mature enough to sit with the adults. The idea of her also being lonely due to her mother’s death and father’s constant absence adds a new layer to her disconnected and self absorbed attitude towards everyone. This brings me to the second thing that this episode turned around for me with a nice twist. They took a stereotypical teenage cheerleader bully character that everyone would and should hate and turned her into a new multi-layered villain of interest. By having her growing impatience to join the ISA against her father's orders parallel Courtney’s impatience to take on said organization against Pat's advice, the series present a compelling adversary for the titular hero. Truly, and I’ve said this several times so far but it begs repeating, Stargirl’s handling on its villain roster is some of the best in the genre.
Stargirl Vs. Shiv
This leads us to a fairly decent (albeit not as cool as the previous episode’s battle) fight scene where Cindy impatiently steals the Shiv costume after seeing Stargirl show up on the monitor wandering through the ISA’s secret halls. This was the moment where both characters went against their father figure to suit up and engage on a dangerous mission by themselves, but Cindy proved to be the victor establishing her previous training. Stargirl does indeed put up a good fight (recognizing Cindy's face which the villain wasn't afraid to hide?) dishing out a couple of cool acrobatic attacks. However, one can argue that the staff has been doing most of the work for her during her fights which I believe Shiv picked up strategically prior to separating Courtney from it. Here’s where our mysterious janitor knight jumps in and saves the day knocking Cindy down with his sword before she could deliver the killing blow. Some of the fight choreography was pretty cool during the overall fight while other segments seemed a bit slow and heavy on the wire works. Still, this series proves to be have a solid and confident sense of entertainment value within its action altogether which I admire quite a bit.
Aside from the actual combat elements, from a design perspective, I thought it was interesting equipping Shiv with a projectile firing staff just like Stargirl sealing the deal that she is indeed a villainous twisted reflection of our hero. Both characters being affected by a death of a parental figure adds to this more making their earlier scenes of seemingly bonding all the more notable. But as terrible as it may sound saying what I'm about to say, it was nice seeing Stargirl get her butt kicked in the end here (the show's "Bane Moment" as I like to say) as it offered the character yet ANOTHER slice of humble pie to eat. Okay writers, here it is. I've genuinely loved almost everything else from the show so far, so I'm trusting you to let this moment of humility actually sink in this time. I'm trusting you to not let this be the 5th or 6th time that Courtney should've learned her lesson, have an emotional self reflective moment, then throw it all away in the next episode. I'll just stand back and see what this ultimate defeat does for the hero what already witnessing the death of an innocent child to Icicle and almost dying like 3 times prior couldn't do.
Bonus Thoughts
1. Icicle: Killer of Children...But An Excellent Father
Icicle’s talk with his son about asking a girl (Courtney) out while referencing how he met their mother was such a tender father-son scene. Well, tender with a charmingly sinister undertone when he jokingly said that he “killed” the other guy who was pursuing her as his competition back then. His statement to his son about being deserving of love which his son turns back to him about being happy and moving on was such a heartfelt exchange following up on last week's sincere diner scene. I'm pretty sure I've reiterated this within every episode discussion so far, but I’m seriously loving the Icicle character the more we get to see him as this loving father figure making it all the more interesting when I have to obviously see him as an "evil" super villain capable of killing children. What Stargirl has done with the Icicle character in regards to season villain development is now leagues more interesting than what the Arrowverse has done with the majority of theirs to be honest. I'm hoping the CW can look to its shared series for pointers on how to slowly and methodically build up its main antagonists in its individual shows.
Episode Rating: 8/10
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