After establishing Stargirl and her step-dad Jim (Luke Wilson) as the heroes of the series, episode 3 shifts the focus to the Injustice Society and ‘big bad’ character, Icicle. Brainwave is in a coma (which is a common TV show way to sideline a character but preserve his or her ability to come back), so Icicle moves to the forefront. The episode starts with a flashback that is an interesting twist on the ‘explain the bad guy’ technique.
Stargirl focuses more on the villains than the other Arrowverse shows, which tend to employ bad guy of the week or an overarching villain who is pretty much just evil. While many villains hide behind legitimate endeavors as a front, the Injustice Society seem to think they are actually doing good. Their version of what is good may be warped (we still don’t really know much about their overall plan) and their methods are bad, but the time the show takes to develop them makes them a more interesting opposing force for our heroes.
Amy Smart’s Barbara is finally given a little bit more to do and is being slowly integrated into the bigger story. Her placement among the other characters portends a possible key role in the future. I want to like her character, so I continue to hope she gets a feature episode.
Since Courtney (Stargirl) is still in high school, we get the requisite high school drama. I tend to have less patience of the internal politics of high school, since it is hard to bring anything fresh to the table. Halfway through the episode, I found myself hoping these seemingly unnecessary characters would get drawn into the main plot as opposed to continuing to see which characters were getting picked on.
As I’ve come to expect, Stargirl has some really funny lines. While the high school scenes are my least favorite, I got a laugh out of a bad math joke slipped into the algebra class. There is also a fun scene involving the family dog and Courtney’s step-brother scores some points that slide him towards funny on the ‘comic relief – annoying character’ scale. Thus far, he has not been necessary for the plot, but he’s been a fun addition.
Episode three starts a bit slowly, but really kicks into high gear about halfway through. Almost as if the writers heard me, the high school plot intersects with the superhero story in a shocking way. Kudos to the writers for being fearless. We also are treated to more awesome robot special effects. As is the case in many TV shows, the last few minutes sneak in some major shocker plot points after the episode seems over. Don’t tune out early.
This episode will debut on Monday, June 1st
Check back next week for my thoughts on the 4th episode of the series.
Did you enjoy the first 2 episodes? Feel free to chat with me on Twitter or leave a comment below!
