STARGIRL: SEASON ONE (2020)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*

In a better world, STARGIRL would have just been an average "teen adventure-drama" that happened to adapt a lot of DC superhero characters. The show didn't try for the edginess of the arguable "mother of all teen TV adventure-dramas," 1997's BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER. Nor did STARGIRL trade on the legend of a major American pop-icon, as the 2001 SMALLVILLE did with the legend of Superman. 

Yet, because STARGIRL did have many of the rich character interactions of BUFFY and much of SMALLVILLE's heartfelt regard for popular culture, this three-season wonder stood out from the pack of other 21st-century TV superhero shows (teen and otherwise), many of which appeared on "the CW Network" or some related entity. It would take too long to discuss the developments of the 2010s, during which even halfway-decent CW programs descended into a stinking morass of pandering political correctness and idiotic characters, both original and adapted. STARGIRL should have been just one good show among other good shows. Instead, it ends up being the last good adventure-drama show in the CW venue (a claim I think it safe to make even though the final season of the tedious SUPERMAN AND LOIS has yet to air). 

All that said, STARGIRL's theme is essentially the same as that of other teen-adventure shows like BUFFY and SMALLVILLE, devoted to showing groups of teenagers trying to negotiate their identity as they progress toward adulthood. The base model for the show might be described as "The Superhero Breakfast Club," in that the four principal teen-heroes come together due to their mutual alienation from regular high school life. Unlike "Breakfast Club," though, these teens happen to live in a world where the foremost superheroes were slain ten years ago by a gang of super-villains, who also disappeared from public perception. If STARGIRL has a structural weakness, it's that none of the people in the show's sole locale-- the small, middle-American city of Blue Valley-- ever seem particularly aware that they live in a world shared by costumed heroes and villains.

The titular heroine's alter ego Courtney Whitmore (Brec Bassinger) has nothing cosmic on her mind when her divorced mother Barbara marries again, and her stepfather Pat Dugan (Luke Wilson) initiates a move to Blue Valley for Barbara, Courtney and Pat's son from another marriage, Mike. The blended family is still in its very rough stages, and Courtney is particularly resistant to the blending process. Things change when she accidentally discovers that Pat has a connection to the slain hero-team of the Justice Society of America. Pat was once known as Stripesy, the sidekick to a slain hero named Starman (though by the end of this season Starman's status is revised). Through a series of coincidences, Courtney comes to believe that her long-estranged father was Starman, and so she makes her own costume and assumes the moniker of Stargirl.

But the slayers of the Society, the copycat "Injustice Society of America," have made Blue Valley their center of operations. Overwhelmed by the prospect of facing such fiends as the Icicle, the Brain Wave and Solomon Grundy, Courtney reaches out to other alienated teens at her school. One of them, Rick Tyler (Cameron Gellman), is the son of the slain hero Hourman, so he's something of a legacy choice. The other two, Yolanda Montez (Yvette Monreal) and Beth Chapel (Anjelika Washington), are upgraded to super-status through their utilization of empowering devices taken from dead crusaders, with Yolanda becoming a new Wildcat and Beth a new Doctor Mid-Nite.

To address an earlier point, none of the four comic-book heroes being emulated-- to say nothing of Stripsey-- have the pop-cultural presence of major DC Comics heroes. But this proves a strength for the STARGIRL show. In the comics, the Justice Society included various minor heroes that the publisher wanted to spotlight, but the book sold thanks to big-name Golden Age figures like The Flash, Hawkman and Green Lantern. By eliminating most of the major heroes from the roster, and giving the heroes-in-training the legacies of relatively minor figures, the youths don't have to deal with the overly long cultural shadows of more famous icons.

Another advantage of STARGIRL is that all three seasons were confined to a tidy thirteen-episode run. This obviated one of the worst sins of most CW shows: the tendency to generate worthless soap-opera plotlines as time-killers. Not every subplot in STARGIRL is endlessly fascinating, but they all function well within the greater whole, and all work to counterpoint the action-scenes, to allow maximum identification with the heroes and antipathy for the villains. I found both the fight-scenes and the emotional interludes superlative, though standout performances include Bassinger's Stargirl, Gellman's New Hourman, and Christopher James Baker as the endlessly creepy mental mutant Brain Wave.

STARGIRL's main strength is dramatic structure, and this is all the more remarkable because the first season derives from a lot of comic-book stories that weren't especially noteworthy for strong characterization. Though the plotline of the slain JSA heroes is original to the program, Season One is largely indebted to a 1999-2000 DC miniseries, STARS AND S.T.R.I.P.E., which was the decent but unremarkable debut for the Courtney Whitmore character. Other elements were derived from titles like INFINITY INC., such as the characters of Yolanda and Rick, but the original heroes possessed none of the passionate qualities of their TV analogues. In the concluding episodes of Season One, Yolanda and Rick have parallel arcs dealing the morality of killing one's enemies, and some of this content continues into the next two seasons-- which I intend to explore in the near future.