Destroy All Monsters: Ally McSupergirl

The pilot for CBS' Supergirl is a problematic, wonderful mess. Problematic, because it must trip over every single misguided trope that bedevils its blend of genres, up to and including speaking its own subtext out loud ("A female superhero? It'll be nice to have someone for my daughters to look up to!").

And wonderful, because Melissa Benoist's achingly heartfelt performance in the title role is so good that it actually sells all of the above, and then some.

Taken alongside the output of the Marvel-Cinematic-And-Television-Universe's meticulously diagrammed single continuity, Supergirl also feels refreshingly... well, fresh, unburdened from the demands of a larger canon and free to be its own thing. That, it definitely is.

I said blend of genres. As far as I can tell, Supergirl is toying with at least three:

Obviously, it's a superhero show. It will remind viewers of The Flash with its multi-racial supporting cast who become Supergirl's team of fixers and emotional support; it also denotes Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., with its villain-of-the-week structure.

(A Kryptonian super-prison has somehow crashed, unnoticed, in a wheat field in Oklahoma, freeing all of its convicts to pop up, I'm assuming roughly weekly, for the series' foreseeable future.)

At the same time, perhaps most critically given the time into which it is emerging, Supergirl is also a YA-leaning romantic comedy. The series immediately sets up a love triangle between Supergirl and two men, one of whom pines hopelessly after her, leaving her to pine (hopelessly?) after the other. It ain't quite The Vampire Diaries in a short skirt and cape, but it's in the ballpark.

Call this problem number one: with a woman in the lead, Supergirl is immediately concerned with who she's going to be dating, as much as who she's going to be saving.

And finally, the series is a... what do you even call these?... girl-makes-it-in-the-big-city empowerment fable? It's a tale of a quirky outsider trying to find her place and test the limits of where being who she truly is can take her, with the (nicely downplayed, in fact) caveat that "who she truly is" is "girl from another planet with superpowers."

With the superheroism pulled out, Supergirl can often feel like the sort of lightweight drama that's meant to pander to girl power without ever necessarily drawing a strong line in the sand by using naughty big-girl words like "feminist." It certainly doesn't use that word - a verbal slap-fight between Kara and her boss about the diminutive uses of the word "girl" is as close as it gets, and one suspects both characters would look profoundly uncomfortable if the f-word actually came out of either's mouth.

These kinds of shows seem to drive people nuts, evoking a feminine ecosystem composed entirely of pumpkin spice lattes and blind dates (or, in this case, comparing the feeling of flying to smooching boys you like) without ever being transparent about its intentions - which is either heartily discouraging, or incredibly clever. Or both.

The series reminds me powerfully of Ally McBeal, and not just because of Calista Flockhart's MVP performance as Kara's catty boss, Cat. (Yes, Cat.) The casting, I suspect, is not coincidental. Ally McBeal was another series whose problematic axes of voice, representation, and feminism were equal parts thrilling and worrying.

Ally was silly and cutesy and maddeningly "girlish," and brave enough to feature a main character who could skip back and forth across the line between lovable and irritatingly unlikeable, while remaining wholly competent, pathologically narcissistic, and the hero of her own story.

Now here's Supergirl, whose pilot plays as a metaphor for life in a post-feminist world, as Kara must decide whether to continue to fit into the role (/gender) assigned to her, or stand up and take possession of skills and abilities that will push her out to the front, no longer docile, no longer subservient, no longer "just a girl."

But the whole thing comes freighted with a disturbing number of men who must confer or validate that power before Kara can accept it: Superman (all from a distance, like a god unwilling to interfere in mortal affairs), Jimmy Olsen (here called James, and gorgeous), even Hank Henshaw (the future Cyborg Superman, so hey, that's cool).

The show is entirely aware of its genre's boundaries, and seems to lean into each of them with a knowing wink to the audience, even as it's breaking through others. (A print ad claimed, "The right outfit can save the day." But then, what origin stories don't spend a bucket-load of time on the hero or heroine's costume?)

So what do we call this, then? Meta-feminism?

It would all crumble if it weren't for Benoist, who plays a Supergirl completely unlike any we've seen before. She's neither the sullen brat of the later comics or the naïve waif of the feature film. (Helen Slater has a lovely cameo as Kara's adoptive mother on earth.)

And this Kara Zor-El isn't the macho icon of Smallville or the disposable Superman runner-up of the early comics, either. This Supergirl is new. And given the comic title's 60-year-old inability to truly land on a compelling, universalized voice for the character that tracks with an audience other than adult men, I'd say that's just fine.

Benoist's Supergirl is cheerful, hapless, clumsy, and relentlessly decent - hardly the marks of a tailor-made feminist icon, but bearing the uncanny semblance of an actual person who hasn't entirely figured out what she's doing yet. And that's more than just fine.

One more thing: Supergirl is an anti-Man of Steel tonic. It overflows with goofy optimism, the sort of "beacon of hope" inspirational fantasy that Man of Steel described in words, and actively counteracted in deeds. The series bible presents an uncomplicated wish fulfillment structure for its audience, and it effortlessly manages to be as fun as the day is long. And it does all of this under the nose of the self-imposed post-modern seriousness of the (big screen) DC Universe, as much of a pleasant antidote to Nolanization as The Flash and its other televised brethren.

Marvel went for the one-universe model, while DC put up a Berlin Wall between fun pop culture and brooding meta-human gravitas as it farmed out its funnybook gods to big and small screens. But this is a story of a girl who can fly. "Fun" is the only version of this I'd ever want to watch.

Destroy All Monsters is a weekly column on Hollywood and pop culture. Matt Brown is in Toronto and on twitter.