So I’m reading the script to the pilot of Supergirl, the 2015 US live-action series, with this episode written by show co-creator Ali Adler, from a story by Greg Berlanti, Ali Adler and Andrew Kreisberg, based on the character from the comics. This is my 311th script of the year and I’m enjoying it until page 42.

Up to then, there are a couple of lines that I think clunk, there’s more narration than I tend not to like and my only actual problem with it all is the name Supergirl. But just as I remember thinking when the show was airing, Shirley Conran probably trademarked SuperWoman, and I have some distant, distant cloister bell of a memory of there being a Superboy some time. I think.

But it’s on page 42 of the 61-page pilot script that the lead character gets named Supergirl. She objects, as well she might. She’s been dubbed this by Cat Grant, the ruthless editor of a newspaper – a kind of Devil Wears Prada figure – and now it’s a toss up. I don’t know whether to feel bad for the actor who has to deliver the excuse for calling her Supergirl, or the actor who has to pretend to be chastised/mollified by the excuse.

That excuse goes thisaway:

CAT: And what do you think is so bad about “girl?” I’m a girl. And your boss and powerful and rich and hot and smart. If you perceive “Supergirl” as anything but excellence, isn’t the real problem you?

Good try.

This is one of the times in the pilot where the writer’s voice comes through like a radio playing too loudly for you to hear the character’s speaking. Another example is on page 30 when a character literally says: “Can you believe it…? A female hero. Nice for my daughter to have someone like that to look up to.”

The character saying that is a waitress talking to a customer who isn’t listening, but I think she was quoting the pitch deck for the show. The words were just too on the nose to belong on a character’s lips.

In the same way, the defence of the name Supergirl does not come across as the character saying what she believes, it is the writer telling us to stop going on and on about this, William. It’s a writer taking a problem name that dates the show, even trivialises it, and trying to write their way out of that. Which is no bad thing, but Adler is not just excusing the name, she is throwing the whole issue back in our faces like it’s you and I who are at fault.

So good try, but nope, it is not my real fault that you were stuck with a name created by two blokes in the 1950s.

Given that Adler is just about infinitely more successful a writer than I am, I’m sure she needs my advice. But if I had been doing this — and if I couldn’t change the name to Superwoman for IP reasons — I think I would’ve simply ignore the issue. Not questioned it, not highlighted it, just got on with it.

Which I offer is what probably was done for each of the show’s 125 episodes after this pilot. Nobody questioned it in those, no further writers tried to distract us from it with a slap to our faces.

You can use writing to get around problems. You can use writing to set a stage and guide people to what you need them to believe. This dialogue about the patronising name tried to do this and instead I think drew more attention to it.

That’s an example of the Barbra Streisand effect. But then it’s also a bad compared to — trust me on this one — how Steve Jobs wrote the story of the first iPhone. This is more relevant than you think, since there is yet another iPhone launch next week, but you’re just looking at me now, I’ll shut up.