Many people were very surprised when Mehcad Brooks got the role of James on Supergirl.
Brooks helped set his version of James apart from that and turned James into a very modern DC character with a sure-footed performance from the very beginning.
It was set to be a very different version of the young, sometimes naive version of the classic character we’d formerly known as Jimmy, who looked up to Clark Kent as a role model.
It certainly made it easy to see why Kara would have a crush on him, depend on him as one of her allies and made it easy for the audience to imagine James as a masked crime fighter.