Welcome back all you Supergirl fans to the show that keeps on keeping on. You can rest easy this week. The Supergirl team has given us a solid episode, complete with every omen of darkness one could ask for. I love me a good spooky forest and we get more Brainy! What more could I ask for? I could ask for all three villains to have P names or . . . have a theme. Dreams. They don’t always come true. Spoilers, as always, are ahead.
1. Lena of Clan Luthor
It’s been a while since Katie McGrath’s Lena has been given something substantial to chew on. Mostly absent, save for the cutaways in the last two episodes, Lena was on the verge of becoming another one of the wasted characters Supergirl seems so good at producing. Instead, we get a damn fine scene of her confessing what she’d been doing these last three weeks to the DEO crew and a very active role in the episode.
This episode also serves to complicate Lena even more by having us find out that she has learned how to synthesize kryptonite and has a very locked vault. Questions arise as a result of this. What’s actually in the vault? Why was she experimenting with creating kryptonite? What else has she been doing?
The one question I never had was whether or not Lena was lying to them or is evil. We’ve been given every reason to trust her throughout the season, even when she pulled some stunts that, honestly, aren’t as bad as some of the ones pulled by Alex or J’onn or Mon-El or Kara or . . . you get the picture. I hope my trust is not betrayed and I’m excited to see where this development will lead.
2. Brainy vs. Winn
It’s always a good week when we get to have both Winn and Brainy acting in the same episode but it also comes with a challenge: who will get the best lines? This time around it seems like it was a tie. Both were thoroughly enjoyable and funny on screen. Brainy’s serious deadpan turned otherwise tense scenes into ones with a tiny bit of levity while Winn’s constant joviality kept his scenes upbeat and lively.
Both of these actors feel like they’ve sunken into their characters in ways that the rest of the cast, to varying degrees, has not. There is always a level of dissonance between performer and character so those who can minimize it should be commended. I wish Supergirl would be given the opportunity to do the same. Melissa Benoist does a fantastic job but there is always this distance, partially because it’s always felt like she was most comfortable as Kara. As such, Supergirl always has the appearance of a thinly veiled Kara instead of as Supergirl.
3. Spooky, Scary Woods
What’s better than an episode set in a dark castle in the middle of a desert? Spooky mind woods, of course! While I’m not totally clear on what the woods actually was, I think I missed a bit of exposition, it was certainly home to some of the best scenes of this episode. Sam and Julia’s plight was harrowing, refusing to let up on depicting the descent into utter despair they were feeling. It’s also a place where, were the season better structured, J’onn’s father’s dementia could have been thematically tied in.
There isn’t really an explanation of why they’re losing their memoires or even what’s going on, which is distracting, and it raised a couple questions that I’d been wondering these last couple episodes.
Namely: is Ruby dead and why the hell did Grace lose so easily to Pestilence? The first was quickly squashed by the end of the episode but the way this and the last episode was framed, it was possible that Lena was hiding the fact that Reign had killed Ruby. On the second question, this is mostly due to what I brought up last week which is we didn’t know Grace at all before Pestilence appeared. Her death here has no emotional impact on anyone in the show and because she was only in this and the last episode, neither do we.
Continued belowWhereas Grace was entirely undeveloped, Julia was only slightly developed. Her debut was hammy as all hell, not in a good way, and wasn’t long enough. Every other time she was on screen was as Purity, which didn’t allow much of the actress to shine through. This week, we got to see her act as Julia and I don’t know if it was a better script, better director or just a better day for the actress but she nailed it all. From the fear, to the loss, to the redemption, it was all great. I’m sad to see her gone but at least she got to have one good episode.
I wish we had gotten more of Grace and Julia so that their transformations could have felt more agonizing or at least given us a foothold into their characters so we could properly gage the tragedy of their transformations. As it stands, however, they were just a couple of mini-bosses that were there to power up the final boss.
4. Lena’s Boyfriend, Jimmy Olson
Jimmy Olson is the most mature character in this entire series and thank God for that. He’s communicative, has a conscience, and is willing to accept the grays of the world without being Mr. Grimdark. He still isn’t given much to do and the writers still don’t know what they want to do with him but if this episode is an indication, that might be changing. I hope they continue to let Jimmy be around to be a voice of reason for the team and to call out the characters when they’re back on their bullshit.
While I do wish we’d get more of him as the, you know, head of CatCo, that ship has sailed. We do get a glimpse of it this week and that will probably have to be enough. Maybe one day we’ll get him into a spaceship heading for the sun in a crazy rainbow suit with a cape but that day is not today.
5. Sanctimony, The Fourth World-Killer
I’ve saved this for the end because this episode was a strong one. It had solid pacing, a creative use of atmosphere and set design, some damn funny lines, and gave Jimmy and Lena some much needed screen time and character moments. But now I want to talk about something I’ve touched on before at the start of the season: the purpose and character growth of Supergirl.
Supergirl, you’re the hero of this show yet at every opportunity you get, you find some excuse to lash out at the people around you and lecture them without cause. I get it. You’re a complicated figure with depth but the sanctimonious and hypocritical attitude has to stop.
Ever since the season premiere, it feels like Supergirl’s growth has frozen in place. She began the series as a fallible, young adult who was learning to balance her human life and her life as Supergirl. She made mistakes and the show made sure to point them out and about 1/3 of the time have her learn from them. There were never any lasting consequences to her mistakes, which isn’t atypical for a superhero show, but at least the show tried.
Now, that third is all gone.
My facetiousness here is not out of anger but out of confusion with where they want to bring Supergirl’s character. Season one presented us with Kara learning how to BE Supergirl. Season two complicated this by changing the dynamic of Kara’s life, which affected how she viewed Supergirl. Yet the show doesn’t seem to know what to do with Supergirl anymore.
Do they want her to be fallible and flawed? If so, let her slowly fix those problem and work on them. Have her grow, have her recognize where she is failing to live up to the mantle of Supergirl and have some damn consequences happen. Do they want her to be the perfect hero? If so, then stop having her make so many missteps without consequence. Have those problems appear in Kara’s life, in her interactions between people, not in her Supergirl persona. As is, the cast treats her as if she’s infallible, a perfect hero. At least until the script requires that they challenge her for part of an episode. Once that’s resolved though, it’s as if it’s never happened.
Continued belowThere’s been bits and pieces of her learning and growing sprinkled throughout the show since the Legion arrived, due to the Mon-El drama, but beyond that, nothing. In this episode, she has no right to be getting on Lena’s case about keeping a secret about someone’s identity from her. She also suddenly uses this to distrust Lena, who has been nothing but forthcoming to her this entire season and the season prior. She’s earned Kara’s trust but because it is important for there to be some added tension in this episode, and to give Jimmy something to do, we get these out of character actions.
For an episode as well put together as this one, that was one misstep that really ground my gears. Maybe this is supposed to be her character and her character flaw. It is consistent with Kara in season one and two, who always believed she knew what was best, especially when it came to how she conducted herself as a reporter. Yet that means she has not changed in three seasons in this major respect. That is unconscionable. Additionally, by this point, Kara Danvers, human, and Kara Danvers, fledgling reporter, have disappeared into the ether, leaving only Supergirl, who is supposed to embody heroics and the best of what Kara has to offer.
Does this mean she has to be perfect? No. She is an extension and a foil to Kara, just as Clark and Superman are foils and no hero is truly perfect. What it does mean is that without the foil, Supergirl has to pull double duty as both the role model and person who has to learn. So far, the writers have proven that this is a tougher challenge than it seems.
Sorry to leave you all on a heavy and contemplative note. I hope it got you thinking though. Let me know if you agree with my analysis or if I’m totally off base. Do you agree that there is a distinction between Kara and Supergirl or is it an arbitrary one? This has been something I’ve been batting around for a while now. Next week, join me again as Kara says one liners and Reign hunts Ruby awkwardly in broad daylight. Sounds like it’s gonna be a blast.
