Welcome back all you Supergirl fans! It seems that the MacGuffin hunt I thought would be happening is on hold for another week as we instead drill down to get a good look at inequalities in healthcare and the ever-present specter of conscious and unconscious racism & sexism that comes from even well meaning people. It is, on the whole, far better than the last two episodes but…well, we’ll get into it.
And as always, spoilers ahead.
1. Casual Building Destruction
It’s not often that I have to eat my words when it comes to this show but it seems like last week’s tonal whiplash was a feature and not a bug. After the collapse of the Orenfell, we were whisked away onto a whimsical adventure with the goal of stopping a 5th dimensional imp but there wasn’t a single check-in with the aftermath of the collapse itself.
I think this was a bit of a missed opportunity in that a couple check-ins and then ending the episode on the start of Kelly’s admonition of the team would have been more powerful BUT what we got was still well presented. Splitting the episode in this way helps reinforce the titular idea of “blind spots” because I, like most of Team Supergirl, totally forgot about the building and the people who live(d) there over the course of the last episode. It’s a good way of using form to present the themes. Kudos Supergirl team.
Just, next time? You might want to do a better job of actually making the building FEEL inhabited before you demolish it, rather than after.
2. Collapsing Under the Weight of My Screams
I said that two weeks ago was a “Very Special Episode”, which I meant dismissively because I hide behind a veneer of irony and sarcasm all the time in these things, though not as often as I think I do. I think “Blind Spots” better fits the feel of a VSE, and this time I don’t mean it dismissively. The central tension of “Blind Spots” is the boiling over of Kelly’s feelings of frustration at the way she is constantly dismissed, deprioritized, and ignored as a woman of color. Of having to always be the one to yell and scream until her voice is raw just to be acknowledged…and then being asked to explain why she was screaming.
Yes, there is Councilmember Rankin whose whole deal is, well, pretty ridiculously on-the-nose even for Supergirl standards, being the overtly antagonistic and villainous person who can give this episode its quota of hand-to-hand violence. However, the more interesting and far more meaty aspects of this episode come from Kelly’s struggle to get the people around her to listen and act, rather than hear and disregard, in all the myriad forms this takes: the hospital staff re: Joey’s sickness, Alex & Co. re: on-the-ground help necessary for the residents of the Orenfell, and Rojas with regards to news coverage of the collapse. Focusing on that was the right move, gave Kelly’s journey to becoming Guardian the shot in the arm it needed, and raised difficult questions that needed asking.
It’s an important and meaningful episode, and the first one in a long time that GOT Kelly, which I would hope it did since Azie Tesfai co-wrote it. I just wish the the episode felt more cohesive.
3. Listen to the Sounds of My Listening
Yeah…much as I think the goals of “Blind Spots” are noble, necessary and, on the whole, well handled, the execution leaves a lot more to be desired than I think the writers anticipated. Part of this is due to failures in past scripts but anytime there’s a rather preachy episode, you run this risk, so it’s not surprising “Blind Spots” is a bit of a mixed bag. Well, a bit less mixed and a bit more very heavy handed. You saw the product-placementy appearances of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ “Between the World and Me” and Robin DiAngelo’s “White Fragility,” right?
There are some excellent scenes, like Kelly’s talk with Alex at the end or her conversation with Diggle, but others feel repetitive and empty. It would be one thing if the repetition was there to support this idea of constantly having to fight to be heard, repeating the same thing over and over, louder and louder, but it doesn’t. Instead, it feels like sloppy scripting, which can be seen also in how its didacticism takes precedence over consistency of character. The characters are talking at us rather than to each other and thus the personal stakes that should be acting as the vehicle for the larger lessons and commentary are removed, thus dulling their impact and effectiveness.
Continued belowLike…it was odd seeing just how dismissive Alex & the team were of Kelly’s attempts to get them to help. It felt out of step with how we see them otherwise. Rather than highlighting how they have tunnel vision, the script and direction instead highlights them just choosing to ignore the problems. I feel this more strongly with Alex over Kara and the rest of the team. It’s really odd that Alex didn’t listen to her girlfriend when the show has been pretty adamant about showing her taking Kelly very seriously and it would have been simple to still have the same conflict, and perhaps a more meaningful one, if Alex split off to work with Kelly and still stumbled and failed to properly listen and help.
At the same time, her reaming of Kara for failing to help the people of the Orenfell right after the collapse and for being performative in her caring because she prioritizes fighting giant cats & interdimensional imps over helping those who are constantly ignored in their suffering is right on the money. I’ve contended in the past that Supergirl characterizes Supergirl as immature without realizing it’s doing so, which is a near constant source of frustration. Here, she’s taken to task for some of that and I hope the character growth continues rather than stagnating again.
4. We’ll Just Make A Quick Stop At the Spooky Cave
Anyone else wondering what was up with the one minute scene of Lena fucking around with some fire magic before running away from her mother’s witch friend to go back to National City, all while said witch friend is calling out to her not to run away from her roots, which…uh…is not what she was doing? Seriously. She ran out of there faster than Luke out of Dagoba and it’s like the script didn’t even realize it! And then the magic book beat Lena home?? Was it teleported or is the Irish post just that good?
I understand its necessity, likely because they don’t have enough time in the season to push it one more week, but damn was that one incongruous scene for an otherwise rather focused episode.
5. No Capes
Kelly is officially Guardian now and I gotta say, I’m very happy with how they used this episode to really catalyze her motivations for becoming Guardian. The impetus we were originally given in the mid-season finale was weak and didn’t feel rooted in the Kelly we knew, though I would argue that’s also a failure of the show to really do a good job of developing Kelly as a person in her own right UNTIL that mid-season finale, but I digress.
Here she also starts to make the mantle her own and I love how her new costume reflects this. James wanted to hide the fact that he was black because he was afraid people wouldn’t trust him, so he hid behind a full face mask. He wanted to be secretive too, so he dressed in all black. Kelly wants to be visible and representational. She wants to be a beacon of hope and change, someone to look up to, and someone proud of who she is (while still preserving a secret identity.)
As such, her costume is a golden color to better reflect the sun and get attention. Her helmet is designed to be more welcoming and to showcase her blackness, with the bottom half of her face as well as her eyes being visible and the helmet contains long box braids ala Batwoman’s cowl. It, like many of the CW costumes, looks a lot better in motion and use than in promo images and for that, I am very grateful.
That about does it for now! What did you all think of the episode? Did I miss anything, like the point of the episode? Let me know in the comments and I’ll see you again in a week for the actual start to the MacGuffin hunt. Sigh. Until then, stay super y’all.
Best Line of the Night (for its sheer lunacy):
Rankin: “I would kill for a sandwich”
Sandwich appears as her aide slumps over, drained of his life-force
Rankin (amazed at the sandwich): “I did that.”
