After last week’s shocking revelation about Jeremiah Danvers, the hunt is on and Alex steps into focus for this episode. As we get ever closer to the end of the season, we’ve finally gotten a taste of the showdown with CADMUS that has been brewing since the beginning of the season and things are getting tense.
Read on below for our Five Thoughts on Supergirl‘s “Exodus”. As always, spoilers are discussed below.
1. Trying To Be Relevant
Look, I get it. The real world is facing a global crisis right now in which the American government is systematically targeting people based on their faith to arrest and deport in an interest to further their white supremacist agenda. Shit’s scary out there and when you’re doing a superhero show, you want to be relevant. I admire that. Despite coming out of nowhere, the alien subplot has been how the show has attempted to be politically relevant, from talking the refugee crisis to now the forced deportation of Muslins.
Here’s the rub, though: if you want to talk about the way the White House is targeting Muslims, talk about it. Don’t couch it in poorly thought out metaphors. Especially don’t muddy the waters by having the family who is representing that violence be a suburban white family. It’s the height of ineffective liberalism to make a shitty, poorly thought out metaphor that paints white people as the victims of real world violence that they’ll never face just to make people think.
I get what this episode was trying to do, but it would have been braver to take a real stand and not just talk around the issue in metaphors.
2. It’s Not Even Been Five Minutes And Snapper Carr Just Said “Fake News”
I miss Cat Grant. At least when she was around, cutting back to CatCo had a point and her monologues were always designed to give Kara a lesson and make her a better person and we saw Cat become a better person because of her interaction with Kara. It was the highlight of the first season and a good part of why the show even worked. This whole thing with Snapper Carr? Not quite the same.
I think the reason this journalist plot thread fell flat was because the writers could never come up with a convincing reason for Kara to become a journalist. They needed some way to keep her at CatCo after Cat Grant left and instead of having her work with James on the editorial side of things, just had her become female Clark. Now, after it only being relevant in a handful of issues, they seem to be dropping it completely because… following the rules is too hard?
I at least appreciate the fact that Snapper wasn’t unreasonable in his assessment of Kara’s story or his decision to fire her and that Kara was never cut out to be a journalist because of her inclination to take the easy path in taking everything at face value. I am glad, though, that they seem to be dropping this pointless sidestory.
3. I Almost Forgot James Was On This Show
You know, I wrote that header as part of my notes while watching the show, hoping that James or even Guardian would contribute something to the episode. Guess the joke’s on me because James showed up for all of two scenes to contribute bugger all. I almost hope that Mehcad Brooks is pissed off at the people running the show because I sure as hell would be. Going from a main supporting character to barely a guest star to make way for Mon-El? Christ.
But this is symptomatic of a larger problem Supergirl has had this season: there’s way too much going on. From Mon-El to CADMUS to Maggie and Alex to now the stuff with Winn and Lyra to Lena Luthor to the stuff with M’gann, the Guardian is just one subplot of, like, ten that’s been going on this season. I’m glad that the show has finally picked one thing for this show to be about, CADMUS and it’s anti-alien agenda, but it’s done so by just jettisoning M’gann and James out of the picture.
Continued belowIf there’s one thing I hope this show learns for next season, it’s to parse down it’s storytelling and tell one story that every character can contribute to.
4. Alex’s Spiral
If last week’s episode was Mon-El’s, this week’s was Alex’s. Dealing with the emotional fallout of finding out her father is working with their sworn enemy, this episode really allowed Chyler Leigh to expand outside the confines of being either Alex the agent or Alex the supportive girlfriend/sister. We got to see the toll it’s taken on her to support the weight of everyone around her and what happens when she needs that same support and it’s not there.
Seeing her go rouge against CADMUS, I feel like I wasn’t supposed to be rooting for her in the way that I was? But it speaks to how much Alex is used as the structural support for the rest of the show that as soon as she needs a shoulder to lean on, she’s being emotionally manipulated by J’onn just to test her resolve.
As Alex said, they need to stop doing the wrong things for the right reasons and I hope that’s a lesson the writers take to heart.
5. Remember When This Show Was About Supergirl?
This really frustrated me this episode and it’s another aspect of how much this show is trying to do at once. Not only have we seen characters like James and M’gann just disappear off the face of the planet, but even Kara seems like an afterthought to the show at this point. I know that this episode was trying to focus on Alex’s emotional state, but shouldn’t Kara have, I don’t know, been there for her? Kara and Alex shared like two or three scenes this entire episode. When Alex needed emotional support, Kara was relegated to her subplot about… learning the power of blogging?
This show used to be about family and it still wants to be so long as Alex can keep yelling about it, but it also can’t help but create a divide between Kara and Alex. They felt like they were part of two completely different episodes, circling each other but never really connecting. This show is trying to juggle a lot of different elements this season and it falters nearly every episode, almost dropping something. I think this episode they almost dropped the ball on Kara herself and that’s very disappointing.
This show needs to carefully think about how it’s going to refocus for a third season before it all comes tumbling down.
