Welcome back all you Supergirl fans! The penultimate episode of season four is upon us like an angry sun, beating down on our senses with tears and fists and the convergence of all that has been brewing for nigh on twenty episodes, readying us for the finale to come careening through our screens and find itself screeching to a halt, smoking, on fire, off the rails which once held it so steady.
In other words, a teensy bit of a mess.
As always, spoilers ahead.
1. Fist of the Brainiac Five
Querl Dox, as a character, is a hard one to get right. He must be emotionally tempered but not completely devoid of reactions meaning the actor must toe the line between being distant and present, selling the realism of the character without ever seeming like they are wooden or a poor actor while also not showing too many “emotions,” a tenuous line that, really, we’re very bad at creation. What counts as “emotions?” How many “emotions” are too many? Too little?
And what implications are there in saying that those who do not match the cultural standard of “normal” emotions are non-human or, at the very least, more distant from the ideal? For what it’s worth, I believe that Supergirl has done a good job of avoiding the latter, positioning Brainy as just as important and valid as anyone else in the show, but the spectre is still there, lurking in the background.
It is a problem inherent in this type of character and the implications that his difficulty with social cues brings about, especially when positioned as the source of his humor. But, he is a fully realized character, not the butt of a season long joke, and while I think this is a conversation that can be had about the character, and the choices around the performance, it’s probably best I move onto the big Brainy development this week: his turn to eeeeeeeevil and Jesse Rath’s acting chops.
Jesse Rath, on the whole, hasn’t been allowed to have a wide range of scenes so seeing him get to really let loose during the torture scene was pretty jarring and affecting. They captured the anguish inside him, both from his current situation but also from his ongoing (or maybe past/offscreen) struggles with his relationship to Brainiac the big supervillain. While I wish they had addressed and constructed an arc around this, like 90% of the character arcs in the back half of this season, it’s nice that his turn to “evil” isn’t sudden nor out-of-place, making it a tragedy rather than a surprise that leaves you angry (looking at you, Eve Tessmacher.)
It also allows Jesse to really chew the scenery as Brainiac, which he does wonderfully without ever going to Otis Graves levels of stupid.
2. Dr. Schmuck
Ben Lockwood taking out Otis Graves really felt cathartic while at the same time being exceptionally ridiculous because of how much it changes, at the eleventh hour, Ben Lockwood’s whole arc. What is scary about Lockwood is how much his message resonated with so many people but by making him an unwitting stooge for Lex, it undermines the terrifying nature of what he represents. While I think that Supergirl’s choice to make Lex the big bad is stupid, I acknowledge that, as Chris pointed out when Lex’s involvement was first revealed, the allegory of the season makes sense. The problem is that Lex, as set up by the Supergirl universe, is a capital-S Supervillain. He cannot stand in for the type of person they want him to because he is cartoonishly evil, desiring literal world domination.
One could make the argument that that is the point, but the wealthy who use their power and influence to engorge themselves more and to influence systems in order to favor them because of an inflated sense of ego and false superiority based in hate or simple greed do not come across in this version of Lex Luthor. He is too cartoonishly evil and the show had done such a great job of setting up Ben Lockwood as a stand-in for the type of hatred we see in the world today: the hate that hides behind false intellectualism and a respectable face, that says the world is perfect the way it was, favoring those who have always held power at the expense of others, asking you to give in and succumb to the worst voices.
Continued belowTo take from history that those who welcome with open arms get slaughtered, forgetting that the ones saying that were the slaughters and that those who were truly once strangers in a strange land only wished to be free to live in peace and find a better life.
…I may have gotten a bit off topic. What I’m trying to get at is that by moving away from the complicated narrative being weaved and instead moving towards a simpler, good vs evil stand-off, where the lines are easy to see and one does not have to reckon with the structures that enabled the hateful to rise to power and wield it like a cudgel or reckon with one’s complicity in that structure, it does a disservice to what the season could have been and what Supergirl stands for. It makes the messiness of the world palatable, but not in the most meaningful way, which is a lot to have asked for but I think it could have been pulled off.
3. Supergirl’s Bizarre Adventure
The A-plot was going well, with effective drama between Supergirl and Alex thanks to the memory wipe plot which got sidelined for a while, which I’m not sure whether to call a good or a bad idea, until the last two minutes of the show. The basic gist is that Supergirl gets beaten up by Supergirl Prime, I mean, Red Supergirl in a fairly lackluster fight that features the cool suit again and then Supergirl is killed by Red Supergirl, who feels guilt(?) and flies away after hitting Alex who finally remembers that Kara is Supergirl. . .somehow, I’m not clear on why fighting in the woods triggered it and not Supergirl knowing Alex’s mother’s name and knowing that the Kara with the mother wasn’t Kara but whatever.
But then. . .but then. . .the dead Supergirl, who we knew wasn’t going to stay dead because she’s the headliner despite having Kaznian Supergirl being the perfect excuse to have Melissa Benoist remain on the show while introducing some actual stakes, is brought back to life.
How you ask? You’re not gonna believe me when I say it. Trust me.
You wanna hear it still? OK. Here goes.
First, somehow it becomes night with one punch even though the fight began at least before early sunset, which was really conspicuous; it’s not even like they did a cut to show how long the fight had been going on for, which was annoying. But then, she is saved. . . by absorbing the sunlight from the plants around her, like a fucking anti-vampire, despite 1) being dead as a doornail according to the text of the show and 2) literally never having this power before.
The second point isn’t so much a problem as there’s plenty of times when this has happened and it hasn’t stopped me from enjoying a show. What makes it stupid is that SHE LITERALLY ABSORBED THE SUNLIGHT FROM HER SURROUNDINGS. Suspension of disbelief can only go so far and this was like, a whole planet too far. Her heart slowing down ala “Death of Superman” is one thing and could have easily been the explanation used here. Hell, they could’ve left that as a cliffhanger along with the others to really sell the despair before the final push theme they have going but instead, they did this.
GAH!
4. Melodrama Orange Road
I rag on the melodrama of The CW a lot. I know I shouldn’t dismiss a whole style of storytelling because of the historical connotations that have been thrust upon the genre, deeming it somehow “lesser” but man, sometimes it’s hard to not be frustrated with the sheer volume of unearned melodrama there is. “Red Dawn” packed so many scenes of characters crying deeply and yelling and that big dramatic reveal music playing into one episode that I wonder why they didn’t put more attention into it throughout the season so that these scenes would be affecting on more than the actor’s abilities alone.
Melissa Benoist sold the HELL out of her scene agonizing over whether or not to tell Alex after escaping from being captured by Kaznian Supergirl but the scene itself was very rushed and, as I keep saying, really wasn’t given proper due throughout prior episodes. They didn’t have to address it each week but some moments that weren’t directly tied to a scene that explicitly addressed and verbalized the character’s emotions and thoughts would be nice. We get some of it for Kara and her struggle but much of that was flattened out or ignored by pairing Kara with Jimmy or Lena or J’onn or, when she is with Alex, there is no indication that she is struggling with the secret she must keep from her sister, with whom she used to share everything.
Continued belowThe same went for Brainy’s struggles during his “transformation,” Jimmy’s sudden terrible reaction to the Haron-El serum which seemed to have been fine just an episode ago after dealing with his trauma, and Kaznian Supergirl’s whole philosophy and outlook, which feels thin and flimsy. Very little of it was properly crafted into an arc, meaning the emotional impacts they have are shallow and feel like a gimmick rather than a furthering of a character’s journey, be it positive or negative. And the fact that all of this is happening in the second to last episode of the season means that they cannot take their time to properly address any of it, unless they plan to let it flow into the next season, in which case, I hope they do a better job then than now.
5. D.N.A.
The best part of the whole episode had to be the short scenes we had with Lena and her mother. Each of the beats hit because of the history between the characters and we get to see just how ruthless Lena is but also how much she’s learned from dealing with Lex. The inclusion of the truth eater was a nice touch as well. You could feel the animosity in those scenes and I wish we had gotten more of these two rather than more Lex.
That about does it for now! Only one more episode until the season is over and, at this point, it couldn’t come sooner. What did you all think? Did I get the episode wrong? Did I forget to talk about how J’onn & Dreamer weren’t given much to do this week? Let me know in the comments and I’ll see you in a week for the finale of season four! Until then, stay super y’all.
Best Line of the Night:
Lena: “My middle school boyfriend, Taylor?”
Lillian Luthor: “I paid him $14,000 to never see you again.”
Lena: “I knew it.”
(The runner up line)
Alex: “Take the grass!”
