Welcome back all you Supergirl fans. How’ve you been these last couple months? Have you missed my wonderful words? I know I’ve missed writing about Supergirl. Despite all my gripes, there’s a good show under there somewhere and damn does this episode prove it. This might be one of my favorites. So, put your cape on and brace yourself for some spoilers.
1. You’re to Blame
Winn takes center stage this week, shuffling the main plot of the world killers and the Legion’s suspicious real mission off to the side. Thank goodness for this because as much fun as it is to have an overarching plot, we need these character episodes. I talk about it more later but Winn gets so many great scenes this week and his mother is both fantastic, sympathetic but also a distant figure.
We understand Winn’s anger and reticence to accepting his mother back into his life. It’s a trope done in TV a lot but here it rings true. Winn’s life was pretty crappy, what with his father being a mass murderer, and the writers and actors know when to play down events and when to let them explode. It’s a very measured episode arc and damn if it isn’t effective. This is helped by Mary feeling like a real person with a personality, a past and agency instead of whatever cardboard cutout character Toyman’s “apprentice” is. I hope we get more of her in the future, although considering who the actress is, this was probably a one and done.
Please keep Metcalf around. She’s too good and we need someone to replace Calista Flockheart in the snarky, never-a-bad-line role.
2. You Give Love a Bad Name
(Okay, so this one doesn’t fit with the title so much but hey, when have my titles been anything but excuses to list film references or song lyrics?)
The CGI in this episode was bad y’all. Like, Spy Kids 3-D bad. When the flying monkey’s attacked, oh boy. I got flashbacks to watching Juni Cortez fight spring creatures inside of Sylvester Stallone’s toy wonderland. Maybe this was on purpose, since this is an episode built around the Toyman, but I suspect it was because they are planning on using their budget elsewhere. Most likely, though, they were trying to make them look like toys and instead made them look like a poorly-rendered version of the one’s from Toy Story.
I rag on this mostly because it was super distracting in an episode as good as this one. Still, the T-rex later looked pretty good and they made the right decision to shoot it in relative darkness. It retained the toy look and movement while also being totally believable. Still, those monkeys were laughably bad. Thank god for the acting.
3. I Played My Part
Can I continue to commend Jeremy Jordan, Carl Lumby, and Laurie Metcalf? They turn in some fantastic performances this week, maybe the best of the season. I’d be hard pressed to say that just one of them stole the show but if I had to pick, it would be Metcalf. No surprise there, as she’s swimming in theater, TV, and Film awards, but her performance truly was that memorable and natural. When Jordan and Metcalf were in a scene together, you could feel the tension crackle in the air. The dialogue was sharp and the delivery was stellar.
Is it award worthy? No. Does it matter? Not in the slightest. Whoever the director was this episode knows how to get a good performance out of these actors and the best ways to shoot them. Winn’s recounting of the night his father got arrested got me teary-eyed. It’s been a good while since a CW show’s gotten that out of me. The shot was one long take, slowly zooming in and building tension as he delivered his lines. He had to act with his face and, when compared with some of the other regulars, this was leagues above.
That isn’t to diminish the other actors’ performances but Jeremy Jordan has always been fantastic at expressive facial acting and this episode gave him the chance to break that out. I only hope we get to see more of it in the future.
Continued belowSame goes for Carl Lumby. Every episode he’s been in has been made better simply by virtue of his presence. He knows how to balance dry comedy with the more dramatic moments and, due to the shifting tone of the episode, he gets to do it here too. Again, every scene is a gem but the best has to be the final two, where he reveals to J’onn that he has dementia and the aftermath thereof. Well composed and filled with just the right amount of dialogue, this was the second time in the episode I got teary-eyed. Well done all.
4. You Played Your Game
So, what was with Toyman’s apprentice? Like, sure, we needed a villain for the episode but her motivation was . . . what exactly? She admired Toyman so she fulfilled his last wish to murder his family? It all feels too forced, mostly because we know so little about her. Fanaticism is a strange mentality but that’s not the vibe I got from her. She says she was his apprentice, which affirms her devotion to him or at least the ideas he embodied but…what are those?
She doesn’t have a larger goal, a larger purpose except to provide a monster of the week for the show. It’s a shame too. A stronger motivation or even a stronger presence in the episode would have made that climax a much more satisfying fight.
5. No One Can Save Me, The Damage is Done
As much as I love to rag on Mon-El, his character has gotten much better since returning. That said, he’s still kind of bland and is given nothing to do but have necessary conversations with Kara. He’s very out of place in this episode, even when Kara and him are having mature conversations (Thank GOD!), and his presence only serves to remind me that the Legion of Superheroes are here and haven’t been seen in THREE FLIPPIN EPISODES. Come on Supergirl team, you can have Brainiac hanging out making quips. He’s infinitely more interesting to have around and really, where is the rest of the league? Are they waiting for some big reveal?
Speaking of reveals, finding out that Lena has been secretly taking care of Sam was a good way to build tension and get me interested into the World Killer’s plot once again. Instead of it being some randos mugging for the camera, it’s Lena keeping secrets in order to try to save her friend. At least, that’s my read of it. It could be that something else is going on, something more sinister.
Anyway, that about wraps up my thoughts for this week. What did y’all think? Was it exactly what we needed as a return? Let me know in the comments and unlike in my Riverdale reviews, I’ll actually see you next week for…whatever was in the preview. Hopefully it’s something good.
