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Supergirl: Crossfire

“Commence Operation Doubtfire.”

Apparently, they didn’t have manners on Daxam.

“Mike” seemed a little too…well, alien. It was clearly just done for comedic purposes and I’m not saying it was unfunny but it did stretch belief a bit. I did love Kara playing dress-up with him making him into her own little Clark Kent. I love that she was later called on this by Alex. But, yeah, I have to say the Mon-El plot just felt very uneven. He doesn’t understand the concept of fulfilling duties and carrying out orders? He was a royal guard on Daxam! And after all the fish out of water zaniness, it turns out Daxamites dance the exact same way as humans. That part was more than a little annoying. They spent the whole episode hammering home that Mon-El isn’t like us only to have him perfectly fit in at Lena’s society party.

Even with all the Mon-El craziness the comedic highlight of the episode for me was Kara having to pull double duty at the party. I just wish there’d been more of it. Kara’s just terrible at covering her secret identity. If Lena is as smart as they want us to believe, she’s going to figure this out soon. J’onn might need to pull Kara duty again. Come to think of it, why didn’t she call him in for the party? I get that his Kara impression doesn’t hold up to close scrutiny but that doesn’t mean he couldn’t mill around in the background.

The way the Cadmus woman warned her lackeys off of Lena Luthor made me think they were working in concert. Why else protect her? Well, I got my answer. “Mom.” Of course. And yet I didn’t see it coming. It’s a great twist and I’m now actually excited to see where Mrs. Luthor and Cadmus take the show, which is the first time I can honestly say that. A big question for me is still whether we can trust Lena or not. For now, I’d say yes. The way she greeted her mother made it clear that relationship isn’t a close one and Lena helped take down the alien weaponry guys on her own initiative. So is Lena just the family black sheep or are they setting up some sort of super villain origin story for her? And either way, can they please hook her and Kara up? It’s sort of killing me. And yeah, if you’re wondering, I will probably mention that I ship these two in every review #sorrynotsorry.

Speaking of lady on lady love, Alex. That was an unexpectedly heavy development to come out of an otherwise fluffy episode. Watching Alex struggling to get the words out was painful in the best way. Way to go, Supergirl. Tackling a difficult issue and not playing it for laughs or cheapening it. Beautiful. Screw allegories for feeling like an outsider and give us a canonically LGTB character every now and again. Whether Alex and Maggie get together immediately or we’re building up to an end of season kiss remains to be seen. In any case, please, Supergirl, I am begging you: LET THEM BOTH LIVE.

James has decided the time has come for him to become a vigilante because he’s tired of just watching bad things happen and being unable to help. Solid motivation, but I do wish they’d built it up for more than a single episode. I suppose him being less than a perfect fit at Catco could be seen as set-up, but that’s a generous assessment. Speaking of Catco, I have to admit that although it was one of my favorite parts of the first season, without Cat around it feels tacked on and unnecessary. Everyone in Kara’s life knows about her secret identity at this point and I’m just not invested in her success as a reporter. Which is weird because I always preferred Clark Kent to Superman. Maybe it’s that it takes us out of the found family at the DEO and drops us back into a world with cardboard cutouts instead of characters. Maybe they just haven’t done a good enough job selling Kara’s desire to be a journalist.

My main complaint about the episode is that it was just too much. Way too much, in fact. It felt like two episodes smushed into one. It felt rushed and the Cadmus/alien tech plot especially seemed hurried. I mean they figured out Cadmus was behind the alien tech empowered baddies so freaking fast. This definitely should have been a two parter if not two entirely separate episodes.

Bits and Pieces

Why was Winn at Lena’s party? Although I did love their dynamic nerd duo.

Katie McGrath’s eyebrows. That is all.

We can add emojis in Blogger now. 😝

Quotes

James: “Kinda missed you from Catco, man.”
Winn: “That’s nice and kind of weird for you to say. Wait, wait. Is your computer frozen?”

Winn: “She can fly! You’re just tall!”

Lena: “Kara! You just missed Supergirl.”
Kara: “Did I? Golly!”

three out of four Red Vines (or possibly Twizzlers)

sunbunny

7 comments:

  1. You're so right about the "too much" thing. There was so much going on that it was distracting. That said, I'm liking the direction they're going with Alex, who deserves a major and serious plotline of her own, and Lena Luthor, a character that is definitely working for me.

    I'm less excited about James. While I like Mehcad Brooks a lot, I think taking Cat's job was the wrong direction for him, and I'm feeling even less interested in him becoming a superhero. Please rethink this one, writer guys. I'm also waiting for them to do better with Mon-El. Chris Wood was a real standout awhile back on Vampire Diaries and could be terrific in this series, so I am cautiously optimistic.

    Terrific review, sunbunny.

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  2. I have this rather odd feeling that the story he told about how he was a guard and the prince gave up his seat in the star ship is reversed, than MonEl is that prince.

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  3. garyb, that would make sense. Mon-El acts like he's super privileged.

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  4. Yes! That makes so much sense (Mon-El actually being the prince). I, too, am having a hard time with what they're doing with James and his vigilante aspirations. At one point in time, I think the writers are going to discover that they have an awful lot of balls up in the air.

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  5. Kara and Lena plus Alex and Maggie would be a little overdone and turn off a lot of viewers.

    garyb, that was my thought right from the start!

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  6. How do you know when you are getting tired of superhero shows? When another character on a superhero show becomes a superhero and you sigh to yourself, "Not another superhero, can't a character on this show just stay a regular person?". I'm losing my interest in this and Legends of Tomorrow. I think I'll go watch someone turn into a vampire or a werewolf. When Chris's character saw that monster thing get bigger, I wanted Spike to run up and yell "You made a monster, undo it, undo it!"

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  7. Nobody is mentioning the possibility of Alex and Lena. Would make the Cadmus stuff even murkier.

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