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Supergirl: Star-Crossed

Romantic disappointment was definitely a theme as Kara and Winn both discovered that their alien honeys haven't been telling the truth about themselves.

Omigod, shocker — Mon-El is revealed to be the prince of Daxam! What a surprise... oh, come on, people. Anyone who has been paying even partial attention has guessed who Mon-El had to be by now.

Meeting the boyfriend's parents doesn't usually involve guided missiles and snarky, bigoted comments about your heritage, although if it was indeed Krypton's mistakes that decimated Daxam, Rhea's ire is understandable. I should at least mention that I'm down with the casting. Dean Cain has been around the series forever as Alex's father, so it was more than time that they brought in Teri Hatcher. (Yes, I watched all of Lois & Clark, and I'll repeat that at some point, we'd better get a Rhea/Jeremiah scene.) Chris Wood even looks like Teri Hatcher, right down to the nose. Kevin Sorbo, not so much, but points for casting Hercules.


I liked Chris Wood's acting choices in this episode (or maybe the director's. Possibly both). Until the actual break-up, Mon-El was quiet and subdued, conveying how deeply ashamed he was of his past but not apologizing profusely for it or exploding into histrionics. The flashback to the departure scene pretty much said everything about the man he used to be: when Krypton exploded and the pieces rained down on Daxam, Mon-El was in bed with a woman he clearly didn't care about before he allowed his palace guard to murder a Kryptonian emissary and put Mon-El in his capsule. You'd think the guard would have saved himself first, but it still made Mon-El look bad.

The thing is, I have to give Mon-El some credit for seeing his earlier life through a different lens now. He grew up in a royal fishbowl, seeing his world through the eyes of his parents, which is something we all do to some extent. Should Mon-El have had the empathy and intellectual curiosity to realize how terribly Daxam and the royal family treated its people, particularly slaves? Of course. Maybe he eventually would have if Daxam hadn't fallen. Or maybe not. Maybe Mon-El needed to lose everything in order to see his old world with new eyes.

Mon-El mentioned early on that, in rom-coms, the girl forgives the guy for the stupid thing he does. Not Kara, though. She broke up with Mon-El, and it didn't feel like manufactured romantic conflict; it was completely understandable why she did. Mon-El didn't start showing emotion in this episode until he lost Kara. But the thing is, he then proved that the change in him was genuine when he continued to do the right thing after he lost her.

Queen Rhea wanted Mon-El to be the face of the future of Daxam. The thing is, he could do that. He could take his new viewpoint and principles and eclipse his parents by completely changing the politics and policy of his own planet, no small thing. I've been getting the feeling that Mon-El will die at the end of the season, but maybe they'll go another way and turn him into the savior of his own people instead.

Moving on to our B couple, we learned that unfortunately, or actually, fortunately for her, Lyra doesn't show up on video. I mean, how? Does she have a superpower that allows her to bend light around herself? If so, how come Winn was able to see her when she was doing it during their "divine museum sex"? Really, I have to stop applying logic to my superhero shows, don't I?

This might be a good time to mention how much I like Winn. His move to the DEO was a smart thing for the producers to do, and he always makes me laugh. Even better, though, is that I really care about him. (Much like Cisco, with whom he was compared in this episode.) Winn believed that Lyra was a good person, even when she tried her best to make him believe the worst. Turned out she was being coerced because her brother Bastian was a hostage of a former Fort Rozz resident, Mandrax the crime lord (great make-up there). I wanted Winn to forgive Lyra for her deception, and he did.


Finally, since we were told "Star-Crossed" would be the first episode of the Flash musical crossover, I kept waiting for characters to start singing. But no. There was just an awkward bit with Darren Criss as the Music Meister jammed in at the end. Why did they bother?

Bits:

-- Who came up with the Daxam names? Queen Rhea is okay, but King "Lar Gand"? That is not a sexy and/or powerful name. So I checked online. Turns out that in the comics, "Lar Gand" is Mon-El's real name.

-- Queen Rhea's costumes were fun. I particularly liked the last one with the pattern of holes, which seemed to be inspired by Crocs.

-- Lyra was living in Jupiter's Rings Trailer Resort. Since the stories were parallel, I think that makes Daxam a metaphorical trailer park.

-- When we first saw Winn and Lyra at the start of her heist, the door was labeled "National City Art Gallery." Later, it was referred to as the "National City Art Museum." As a former long term museum employee, I will mention that there's a difference between a gallery and a museum.

Quotes:

Kara: "Wow. We are six seasons in and winter still hasn't come."
Mon-El: "You know, since you got fired from CatCo, your queue has gone down exponentially."

Kara: "Why would you want to beam yourself up to an unknown spacecraft?"
Mon-El: "'Cause... stuff."

Winn: "That is 'Starry Night,' a classic paint by numbers."

Rhea: "... to make Daxam great again."
Mon-El: "Daxam was never great."
Metaphorically, does that make Mon-El Ivanka Trump?

Winn: "She femme-fataled me."

Kara: "I'm ready to Nancy Drew the crap out of this."

James: "What's it gonna cost us?"
Guy: "Hamilton tickets. Orchestra."

I liked this one. Three out of four paint-by-numbers,

Billie
---
Billie Doux loves good television and spends way too much time writing about it.

3 comments:

  1. I remember I read somewhere that when they made plans for filming the show this season they didn't incorporate much downtime that could be used to facilitate crossover filming (thanks to adjusting to moving to Canada and the change of network) and that's why the Supergirl crossover episodes just have one scene at the end. They promised the next annual 4-show crossover would remedy that. I guess it applies more to the first crossover then this episode but still.

    They wrote out another love interest (Lyra) so I guess there is ggrounds to fear about Mon-El too at tne end of the season.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Star-Crossed: (1) the Romeo & Juliet theme from two houses, Krypton & Daxam; (2) the fact that Lyra is not from Starhaven; (3) Rhea & Lar Gand crossed many stars to find their son; (4) Van Gogh's Starry Night!

    Which brings me to something totally off-topic. A couple of months ago, I noticed a Citroën called "Picasso" - wouldn't it be cool to call a van model "Van Gogh"?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Victoria, you just named my possible future van. Seriously.

    ReplyDelete

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