Great Rao. I stand corrected. Again. Just like the last two weeks, this episode continued to improve upon a great foundation. For the third consecutive week, I have a new favorite episode. A part of me still can’t believe this is a thing that I’m getting every week. Even if this is the only season we get, I’m still getting about 15 hours of the most perfect version of my favorite hero.
Before I start my actual review, I want to break a little news before the boys get their chance. First and foremost, I’m a comic fan and then a TV fan. So when tidbits about the show started coming out, I was hoping it would mean that we’d get a comic that fell more in line with the themes that they were going for on the show than the current comic on the stands. That seemed to be reinforced when DC cancelled the last Supergirl book at the beginning of the summer. For months now, I’ve waited for them to solicit a new Supergirl book, and have been disappointed every month. Until today. Today the creative team for new, digital first, comic Adventures of Supergirl was announced. And I’m over the freaking moon. About a month ago or so, friend of the show Sterling Gates made a mention of working hard to get a book done. When asked what it was, he was unable to provide an answer at the time. My brain immediately went, “What if it’s the as of yet unannounced Supergirl book? Nah. Couldn’t be.” My instincts were right, and that was indeed the secret book he was working on. My favorite Supergirl writer is returning to a character he deeply loves, and nothing could make me happier than that. The rotating team of artists is also amazing, with Bengal, Jonboy Meyers, Emanuela Lupacchino, and Emma Vieceli working on the book. I can’t wait to read it.
On to the show, the episode kicks off where the last one ended with Kara in the hands of her aunt and lackeys. The little blue thingies on their outfits turn out to be Kryptonite nullifiers.
The Cat Grant storyline is one that I really enjoyed this episode, because it made her seem all the more human. I’m again seeing criticisms that she’s unnecessarily mean to Lois Lane, and those criticisms are turned into arguments about how that discredits her as a feminist. Because I guess feminists are not allowed to hold grudges or dislike other women. Are the things she says snipey and mean? Yes. But she’s allowed to be human. We don’t know what Lois did to her in the past to cause their falling out, so it’s a bit much to make assumptions that maybe Cat has a reason to dislike Lois? After all, Lois and the Planet didn’t have any qualms with running stories about private emails from Cat Grant to make fun of her.
One of my favorite things about this episode was it’s separation from the Man of Steel universe. I don’t particularly care for most of that movie, because it’s not what I expect my Superman to be. I don’t fault anyone for liking it, but to me it’s just not Superman. The two moments in this episode that stood out for me in that respect were Kara saying, “Superman doesn’t kill,” and saving civilians in the middle of her fight with Astra. Had Man of Steel added a similar scene to its own massive building destroying fight, it would have made it much more palatable to me.
The depth of the Astra and Alura storyline is astonishing. Neither is fully in either the right or the wrong, and this episode plays a lot with that. For the first time, the one piece of Sterling Gates’s run on the title that the show hadn’t seemed to draw inspiration from is there. Alura is starting to seem a bit more like his Alura.
Armen VFX again works magic with a TV show budget. The mid air fight scene was amazing, and really looked like something off the big screen.
I can’t say enough times how hard this episode hits on an emotional level. The scene with Kara and her Holo-Mom was just so immensely powerful, and all of that has to do with Melissa Benoist’s acting chops. Her grief and anger are so palpably visible. The pain is so undeniably real. It breaks my heart.
I’m going to give myself the props that Tim got last week. I called the Adam Foster thing the day the casting was announced. The name Adam is too important in Cat’s history to have not been her first born. I wonder if the episode we get Adam in will be the same one as Winn’s dad. The parallels between Cat and Kara’s story was also an immensely powerful emotional moment, and one that continues the beautiful mentorship that has evolved between Cat and Kara on this show.
That leads us to the end conversation between Cat and Kara. Calling her a secret weapon was a great nod to comic fans, since Supergirl was Superman’s secret weapon for nearly three years of real world time before becoming a public superhero. Her bullet points as to why Kara is Supergirl were fantastic. It proves that she’s a great reporter and right up there with her rival Lois Lane. I do see a way (a big green way) that the show can debunk Cat’s assumptions.
Alex’s reaction to “Hank” revealing that he can read minds is absolutely hilarious. The blank deer in headlights look was great. Although the “Purposefully Captured” trope is a bit overplayed, it did lead to an amazing climax and cliffhanger. The next two Mondays are going to feel terribly empty.
In the meantime, while we wait for new episodes, I plan to go back and do a little bit of rereading. And who knows, maybe a review or two of some old Supergirl books.
Corinne McCreery has been a fan of comic books for over twenty years, and a fan of Supergirl in particular for just about that long. Other comic characters near and dear to her heart are the members of the New Teen Titans (Especially Nightwing), Kitty Pryde and Roy Harper. Other non-comic related interests include water skiing and tattoos, of which she has five, three of which are comic related. One of the best days of her life came when she met Dean Cain, and was able to recreate the famous Crisis on Infinite Earths cover with the Man of Steel that she grew up with. Currently she lives in Oakland, CA; a transplant from South Dakota. You can find her online on tumblr at effyeahsupergirl or Twitter at @corimarie21, where you will likely find her live-tweeting the west coast airing of Supergirl every week.
