Episode Review: 1x10 "Childish Things"

By Corinne McCreery

Full disclosure, he may not be a big name villain, but Toyman has always really terrified me. The year was 1993, I was 9 years old, and had just started reading comics with the “Death of Superman” in Superman (volume 2) #75. Nine months later, Superman was back and I was still hooked. Superman #84 and 85 left an undeniable impact on my young psyche. In those two issues, Cat Grant’s son Adam is kidnapped by Toyman, along with several other kids. Adam leads an escape attempt, and when he is caught, he’s stabbed to death by Schott. These comics were very dark for a nine year old, especially since Adam was probably no more than that age himself. So this episode hit some feelings for me, which made it take awhile for me to write.



One thing I loved were the subtle shout outs to the Toymen of television past. First there was the creepy robot, that looked exactly like the Toyman from the Superman Animated Series, and then there was the doll Winn received that looked exactly like the Toyman from the Superfriends. And lastly, the Supergirl doll is a pretty great call out to Sterling Gates’s Dollmaker arc Also, escaping with a weaponized Yo-Yo is all sorts of awesome.

The Kara and J’onn scene was SO much fun. I’m so very happy that we have such a happy Supergirl. It’s so perfect for me.

Jeremy Jordan’s performance in this episode was spell binding. I give Melissa credit every week. For the first time though, she wasn’t the best actor in the episode. Jeremy showed so much emotion this week and gave such a powerful nuanced performance. My heart broke for him at the end of the episode.

Also immensely powerful was David Harewood’s performance as J’onn. The emotions run really deep in this episode.

I said above how much Toyman has scared me in the past, and good lord did this episode reinforce that. It was very much the deranged Toyman of the 1990s Superman comics.

The Alex and Max scene reinforced my opinion that Peter Facinelli is the greatest Lex Luthor ever. And I’m very much looking forward to see what he does with his newfound information…

And J’onn pretending to be Max was great. “My narcissism and ill kept facial hair” was my favorite line of the episode. The mind wipe though, was incredibly dark.

I love how thoroughly Supergirl has mastered her powers. All through the episode she had a great grasp of them, and it fully balances with how bad she was with them in episode two.

The Convention scene made me giddy, with the classic shot of bullets bouncing off the “S” shield.

I don’t have a lot to say on the “C” plot, but I’m excited to see James get back behind the camera. 

Sorry the recap is shorter than most, but like I said, this episode hit different feelings for me. I still loved the episode, but I kept going back to how scary Toyman was to nine year old me, and how scary he still seems.

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.