By Corinne McCreeryWe’re going to be breaking rules number one and two tonight, as we talk about a certain type of club. And not as the masks would have us believe the same type of club as seen in Eyes Wide Shut.
We open with the devastation of Daxam, and see that Mon-El was the bodyguard to the planet’s prince. The prince tricked him into the pod, and the rest is history. The biggest thing I’m wondering with Mon-El is why Kara hasn’t questioned the similarity in their names yet. I’m really hoping they are not setting him up as a romance for Kara, because they seem more like friends than anything more than that. I love that Mon-El is essentially a golden-age Kryptonian. Tough skin, but not invulnerable, strong but not too strong, no flight but good leaping, no vision or breath powers.
The budding bromance between Winn and Mon-El is great. Though going to Playstation after Garada seems like a big step down. The bar and post-bar scenes were the absolute best of it, too. Seeing Winn trying to keep up with Mon-El was fantastic, and hungover Winn was amazingly relatable. Both “I AM FIVE-NINE” and “Thank you, I saw the mirror this morning” had me rolling.
Got a lot more movement in what is very obviously the set up to a Maggie and Alex romance, but Maggie, maybe don’t use “Wanna see a dead body” as your pick up line. Alex’s stammering after Maggie complimented her was adorable. My heart shattered for Alex at the end of the episode when Maggie’s girlfriend showed up. Alex’s face absolutely read as “Well I’m going to go home and drown myself in ice cream and bourbon.”
Snapper is growing on me a lot, especially because I’ve been watching a lot of Mary Tyler Moore and he does remind me a bit of Lou Grant. And he wasn’t wrong at any point this episode, a little gruff sure, but Kara’s not very good at her job yet. But I do feel there was a giant missed opportunity to have him punctuate his “BAKE BAKE BAKE” line with snaps. He NEEDS to snap, dang it. And lord, was I annoyed by Kara using herself as a source. She could have easily gotten Alex as an anonymous source, and Lena or Maggie both probably would have been willing to go on the record. I mean, yeah, Clark used himself as an interview for his first story, but that’s not an example to look at Kara!
J’onn and M’gann have a relationship that is very intriguing so far. I loved the parallel of both Mon-El and M’gann telling their stories of survival, and agree that I don’t think either of them were the full truths. And oh man, their fight scene was incredible. The phasing, and the shifting were so well done. It was fun seeing how the non-comic fans reacted to the twist of M’gann’s identity.
Dichen Lachman was a fantastic Roulette and looked spot on. Roulette had a way with words, and made a fantastic ring announcer. I lost my cool at Maid of Might being dropped. Episode writer Eric Carrasco said that was on his to-do list from the day he got hired. I told him that I’d probably die if he ever managed to work in “The Midvale Marvel” or “The Stanhope Sensation”, two more nicknames she had in the 60s and 70s. Neither seem likely though, since she didn’t become active until moving to National City. I also asked Eric Carrasco why they went with the name Scott Klein instead of Dick Malverne, which was the name of Supergirl’s silver age boyfriend. He applauded my deep cut, and said that it was because Dick Malverne just sounds like a fake name. If you want to know more about Dick Malverne, he comes up quite a bit on my comic podcast Supergirl Power Hour.
Seeing Draaga was awesome, because one of my first introductions to the Superman mythos was the Panic in the Sky trade paperback in the early 1990s, which heavily featured that character. Little bit shocked that the guys didn’t use that one as the weekly recommendation from In-Stock Trades, so I’ll plug it for them. You can get Panic in the Sky (which is both a good Superman and Supergirl story) for $10.99 right here at InStockTrades.com. I also loved that Mon-El talked about seeing Draaga on Warworld, which is where the character is met in the Superman stories.
Although we only got one scene with Lena, the scene we got made me very happy. I’m already intensely fond of the character, and she’s obviously already intensely fond of Kara. Her little smile when Kara said a friend needed help was great.
Supergirl talking down the mob was just absolutely perfect. That’s what Supergirl is, a beacon of hope, a beacon of compassion. As Steve Orlando has said, she’s the hero who will make sure you go to jail for hurting people, but she’s also the hero who will visit you in jail to make sure you’re doing okay, too.
Corinne McCreery is a Northern California comic book podcaster and fan. She’s been a fan of Supergirl since the early 1990s when she discovered the character through the Mayfair Games DC Heroes RPG, and then Crisis on Infinite Earths. She has amassed an impressive Supergirl collection over the years, including original art and Action Comics 252 and openly gushes about the character whenever given the opportunity. Along with episode reviews, she is the co-host of the Supergirl Power Hour, which is going through Kara Zor-El’s appearances in the Silver Age (and eventually beyond!). You can find her on twitter at @corimarie21 or @sgirlpowerhour and on tumblr at effyeahsupergirl and www.supergirlpowerhour.com. Her two crowning achievements of fandom are that she has Dan Jurgens’s signature made out to Supergirl (acquired by a friend) and has reenacted the Death of Supergirl with Dean Cain.
