Director Kevin Smith returns to helm his second ‘Supergirl’ episode of the season – and it’s a pretty good one. In fact, an argument can be made that this is one of the best episodes of the entire season.
For those of you who missed last week’s musical episode of ‘The Flash’, Mon-El and Kara made up and, as this week’s episode gets underway, Mon-El is at Kara’s apartment cooking breakfast for her. A news story on TV about an alien attacking sends Supergirl on her way. After taking care of the alien, she learns that he was a bounty hunter. Someone, it seems, is out to kill the Girl of Steel.
We get another visit from President Olivia Marsdin (Lynda Carter), although it’s only through a video transmission telling J’onn that she wants no action taken against the Daxamite spaceship orbiting Earth. I’d like to tell you Ms. Carter’s acting abilities have improved since her last appearance… I’d like to tell you that, but I can’t. She’s horrible. Was she this bad on ‘Wonder Woman’? I can’t remember.
Alex and Maggie have a nice little subplot this week that we might as well get out of the way. The two of them run into Maggie’s ex-girlfriend, Emily (Hayley Sales), and Alex suggests the three of them have dinner so that Maggie can get closure on their relationship. However, Emily doesn’t show up for dinner, leading to Maggie tracking her down and ask why she skipped out on them. It turns out that the reason that Emily broke up with Maggie is because Maggie cheated on her. This leads to Alex confronting her lover about trust issues. Don’t worry, they kiss and make up by the end of the episode.
Believing that they put the bounty on Supergirl, Mon-El invites his parents to meet him at the bar where he works. They insist that they had nothing to do with it, and he isn’t sure whether to believe them. For her protection, J’onn insists that Kara lie low for at least 24 hours. She’s at her apartment playing a board game with Winn and Jimmy (who once again, serves no purpose at all in an episode) when Mon-El shows up. A telepathic alien down on the street below Kara’s apartment uses his powers to take over Mon-El’s body and force him to grab Kara, smash through her window and fight with her. Winn stops the alien by pretending a stapler is a gun. (So much for the telepathy, huh?) The alien is taken back to the DEO, where J’onn uses his own telepathic powers to learn from the alien that the Daxamites indeed ordered the hit on Supergirl.
Mon-El asks Kara to leave Earth with him and hide out on another planet where his parents will never find them. That’s not an option for her. Instead, Kara talks Mon-el into meeting again with his mother, Rhea, to try and talk things out. The three meet at the Fortress of Solitude. (Why there? Because – true story – Kevin Smith wanted to shoot a scene on that set.) Rhea pulls out a pair of sai swords made out of Kryptonite and attacks Supergirl with them. Mon-El stops his mom by promising that he’ll go back to their homeworld with her. Rhea promptly beams the both of them out of there and back to the spaceship.
Supergirl returns to the DEO, eager to launch a rescue mission. Unfortunately, J’onn insists that he’s under orders from the President not to engage with the Daxamites for fear of starting an interstellar war. After some begging and pleading, he relents and Winn fixes the alien portal device (used back in Kevin Smith’s prior episode this season) so that Supergirl can jump through it and arrive on the bridge of the Daxamite ship.
When Rhea tries to use her swords on Supergirl again, they have no effect. She soon discovers that it’s not Supergirl at all, but actually J’onn in disguise. While this is taking place, Winn jumps through the portal to the cell where Mon-El is being held. His mom threw him in there after she caught him talking to his father, Lar Gand (Kevin Sorbo), about maybe letting the people of their world start to make their own choices. Supergirl eventually jumps through the portal herself, and after a long fight (which includes breaking one of the windows of the ship and a few guards being sucked into the vacuum of space), Lar Gand stops things by saying that his son has made his choice and should be allowed to return to Earth.
In the final scenes, President Marsdin has another teleconference with J’onn in which she states her disapproval about him disobeying her orders. She says she’ll have to think about his punishment. After she hangs up, viewers are reminded once again that she’s actually a White Martian. (Gee, you’d think her last name would give people a clue!) Back up on the Daxamite spaceship, Rhea talks to Lar Gand about how she feels he has betrayed her… and then she proceeds to stab him to death! She then turns back to the viewport and proclaims that she’s not done with Planet Earth quite yet.
Episode Verdict
I found this to be a really entertaining episode of the series, and admit to being surprised that Rhea killed Lar Gand in the final moments. I guess this means that we’ll be seeing more of Teri Hatcher on the series in future weeks. The show-runners seem to be setting her up to become a villain in the mold of Kara’s Aunt Astra (who hasn’t been seen or heard from since the show moved filming locations from Los Angeles to Vancouver).
This has been a running theme for at least a half dozen episodes now, but does the character of Jimmy Olsen have any reason to be on this series anymore? It seems that all he does these days is briefly show up as Guardian to help one of our other heroes get out of a jam. For the most part, the character (and, indeed, the actor himself) has been given little to do this season. I wouldn’t be surprised if Mehcad Brooks asks if he can move on to other things – unless, of course, he’s been asking for a lighter load because he already is working on other things. That’s the only reason I can think of for his complete lack of use for most of this season.
