The Toyman stuff didn't do much for me. I think Jeremy Jordan did some good acting, but the character of Winn just doesn't quite work as well as the other characters. I guess the best part was the resonance between Kara and Winn both losing their worlds as teenagers. The hyperaggressiveness of Emma Caulfield's FBI character was kind of weird -- you don't rain down a hail of bullets on an unarmed man just because he doesn't put his hands up.
I have a hard time believing quicksand could trap Supergirl. Sure, in theory, she'd have nothing to push off of, but she can levitate. I also think her plan for dealing with the bombs was implausible. One, I've been to comics conventions, and there's no way in hell you could get a crowd that size to clear out of half the convention floor in less than ten seconds. Two, you couldn't freeze the discrete drops of water from a sprinkler system into a solid wall of ice (and blowing out one sprinkler would only set off that one sprinkler, not the whole system, I think). Three, putting a wall of ice between a bunch of explosives and a crowd of civilians might make things worse, what with all the sharp fragments of shattered ice flying through the air. Really, this was the most ill-conceived super-action sequence the show has done. If she saw that Toyman was in the basement using a tablet to control the bombs, why not just smash through the floor, grab the tablet, and shut them down?
I also have a hard time believing Alex would be so careless as to let Max plant a camera on her purse. You'd think the DEO would've had sensors that would've detected it, since she did go there between her dinner with Lord and her visit to Kara's apartment. And having Lord discover Supergirl's secret identity this early in the series is surprising, though from a Berlanti show, I guess I should've expected it. But it was fun to see Kara just flopping down on the couch to eat pizza and watch TV without changing out of her Supergirl costume. As I've said many times before, I love how much more time she spends in costume than most TV superheroes, how comfortable she seems to be in the outfit. Which makes sense, because it's basically a Kryptonian design with some Earthly flourishes (note that Alura in last week's trial flashbacks wore the same style of belt as Supergirl wears).
I liked that Toyman wasn't your typical bad guy. Well, he was but they provided a bit of insight into why he does what he does. He was a broken man with little confidence and a lot of anger who got pushed too far.
We must have different cultural referents for bad guys, because that pretty much
is a typical bad guy in the DC Animated Universe. Tons of villains in
Batman: TAS and
Superman: TAS, including Toyman, were wronged people who snapped and tried to kill the entitled or corrupt people who wronged them. In the S:TAS version, Schott was seeking revenge on the gangster who'd framed his father for a crime, leading to his death in prison. (So that Toyman was Winslow Schott, Junior -- basically the counterpart of Winn.) His backstory here reminded me of B:TAS's Riddler origin -- having his intellectual property stolen by his boss and seeking revenge for it. (In the post-Crisis comics, he was basically just vengeful against Luthor for firing him.)
The talking jester doll that Toyman left on Winn's desk was based on the design of Toyman from the
Super Friends animated series (which was based loosely on a short-lived alternate Toyman from the '70s comics, Jack Nimball).
But I do still think it appeals to a pretty limited male fanboy crowd compared to something like Supergirl which is clearly trying to be much more approachable and mainstream (much like Lois & Clark back in the day).
