Spoilers Supergirl - Season 2

[Christopher]

Supergirl was, is, and always will be the most 'politically driven' of the DCW series, and there's nothing wrong with that, because the political undertones and 'social commentary' narrative elements have been, at least for me, among the better parts of the show through its first 35 episodes. Tonight's episode so blatantly pushing back against the concept of forced deportation, coupled with Snapper's mention of a "fascist President", gave me everything that I want from this show as far as 'political commentary' is concerned, while also delivering a really great Sci-Fi-based story in and of itself.

Yeah, I'm surprised at how timely this was. The immigration crackdown started just a few weeks ago, but this episode must've been written at least a couple of months ago, before the inauguration. Sure, we all knew that the incoming administration's campaign was rooted in anti-immigrant fearmongering -- we knew that last year when Supergirl had Senator Crane talk about building a dome to keep the aliens out -- but there's a degree of serendipity in the timing of when it came out.

Although since Olivia Marsdin is apparently in her second term on Earth-38, it doesn't seem their United States has any experience with a potential fascist becoming president, so I wonder if Snapper's line really makes sense in-universe. Well, maybe Lex Luthor mounted a presidential campaign at one point.

The only thing I was kind of surprised by is that she seemed to buy Supergirl's explanation about how she suddenly showed up outside L Corp, but only because I feel like Lena is eventually going to learn that Kara and Supergirl are one and the same and the show might not get a better opportunity to make that reveal than they gave themselves tonight.

I don't know why Supergirl even needed an excuse. She could've just said she was patrolling the city and happened to be nearby.

I do wish they'd had Kara be physically weaker, though, since it would've been a nice callback to the fact that she can in fact lose her powers if she's put under too much strain/has to exert an intense amount of effort.

That's only been established with the Solar Flare, where she drains all her accumulated solar energy through heat vision. I don't think it's been asserted as a consequence of extreme muscular exertion (or whatever the underlying mechanism of her flight propulsion is).

I also found it kind of curious that it didn't seem to take long for Hatcher and Sorbo's characters, the King and Queen, to begin feeling the effects of Earth's yellow sun on their bodies as opposed to what happened with Mon-El, but maybe that's a function of the fact that he spent so many years stuck in a Kryptonian pod in the Well of Stars.

Or maybe it's because they're getting the intense, raw, full-spectrum sunlight of outer space, while what we get on Earth is filtered and weakened by the atmosphere. So they're getting a more potent dose, especially of ultraviolet, so it's charging their cells more quickly.

If @Christopher hadn't pointed it out, I wouldn't have remembered/realized that Kara's comment to Mon-El that "Supergirl is what I can do; Kara is who I am" was a paraphrased reprise of something from Lois and Clark, but I think it makes far more sense coming from Kara, especially as she's characterized in this show, than it does coming from Clark (even Dean Cain's Clark), since it's an affirmation of something that I've repeated in the past, which is that Kara doesn't actually technically have a 'secret identity' so much as she has three separate but interconnected identities that help define who she is.

I see it the other way around. "Superman is what I can do; Clark is who I am" is a perfect summation of how the L&C character was written. That version was based on John Byrne's version from the post-Crisis reboot, which reversed the traditional approach of depicting Clark Kent as merely a facade that Superman adopted to conceal his identity and instead made Clark the real personality, with Superman as the facade to enable him to use his powers without compromising his ability to lead a normal life as Clark. In context, Lois had just learned that Clark was Superman (the famous "Duh" scene where the evil Tempus mocks her for not seeing through the glasses) and she's furious at him for lying to her, thinking that Clark is just a persona Superman fabricated. Clark is trying to assure her that the person she's gotten to know and fallen in love with is who he really is, that it's Superman that's the false persona.

With Kara, it's different. Supergirl is more than just what she can do. The whole point of the first season is that embracing what she could do rather than hiding it was a key part of embracing who she was, that they were a single whole. Becoming Supergirl was becoming her true self, which is why she (until recently) spent the majority of each episode as Supergirl rather than in civilian mode. So I'm not sure that line really works for her.

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

Shoved into a corner is exactly what happened again

..which is why I said "early on"--knowing he would (eventually) be kicked to the curb.

I know an hour long (42 minute) script can't include everything, but James is the head of the company that the lead character works for. Snapper may be the news editor, but the episode needed some interaction between Kara and Jimmy over her firing.

As suspected over the past few weeks, it seems the showrunners are moving toward eliminating James from the series. While using the Guardian in that early scene would suggest they're trying to keep that story alive, the man behind the mask--in story terms, the most important half--is constantly pushed aside like a pair of old socks serving no purpose.

Of any of the people Kara needed to talk to about losing her job, it should only be James, the man who runs the business--not Metro-El, who knows nothing about her desire to work in journalism, why she would risk her career, or anything else connected to her profession. There's no excuse--none--for James to be pushed aside as her go-to confidant in such a significant, arc-ending incident as Kara being fired. It was more important to have Merto-El do the usual CW act--and that satisfy her need to express her feelings about her future was weak, CW-fan pandering of the worst kind.

Instead, he's sitting in a bar with no lines. The closing act needed the two of them reflecting on her actions rather than Mon El's tiresome shtick.

Exactly.

Didn't she lift a space fort into orbit a year ago? Why the struggle with some puny starship?

To stretch out the "sisterhood" staring contest, and sweep away the genuinely good tension subplot built over the past two episodes.

What is it going to take to please some of you people? I mean, seriously; this was the best episode of the entire series thus far, and yet some people here are acting like it 'killed their mother'.

Ridiculous exaggeration.

 

[kirk55555]

Ok, I haven't finished the episode but I'm confused about one thing. James runs Catco. If he tells Snapper to print a story that says Lena Luthor is the daughter of Bigfoot, Snapper has to run it. Why did they waste so much of this episode acting like Carr was the final word on the stories that get run in the paper? James Olsen tells Carr to run a story, it gets done. Period. End of story. Even if James wouldn't like to do that, and Carr might even quit if he did, lives are at stake. I don't know if I'm missing something, did they have a line about why they're dealing with Carr at all that I missed?

 

[tomalak301]

Other than two questions, That was much more like it. Way to get back to form, Supergirl, because that was the best episode of the season. I will, however start with my two questions first:

1. How was Alex able to rig Luthor Corp with explosives without anyone noticing? What kind of Guards were working there, because that's quite a task to rig the whole complex by yourself.

2. What is the organizational structure of CatCo? I mean James was supposed to still be the CEO of the company right? I ask because James should have stopped in on Kara's behalf, way before she was forced to write her story using competitive social media? The writers are writing Snapper to be the new head of CatCo but that's not entirely accurate. Ok, so what Kara ended up doing was wrong, but it should never have gotten to that point. It's interesting that with as much screen time as James is not getting and how no one seems to care, when he's needed because THAT'S WHO THE CHARACTER IS, he still is nowhere to be found.

Now that's out of the way, this episode was awesome. It was very poignant to what is going on today and the story was just gripping and timely. I think this show did a great job dealing with the issue of immigration and deportation and the climax was really great. That scene with Alex and Kara eye to eye might be my favorite scene of the season because I've been wanting more sisterly stuff, like we got in Season 1. Their bond is strong and you can feel the tension with the close up shots of both of them. I was reminded of the airplane scene from the first episode and it's awesome how far we've come since that scene. Yeah, it was the first episode, but the two scenes illicited the same response from me, which was very tension filled and just rooting for the sisters to get it done.

Looking forward to meeting Mon-El's parents in two weeks.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Are Teri and Dean angry at each other, or did TPTB not know that that scene was going to be in that episode when they filmed them weeks apart from each other?

 

[kirk55555]

I finished the episode. Outside of my question about James and Catco, it was watchable. I still hate the Cadmus story arc, and Dean cain's character's motivation is extremely stupid, but at least it was a tolerable episode. I don't like that they treated hank as wrong, though. He was completely right, even if he didn't know it. Alex was compromised, she let Dean Cain escape. What he did to test her was harsh, but not wrong. Snapper Carr was horrible and wrong, but hopefully he won't be appearing much now that he fired Kara (which you think James could have stopped, but obviously the writers don't care that James is Snapper's Boss, and that Snapper doesn't have absolute power).

I also could not care less about Winn's relationship with Bland Alien Girl. Even before she had the bad taste to like the terrible Dune movie () she was just boring, and remains so. I like Alex/Maggie a lot better, because the relationship feels like its written better and Maggie is a more interesting character. But overall it was still an upgrade from the last two episodes. Unfortunately we get Nutty McA-Hole soon (presumably next week, along with teri hatcher) so I don't foresee a real return to the quality of the first half of the season right away, but hopefully the stuff with the main cast will stay enjoyable despite having a fairly unpleasant actor having some screen time for an indeterminate amount of time (hopefully just an episode or two).

 

[DigificWriter]

Lyra is anything but "bland"; she's also not going anywhere, at least not anytime soon.

 

[tomalak301]

Lyra is anything but "bland"; she's also not going anywhere, at least not anytime soon.

I liked Lyra, but after tonight when she was kicking ass, I gained even more appreciation for her. Would like to see more of her between now and the end of the season.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Are we certain which Dune that they watched?

1. 1984.

2. The miniserieses from 2000 + 2003.

3. The Dune that comes out soon to make Supergirl seem "relevant" and present day.

 

[kirk55555]

Lyra is anything but "bland"; she's also not going anywhere, at least not anytime soon.

Bland is all the alien woman is, she exists so Winn can have a girlfriend, and that's her whole "character". But, its not a huge deal. I think she's boring and a waste of screen time, but I don't hate her or anything (she's not Mama Luthor, Snapper Carr or dean cain, who I legitimately hate whenever they're on screen). I mean, I'd be happy if she goes away or gets killed off, but she's mostly just a bland waste of a minute or two per episode, nothing more.

Are we certain which Dune that they watched?

1. 1984.

2. The miniserieses from 2000 + 2003.

3. The Dune that comes out soon to make Supergirl seem "relevant" and present day.

Then mentioned the movie specifically, and they way they talked really seemed like that's what they meant. If they'd been talking about the mini series, I might have actually liked the alien woman, at least in that one scene.

 

[The Old Mixer]

That was just one of the references. When Kara said "Supergirl is what I can do, Kara is who I am," she was paraphrasing Dean Cain's Clark from the Lois and Clark episode "Tempus Fugitive."

That could have been in any episode...not quite the same thing as somebody referring to Cain's character as (a) superman while he's right there on camera.

 

[Christopher]

That could have been in any episode...not quite the same thing as somebody referring to Cain's character as (a) superman while he's right there on camera.

It's not a competition. I'm simply pointing out that there were at least two L&C references in the episode, no doubt to commemorate the fact that both Cain and Hatcher were featured (though not together, yet).

 

[Forbin]

"I have to do this myself!" really, Alex? You have to go into the enemy headquarters full of evil henchmen all by yourself? Stupid, stupid writing. Not that Alex isn't damn near a female James Bond, does she isn't a solo agent like him - she has a whole damn organization right there to back her up. But they keep writing her doing stupid, loose-cannon shit.

Was that guy in the car a loan shark?

The spaceship scene was indeed awesome, and Melissa's performance of pain and desperation was magnificent. Unfortunately it brought to mind an earlier episode where Alex said Kara can't fly in space because "she has no air to thrust against." (Which, of course, goes against many historical times Superman DID fly in space). So while Kara is straining against the accelerating spaceship, all I can think is, HOW is she thrusting? What does she thrust WITH? Super-farts??

Also, disabling the engines with heat vision first would have made that whole effort a lot easier, if a lot less dramatic.

On the social commentary side, and I do appreciate good social commentary now and again (after all I grew up in the 60s), but not outright propaganda. Remember, the current deportation thing involves only illegal, undocumented immigrants (deportation of whom has been going on under all previous administrations of both parties, including Obama). Presumably everyone on the "alien registry" has their Little Green Man Card.

And fascist?? Pejorative, partisan, and unsupported.

 

[Marc]

Are we certain which Dune that they watched?

1. 1984.

Was the Lynch movie.

 

[Mudd]

That this show's writers and producers are willing to take stands, however clumsy, against crap like the current nonsense about immigration coming out of this country's government is one of many reasons it's quickly become my favorite of the Berlanti shows.

This is what the original Star Trek did - perhaps with more sophisticated writing in some respects, but no less heavy-handed - and what none of the Trek sequels did with any fervor.

Of course, Carr's commentary would have accurately reflected our current situation had he said "wannabe fascist."

 

[Dick Whitman]

I thought the effects to show the family at the beginning was alien was very similar, maybe even exactly the same, as those used for President Marsdin. Anyone else get the impression she could be the same species?

 

[Dick Whitman]

It's not a competition. I'm simply pointing out that there were at least two L&C references in the episode, no doubt to commemorate the fact that both Cain and Hatcher were featured (though not together, yet).

I did not notice it but someone on Twitter also thought one of Supergirl's takeoffs was a direct homage to how very often Dean Cain did it. How he would simulate it by lifting his cape in front of the camera.

 

[Dick Whitman]

Are Teri and Dean angry at each other, or did TPTB not know that that scene was going to be in that episode when they filmed them weeks apart from each other?

They are not angry with each other at all. The producers have hinted without giving away details that if things go as planned they will eventually work together on this show again. Also that Dean and Teri are very happy to do it.

Most of last nights episode was probably shot a couple months ago. But Teri first came to Vancouver to shot only a couple weeks ago. It must of always been scheduled that this small introduction for her be filmed along with her longer scenes in later episodes.

Given actor availability multiple episodes of these series are often filmed at the same time.

 

[Christopher]

I thought the effects to show the family at the beginning was alien was very similar, maybe even exactly the same, as those used for President Marsdin. Anyone else get the impression she could be the same species?

Not exactly the same, I think. Same principle -- mottled skin, glowy eyes -- but the color scheme was different. Maybe a related species or ethnic group, though. Or maybe it's just the simplest way to reveal "disguised alien" with a quickie digital effect.

 

[doylem1]

Although i'm not fussed with the Kara as a reporter arc finishing, I hope we still get to see her in Civilian clothes. Supergirl's costume might show more leg, but dam Melissa looks hot with those glasses and her hair tied back and figure hugging dresses.

Wow finding a woman hotter wearing more rather than less. Padded Cell here I come.