Fight or Flight
Supergirl has been so good lately. The show figured out its tone and secondary characters making for a delightful, light and bright watch opposed to the generally darker tones dramas that hang around lately. It’s fun and it has a good pace, and the characters show more interesting development with each week.
“Fight or Flight” is an episode that is all about establishing Supergirl as her own, someone who can live beyond the shadows of superman. So far I like Kara’s character arc: it is all about defining herself, who she is? How does she do it? The show is establishing all of this while letting Kara figuring it out on her own.
One of the things I really like of the show is how the relationships around Kara are mostly positive and fun: even though sometimes she may have the occasional issues with Alex it is obvious the sisters love each other, and it is shown how much James (since he prefers it rather than Jimmy) and Winn care for her and how they are committed.
My only issue about the episode would be how Kara reacts to James calling Superman to help her; she could have died if her cousin didn’t come to save her. I do understand that Kara wants to be defined by her own and doesn’t want her cousin to be there as a safety net, but come on, getting help is not that big of a deal.
Reactron was a good villain of the week, one that really pushed Kara to her limits. Heroes are made by their defeats and we need to see them as vulnerable and not invencibles. Kara has so many powers that it could be easy to believe that she is overpowered, but now we see that she has her own vulnerabilities, her own inexperience being one of them.
The superman insertions on this episode are a bit weird: we see his silhouette while saving Kara and in order for them to communicate the show uses ichat. It’s really weird that they allow us to see him (though barely), but not fully fleshed out. It’s not a big deal to me, but I admit it’s weirdness.
As for the D.E.O development, we see Hank Henshaw noticing Alex using their system on her own; she tells him that she joined the D.E.O to help and save everyone and Hank steps back, but it is obvious that the show is cooking up a storyline here, we have the foreshadowing, we have to start theorizing who he is and what’s he is going to do. “Livewire” adds some more fire to that.
The conclusion of Supergirl vs Reactron is good, but not really spectacular. Good action, but I’m expecting more from the show. These are merely nitpicks, but I mention them so you know that I foresee the show getting even better as it figures out how to play out its action scenes as it goes, and it’ll get even better once it delivers the storylines it is building up to. But as of right now, I’m enjoying Supergirl a lot.
Grade: B+
Livewire
I find it a bit weird that Kara keeps correcting everyone saying that her mom is actually a “foster mom”, The distinction seems to unravel some kind of issue, but maybe it is me just over thinking a bit.
The episode deals a lot with mommy issues; Alex feels like her mother pushes her too hard while being light on Kara, and we see that as the episode unravels the dynamics of the characters. Alex’s motivation for everything that she has done so far is prove to her mother that she can be as good as Kara, and she learns on this episode that her mother has only tried to push her on the right direction while she had no idea how to deal with a girl that came from space.
This episode is just as much about Alex coming to terms with her mother as it is about Cat coming to terms that she needs to make some changes to the way she is doing stuff. She is still going to be caty, witty and a bit bitchy (“congratulations, you have the wit of a youtube comment”, one of the best lines of the episode), but we know see that she has more layers than that, and she is not as bad as she seemed on the pilot.
This week’s villain “Livewire” is cool: born by being struck by a lightning that passed through Kara, Leslie is able to shoot electricity and merge with it. It is visually amazing and it gives Kara a challenge as she faces off with an atypical kind of enemy. My only disdain would be that it ended on a rather simplistic note with the water, but I’ll take it.
I honestly don’t care much about the romantic developments: we see Winn developing an even bigger crush on Kara and there is this implicit love triangle of James-Kara-Winn, which I honestly couldn’t care less for. I would rather have them all as friends.
The biggest reveal of the episode is that Kara and Alex’s dad worked for the D.E.O and he died while working on it. It’s not so shocking, but the surprise is that the show would let this early on for Kara and Alex to start uncover the truths that Hank is hiding.
I’m really looking forward for what the show will do next: it is becoming a real pleasure to watch. Light, fun and well developed, Supergirl has used its own blend of ingredients to make itself a good show. Now let’s see if it can become great.
Grade: B+
