Supergirl S01E06 Review: Wizard of Oz

Supergirl, Season 1, Episode 6: Red Faced

Well, this episode is going to certainly be polarizing. On one hand, it easily has the best scenes and most well-written character development for Supergirl's character. There are also several great sub-plots, exploring Cat's mother (which has been foreshadowed over several episodes), the introduction of the military, more exploration into the Hank Henshaw mystery and a great anger management theme tying them all together. On the other hand, the plot-of-the-week and all the problems that I've been talking about for the past few episodes rear their ugly head with a huge vengeance.

First up, before we get to me lambasting this unbelievably ugly Red Tornado, let's talk about, again, the whole feminism topic. I actually don't mind the speech that Cat Grant gave to Supergirl about how women are judged differently if they throw a tantrum. It was absolutely preachy, but it kinda makes sense in context and works for the whole anger management theme of this episode. But there's a fair amount of other unnecessary lines like "because he's a MAN!" or "only MEN will drive recklessly"... from Supergirl herself, to boot. Also, Cat Grant's mother's point has been her disapproving of her daughter's life choices and career and generally makes her feel shit despite Cat's attempts to reach out to her. You'd think that would be good enough to make her a shitty parent in anyone's eyes -- all you have to do is add some more hurtful lines. Having her spout "I prefer MALE doctors" out of nowhere just seemed tacky and juvenile. Does the show really think a villain is only hateable when they are sexist?

Not to mention, for all the potential that General Sam Lane brings to the table as this hardass xenophobic general (played by Glenn Morshower to boot!) that is absolutely true to his comic book origins... he ends up feeling like a villain straight out of a Sunday morning cartoon. "Fight this robot! You don't have a choice! Government orders!" "It went wild, it's your fault! It's ALL your fault! Even though I said you didn't have a choice!" The big twist that, oh, surprise, surprise, he hates Kryptonians and the Red Tornado is meant to be a weapon to take down Kryptonians isn't even a twist so much as it's just confirmation of what we thought when he acts like a gigantic ass.

This ugly-ass thing

Red Tornado... as much as I appreciate them bringing in Professor T.O. Morrow (though they only ever called him Morrow in the show, sadly) they might as well as have cast any of the twenty gajillion evil killer robots in DC lore. Red Tornado might not be the most complex of characters, but he's a C-lister hero that I like. His backstory is simple -- android weapon with tornado powers gains sentience and doesn't want to work under his evil scientist 'father'. Here? Red Tornado is just this random killer robot that runs amok. The tornadoes look impressive, that's for sure, especially the big one that menaces National City streets, but Red Tornado himself? Hah. I generally don't like talking shit about visuals, but holy shit, Red Tornado looked like he walked off from the cast of that old Wizard of Oz movie. Yes, most of the details are pretty okay, right down to the yellow T on his chest, but he just looks so stupid. I don't expect movie-quality level of CGI making him look like Vision or Ultron, but come on. He doesn't even look like a robot -- everything below his neck looks like it's made up of felt. It's hard to imagine him being threatening even when he's summoning giant tornadoes when he looks like he flopped out of a Halloween costume.

It's just as well that Supergirl blows him up with a super heat vision. Which is still blue, despite the cracks around Supergirl's eyes being red. And it's still annoying. 

Also, yes, I realize that the love triangle-square thing needs to be in this show, but holy shit, couldn't they have been more subtle about it? The game night scene really felt out of place, and the overly long Lucy and James being in sync while Kara and Winslow stumbles is just bland and uninteresting. And of course Lucy has to throw in a little barb against Supergirl and how she's not James's type because subtlety ain't this show's strong suit.

Which is a pity, because the scenes with James, Lucy and General Sam are pretty decent. Sam hates James for being a glorified paparazzi and doesn't want him anywhere near his daughter, and while Lucy abandoning her high military rank to stay with her man seems kinda contradictory to the whole female empowerment theme, it's a nice, decent little mini-arc for James as he dealt with his own frustrations against Sam. He doesn't get much screen time other than that and the cringe-inducing game night scene, but hey.

Winslow is still so deep in the friendzone and still utterly uninteresting.

Cat gets some great scenes too, especially with her cartoonishly evil mother. The scenes are overtly exaggerated, with Cat's mother basically having all of the 'bitchmom' tropes you can think of thrown in. Sexist. Disapproving of her daughter's career. Arrogant. Prioritizes career over daughter. Hypocritical. Talks shit about a career path that doesn't align with hers. Doesn't care about her grandson. Generally a horrible person. No real motivation beyond being arrogantly punchable. Wow, I wouldn't have imagined she is hateable! Even cartoons aimed at ten year olds have more subtlety than this. A lesson to all writers -- use too many of these tropes and your villainous character just ends up being little more than a joke. Use some and subvert others, and you can get excellent evil parents -- Trish Walker's mother from Jessica Jones comes to mind.

But where her mother was written without any effort thrown in, Cat Grant's crushed expression when she kept her entire evening free -- not an easy task because she's Cat Grant -- and her mother just cancels dinner out of a whim to go with her friends. Cat even offers to join their dinner, but her mother's cartoonish dismissal about how she can't have any topics to talk about just absolutely crushes Cat and her dejected expression afterwards really sells the scene.

Both Kara and Cat kinda explode a bit at each other, then they drink to talk about anger management. It's... not done as well as it could have been, but compared to everything else that was shit in this episode it's definitely decent in comparison. It also brings to head all the anger that Kara has been suppressing throughout the episode (even if we do get the rather blah "women need to be more delicate than men because of society" line) and she ends up admitting to herself the source of her anger and whatnot.

Alex doesn't get to do much this episode other than having a tsun-tsun act with Maxwell Lord that is still as dry as their original interaction. I think the show is trying to ship them together, but wow, a show's that's obvious about romantic interests, the two of them really don't have any good chemistry between them and their scenes are wooden.

Lucy Lane is apparently a major in the military. Who knew? Sadly she serves under the equally-bland daddy-General Sam Lane. And while Sam Lane is written a lot better than Cat's mother it's still not really well done. Lucy herself ends up pretty generic too this episode, just being a generic supportive girlfriend to James and being obliviously jerk-y towards Supergirl.

While offscreen, Winslow apparently hacked into the DEO database and found out that Jeremiah Danvers went missing with his partner while hunting an alien... and said partner is Hank Henshaw. Who showed up alive later on, and redacted that document. It's rather odd for Alex to be jumping to conclusions that Henshaw killed Jeremiah and they could've gone through some logical loops before reaching that conclusion, but hey. At least we get progression.

We also get a cliffhanger, because apparently Kara lost her powers and is now bleeding. Do the plot twist dance!

Overall, though, the messiest and my second-least favourite episode of Supergirl so far (the fourth is still the worst by far), which is surprising considering how many of the themes and scenes in this episode are actually pretty damn interesting and would've been great on paper, but generally shoddy writing got in the way and a lot of those scenes fell flat, dragging the better scenes down with them. Also, this version of Red Tornado is poop.