Supergirl S01E09 Review: Nonsensical Plot Development

Supergirl, Season 1, Episode 9: Blood Bonds

Wow, this feels like a badly-written episode of an anime. I mean, yes, I get that Superman is on the idealist side of the spectrum, but honestly there has been ways to make idealism not look like utter stupidity. I mean, yes, General Sam Lane attempts to get his information through torturing Astra and is clearly somewhat xenophobic, but it's not like Kara was any better, throwing a tantrum the first time she went to talk to Astra and generally just being unhelpful until she saw there's really no other way. Add that to the utterly stupid notion of counting merely upon Astra's honour for her to call off the Kryptonian army, something that would obviously come to that prisoner exchange... even if Astra is honourable enough to keep her word and is touched enough by Kara's story, there's really nothing in-universe to prove that -- for all Kara knows, Astra's sympathetic story are just lies, something she points out earlier on... and honestly there's nothing in-universe that Astra does that really makes her more believable to Kara. And even if Astra is honourable enough, Non clearly wants to murder Kara as he shows last episode. 

Except Non doesn't. He just picks Hank Henshaw up and leaves. Not get one of his other Kryptonian goons to do it while he finishes off Kara (though that can be chalked up to not wanting to hurt Astra, at least). But Hank/J'onn doesn't fight back, or try to escape, which is just dumb. Non kills off that random multi-eyed telepathic alien, while sparing every single person of the enemy forces he meets, which is also equally dumb. Sam Lane uses comparisons to 'the Day the Earth Stood Still' to gain Astra's respect, which actually works, making both of them dumb. That soldier who let Kara past who we're supposed to think 'oh that's nice he's grateful' has probably signed a death warrant on his career, so he's dumb as well. Those other soldiers who blindly follow into a crate with a bomb even though Supergirl is bulletproof are dumb and it's no surprise they die in the most moronic way a redshirt can die. Kara, while dealing with J'onn captured by a bunch of psychotic aliens and the DEO and military basically waging a wartime operation against Non, elicits to go back and forth from CatCo and the DEO just to talk about Cat's suspicions and James Olsen being suspicious about Maxwell Lord. Maxwell Lord can apparently just shoo the DEO from securing the facility just because it belongs to him, making the DEO the most pathetic secret organization ever in fiction. Alex apparently complies, making her equally insipid. And Maxwell Lord joins the idiot squad by catching James Olsen able to sneak into the DEO facility -- he knows James has a friend... and lets James off after slapping him a few times. Not even a busted kneecap for all his troubles? Not even a 'big brother is watching' demonstration? Yeah, Maxwell Lord, I think a third-grade bully is more menacing than you. Granted, it also is utterly idiotic for James and Winn to go with 'let's make James Olsen into a super spy' when they have a friend who can see through walls and has super-hearing. 

Also, to add to utterly stupid things that people do, Kara heats up Cat's latte with her (ugly blue) heat vision in what appears to be an office where anyone looking their way could see what is happening. And it's utter stupidity on both Kara, everyone present, and the person who wrote the scene. 

Honestly coming back from that slight surge of quality that was episode 8, this one just comes crashing down because of bad writing... and for once the dialogue isn't quite as atrocious (still bland, but not outright bad), but the storytelling is just nonsensical. Everyone does utterly stupid things and the logic leaps that Kara takes throughout the episode honestly just don't make sense, and you really can't fault General Sam Lane for being suspicious about Kara because she just does her own things, basically intimidates Sam Lane to letting her undergo the prisoner transaction -- General Lane had every right to be suspicious and wary about Kara making the decision on her own without even the courtesy to inform the good General just why she is doing it. 

Of course, the show itself doesn't really do much to convince us that Astra is an anti-villain or anything of the sort other than her letting herself be captured and Sam Lane being tortured, which totally makes her less evil... no, wait, I don't think it works that way. What the fuck was the point of Astra getting captured, actually? That ends up achieving nothing at all. 

The big point of the episode, the whole talk about blood and whatnot, ends up being muddled, confusing and ends up with something that really should've been revised multiple times on the scripting process. The concept, again, is decent -- Kara struggling with whether her mother ignored Astra's warnings and condemned her aunt and uncle to lifetime imprisonment... except it's not executed well at all, is not compelling at all, the flashback is confusing as fuck because neither Astra nor Allura are easy to tell apart since they're played by the same actress and both wear similar clothes, and honestly the payoff that Allura is a mega saint ends up being utterly boring. I mean, shit, having Allura the slightest bit morally ambiguous would be interesting to explore, but nooooo Kara's mother has to be this super-awesome saint who can do no wrong.

Add that to the fact that this episode undermined one of the stronger moments for Cat Grant from last episode -- that she figured out that Kara = Supergirl all on her own, ends up being reduced to a laughingstock of a B-plot that's only saved because the two actresses in the scene are at least half-decent enough to drag the dying corpse of a subplot... which isn't even entertaining at all. Oh, yes, office hijinks intercut in-between a prisoner exchange and Kara's soul-searching is totally necessary. No, what is apparently interesting to the makers of this show is the utterly banal interchange of Cat going "you're totally Supergirl" and Kara going "nope you must be joking hahaumhaha"which the audience is probably supposed to find hilarious.

The show also never really makes it clear just why Kara needs to hang on that CatCo job so much. If it's literally just for Cat Grant's sarcastic-but-coincidentally-appropriate retorts, then, um, wow, add yet another to the 'this is dumb' clutter. 

Also, Maxwell Lord is evil and up to no-good stuff involving corpses and Dead Tornado and shit, but he has so little class to him and has so little menace that I'm flabbergasted that big scary secret agent Alex just kowtows to him throwing a short tantrum and going all "this is my property take your pet alien and go!" Being a big hammy manipulative villain should really be the easiest thing to do -- all you have to do is ham it up and act like an entertaining asshat, but Lord fails at even doing that, and ends up just being a douchehole. Though honestly, Astra, Non, Lord, Sam Lane... none of the antagonists really are anything beyond two-dimensional characters and I'm just waiting for any one of them to be remotely entertaining. 

Oh, and for all the interest that introducing the damned Martian Manhunter into the show, all he does in this episode is to transform into Supergirl to fool Cat Grant about secret identities and stuff. Totally inspired usage of a character. [/sarcasm] At least Kara discovers J'onn's identity, which is a needless amount of drama that's glossed over quickly. 

Other than that, though, this episode, I think, tops the 'Supergirl has to multi-task golly gee' episode as the worst Supergirl episode ever. It's just badly written on all fronts, nothing in this episode works, Non is yet another in a slew of uninspired and uninteresting villains, any attempt at clever emotional storytelling fell flat on their face and I'm just thankful we didn't get any of that stupid love triangle inanity thrown in. With bullshit like this all piled up on each other this just exemplifies all the problems that this show has, and honestly I can see why some people view this as a parody of general Superman movies or cartoons.

I honestly could rant more, or think about the whole 'blood bonds' bullshit to actually give a proper analysis on it, but this shit episode deserves so little of my (or really, any half-intelligent viewer's) respect I'm actually slightly ashamed to talk so much about it already.