Supergirl S01E12 Review: Cookie Monster Bizarro

Supergirl, Season 1, Episode 12: Bizarro

Bizarro is... a remarkably faithful adaptation of the comic-book character, albeit this time she's a clone of Supergirl instead of Superman. Other than speaking in opposites ("Me no am Bizarro") which would be hella confusing to pull off in live action, Bizarro is a remarkably faithful distillation of the various Bizarro origin stories. An imperfect clone created by an evil scientist (Lord here instead of Luthor) to combat Superman/Supergirl, and is evil simply because it misunderstands the world. She acts like a child, but is ultimately only harmful because she doesn't understand things and is tragic because she'a a pawn in the evil mastermind's machinations. She gets Bizarro #1's pasty-white cracked skin halfway through the episode, has fire breath and ice vision (the latter not really easy to tell because the show's dumb and made Kara's heat vision blue), is empowered by Green Kryptonite and is weakened by the harmless-to-Kryptonians Blue Kryptonite. Bizarro Supergirl even kidnaps Jimmy Olsen -- a common go-to plot for any Bizarro is to kidnap love interest Lois Lane! It's an impeccable adaptation of the comic-book Bizarro... and it's just a shame, y'know, this episode kinda sucked. 

Not the Bizarro parts, because Bizarro is a decent, fun villain, and I did enjoy the little moral dilemma that Supergirl has regarding taking down Bizarro. Alex is just ready to launch Kryptonite and scream bloody murder, but Supergirl is convinced this clone has a soul and all that. I mean, I've seen this happen multiple times across multiple incarnations of the Bizarro incarnation in comics and cartoons, but it's done well here, and actually highlights some nice staunch realism from Alex, who has been kind of a flat character lately. But really, that's mostly it. 

And it's a shame, really, because Bizarro's been built up across a couple of episodes as Maxwell Lord's big plan, and the idea of an evil tragic clone is always exciting... but it fell apart, I think, due to two main factors. One, Maxwell Lord just doesn't work for me and he just feels like this knockoff Lex Luthor who just doesn't quite have the charisma or dangerous aura that Luthor has. And the second... this episode is just filled with nonsensical lovey-dovey interactions that either don't make sense or ones that I don't care about. 

For one... Adam. I just don't give a rat's ass about him. Watching him was painful, and I think even moreso than the stupid Kara/James/Winn love triangle which at least has the excuse of happening early on in the show's life. Adam is just your stereotypical nice guy, and it's odd, really, considering what he sprouts really isn't that much different from what "Mr. Friendzone" Winn said a couple episodes back. And we've got some really boring and cliche'd breakup scenes, some stupid scenes from Cat favouring Kara because she's dating her son... and the show treats this breakup like, oh, Barry Allen and Patty Spivot from the Flash, a relationship that lasted more than half of a season. When Adam literally showed up last episode, and spent most of last episode interacting with Cat anyway.

Winn actually became a bit more likable in this episode after being a bit of an ass, being mature regarding the whole friendzone thing, giving James Olsen friendly advice in dealing with his feelings, and generally being a supportive friend. I mean, I could write an argument how two men discussing who should "get" a girl would be objectification and something that a pro-feminist show should, y'know, fucking avoid, but hey, it's not that it isn't realistic that two men would talk like that. 

James Olsen, on the other hand, once more just fell apart. I'm not sure if we skipped an episode's worth of character work or whatever, but last we saw them James and Lucy Lane were still quite together and nice and all. And suddenly James is all "huh I do love her" when Winn talked to him, and he confesses his love about Kara in front of Bizarro... it's just odd. And weird. And badly written in general. 

All these moronic love subplots, and I really hoped at least the main superhero stuff was genuinely good. Well, we get some good Bizarro scenes, but it all falls apart up top. Maxwell Lord is just insufferable, and he's not at all threatening, sounding like a villain from Super Friends. I think he's just became an even worse villain than Astra. He just doesn't work, his insistence that the DEO can't touch him, his being hammy without really having anything to back it up. A simple "if you arrest me, footage will be released in 4 hours" or actual plausible deniability and, y'know, not taunting the government agent that he made Bizarro would be actually intelligent. Lord gets arrested and put in jail, and I do hope he stays. He's a boring, bad villain.

TL;DR? Bizarro's good. Everything else is just shit.