Supergirl, Season 1, Episode 14: Truth, Justice and the American Way
Back to this show, I guess. Supergirl's having a crossover with the Flash in episode 18 and that's around 80% of the reason that I'm going to catch up with it. The other 20% is J'onn J'onzz, definitely. This episode tries to be more philosophical about things, which mostly is imprisoning resident jackass and horribly-written Lex-Luthor-expy Maxwell Lord without a fair trial. Despite the fact that, y'know, the only real thing stopping Lord from getting said trial would be him knowing about Supergirl's secret identity -- something that J'onn certainly could've have a hand with making him forget certain things. The dude created an evil Supergirl clone that totally fucked up the city!
Also, Supergirl is all prissy and being passive-aggressive like a little girl towards J'onn... for killing her aunt. In combat. I mean, I get that she loves his aunt and that she's relatively new to this superhero thing, but honestly the prissy little passive-aggressive comments she makes towards J'onn and the uncomfortable reactions from Alex... it was really poorly done, I thought.
I thought that the moment with Non was quite well done, that Non respects Astra and Kara's relationship enough to invite her for her funeral. And the Kryptonians observing funeral rites for, well, a couple of weeks basically takes them out of the equation for the forseeable future.
The concept of this episode's filler villain was relatively decent. I'm not aware of the villain Master Jailer (though a quick google shows me that yes, he is a villain from the comics... though a human instead of an alien as it is here), but he's shown as this big bounty hunter that hunts down the convicts from Fort Rozz and then systematically executes them with his Space Guillotine.
Apparently the DEO has records on every criminal imprisoned in Fort Rozz, enough to know where to track the asshole corpse-eating alien (who got beheaded) and the nice old professor who was only imprisoned for trying to steal stuff to buy medication (who Supergirl saved)... but despite being an organization dedicated to hunting down these potentially dangerous alien convicts, they don't even... try to look and apprehend Luzano and those other five aliens before this? Man, the DEO's alien tracking system is shit.
Meanwhile, the filler Cat Co subplot involves a new secretary. She's Siobahn Smythe, played by an actress that's quite pretty, and, well, she's basically a bitch. Nothing that she does in her interactions with Kara in this episode really felt like it needed to be in this episode -- and while she's definitely being built up for a larger role in the future (*cough*SilverBanshee*cough*) she's mostly just an annoyance here.
Also, we get this stupid subplot where Lucy and James get into a big argument about their relationship. I honestly don't care enough to listen to what they say. I think there was an argument about how James cares more about superheroics and is Lucy jealous of Supergirl? And then there's a subplot where James angsts about telling Kara's secret identity to Lucy. Or whatever. I honestly don't give a shit, and giving a shit would mean I would probably have to rant and type another three paragraphs about the bad writing regarding relationships and the underutilization of Lucy Lane as a character, so let's leave that alone, shall we.
That moment between Cat and James about journalism ethics with that backstory on Cat Grant's journalist origins was pretty decent, though, I must say.
Overall, though, while ultimately throwaway, this episode does have an interesting concept with Master Jailer as a villain. The character himself was extremely dull, with a very inconsistent power level that takes out Supergirl with one shot in the mid-episode mark but Supergirl tanks every single blast and punch in the climax. But what he represents -- a Punisher-type antihero that embodies an extreme Knight Templar brand of 'good' does make Supergirl think about her own ethics, and that makes him somewhat interesting. Granted, considering that the examples used in this episode are extremely conveniently black-and-white with Luzano being obviously not evil and Master Jailer being a cackling 'OFF WITH THEIR HEAD' psychopath being obviously very evil kind of makes it moot. Plus, you're letting Max Lord back to do whatever he does... which is different from rescuing a wrongfully death-sentenced criminal. So yeah, props for trying to tackle a big topic, but maybe make your allegories less strawmanny.
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