Supergirl, Season 2, Episode 15: Exodus
Sort of an okay episode, which does a lot... but it just doesn't really excite me all that much. I guess it's kinda-sorta topical what with the current state of stuff in America, but considering the lead time that an episode with so much CGI and scripting would have, I'm not sure how intentional it was. Still, taken at face value, it's a pretty decent plot-of-the-week, if not the most innovative. We've got Cadmus rounding up the aliens -- with the very X-Men-esque scene where the alien shapeshifter family on holiday being captured being a very excellent 'mood whiplash' scene -- and apparently Jeremiah convinced them to, uh, build a spaceship to forcibly deport them into space.
And Cadmus goes along with it why? At the very least, wouldn't the actual fanatics like Hank question Jeremiah's loyalty in the face of that? And they built a very expensive and gigantic spaceship instead of taking out a gun and shooting the aliens in the head? Okay, then, you Luthors and your inexhaustible money.
Honestly, it's not a bad story, logic holes aside. I still feel that the Alex bit was pretty weak, though, how she flip-flops between whether Jeremiah is evil or not, and while I totally understand why she'd be having this moral drama I don't think it necessarily adds much to the story other than to give Alex an excuse to go off on her own and be the heroine. Which I'm fine with, though the writing between Alex and Jeremiah honestly comes off as quite spotty. Much better is the scene between J'onn and Alex... and, yes, I know what J'onn was trying to do, but man, dick move, bro.
Jeremiah... really is a character that makes my eyes roll more often than not. He keeps justifying his actions with 'for my daughters!' but honestly where the shit does joining Cadmus in deporting aliens anything close resembling to 'I am doing it for my daughters'? Or not, y'know, betraying the D.E.O. last episode? I kinda like Alex's story this episode, but Jeremiah just fell flat for me.
Kara's story is the weaker part of the episode, I think, mostly due to how utterly asinine it is. It's another "verify your sources before you publish a paper, kid!" plotline between Snapper and Kara, which is something we've seen at least twice, except with Cadmus switched out for Lena Luthor. And honestly, what good is publishing a story on a newspaper would be? I mean, yeah, for muggles like me, that's probably the best I could do, but you're motherfucking Supergirl, the Girl of Steel, and you can just fly into city square, take a megaphone and shout "aliens, hide yourself now 'cause the big bad Cadmus people are coming for you!" and she'll go viral in YouTube faster than Gangnam Style videos.
Kara treating all of this like some huge, huge problem just doesn't really resonate with me at all, and honestly? I agree with Snapper there. Yes, Kara's information is right, but without sharing the source and just asking everyone to take on her faith is probably as tyrannical and deceptive as not reporting the thing at all. At the very least, as Supergirl could've just told Snapper something about uncovering Cadmus' to-do list while fighting them or something, right? So yeah, she publishes a blog (which, by the way, doesn't get anywhere close to a fraction of the views that huge sites would) which accomplishes absolutely nothing other than nearly getting all those aliens deported ahead of schedule. So yeah, Supergirl, you really should've spent your time and effort flying around the country with your X-Ray vision.
And can you really blame Snapper? I honestly thought he handled it as well as he could, with Kara just running in blabbering her mouth about something that's as believable as any conspiracy theory, and her source not being super credible at all and obviously hiding something... and yes, Supergirl is a beacon of justice and all, but without really any substantial evidence to prove her story Snapper really has reason to doubt her. His breaking speech to Kara at the end of the episode about how one misattributed quote or statistic can put a fascist on the throne or cause the Great Depression is awesome. Really a bit of a shame that Snapper Carr wasn't given more to do with, because he really never felt like a character I care about until this episode.
I think the show's trying to draw parallels between Kara and Alex's stories, whether they should do what's right or follow protocol, but honestly by the end of the episode Alex has accomplished a lot -- rescued an alien, beat up Cadmus people, infiltrated their base and managed to talk her father into the light side. While Kara made a blog post and goes all emo about it. Not the best depiction of our titular character, I guess, which is why thankfully the episode actually punishes her by making her get fired. Like, not that I enjoy seeing bad things happen to Kara, but it's a development that makes sense. I just hope we don't get a season-long 'Return to CatCo' storyline because, fuck, I honestly never cared about CatCo.
I'm not sure if I would prefer the cliffhanger to involve Alex, Lyra and the aliens actually be shot off into lightspeed and Supergirl being unable to save them, because the scene with them banging at the glass seemed to really be going for that route.... but it didn't happen. Eh.
What else? Mon-El is on full 'boyfriend mode' duty instead of 'fledging superhero', which would be decent if the civilian subplot is decent, but it's not. Winn is only there to be scared for Lyra being kidnapped -- and Lyra's barely a character. Both Hank and Guardian is a glorified cameo in this episode. At least the Mon-El storyline seems to going to be pursued as what appears to be Daxamite royalty has shown up on Earth, and I bet we're going forwards with the 'Mon-El is actually the prince in the story' theory.
So yeah, while on the surface it's at least three-fourths of a good episode, the sheer amount of logic loops and bad side-plots makes this an underwhelming episode to me.
DC Easter Eggs Corner:
- Dean Cain (Jeremiah Danvers' actor), of course plays Superman in the old TV show Lois and Clark, earning some gags around his role there, the most obvious being Lillian telling Jeremiah that he's "the only Superman we need".
- Dean Cain's co-star, Teri Hatcher, a.k.a. Lois Lane in Lois and Clark, is acting as the Daxamite Queen in the final scene of this episode.
- Takron-Galtos, the planet that Cadmus is sending the aliens, is a prison planet in the DC Comics.
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