Supergirl S05E05 Review: Dr. Octopus

Supergirl, Season 5, Episode 5: Dangerous Liaisons

Okay, that's... that's a relatively simple episode. Like its sister show Flash, even though she doesn't quite have the same massive role that the destined-to-die Barry Allen has, Supergirl is also counting down the days to the Crisis while it builds up a villain in Leviathan since Ma'alefa'ak is more or less contained for the time being, although from the looks of it we're just going to be dealing with random Leviathan operatives and I highly doubt that Supergirl's going to actually defeat Leviathan by episode 9, just maybe do some uncovering on just what they are.

And this episode is relatively solid, if not the most remarkable one we've seen from the show. We get a villain of the week, we've got a vague progression on the Obsidian North storyline and it's a story meant to sort of focus on William Dey. The whole "Andrea Rojas takes over CatCo and turns it into a clickbait news site" has never really hit and felt more like a distraction meant to take up five minutes every episode, so I'm kinda glad that we're finally letting the other shoe drop and finally reveal Andrea's connection to the larger storylines.

The episode opens up with an announcement of Obsidian North's VR lenses which still feel pretty fucking impractical, it's one of those tech pieces that will definitely lead to a whole lot of road accidents if we actually released anything comparable to this in real life. While all of this is going on, the main plot revolves around Kara and William Dey going around trying to investigate Andrea Rojas, in no small part due to William having this whole intricate backstory about how his super duper best buddy Russel Rogers got involved with Andrea, but then was apparently killed by a super-powered assassin called Rip Roar (what you get if you put Dr. Octopus and Robocop in a blender) shortly after, and William's uncovered a trail of crimes that sort of tangentially link to Andrea while not finding anything that really implicates her. Kind of a basic motivation, but okay. There's a bit of an attempt to try and make it interseting since we're focusing more on the Kara Danvers side of Supergirl's dual identities, but there really isn't enough to make the Kara/William interactions particularly exciting or charming. Also not particularly exciting is how very clear that Rip Roar's basically Russel Rogers himself with a Robocop helmet on -- I kinda feel like that scene where William sees Rip Roar walking out of his friend's apartment to be pretty obvious and well-lit, and they could've made it more chaotic to make William look less like an idiot.

Supergirl's investigation into the D.E.O. ends up with an interrogation of last episode's villain, Breathtaker as well as the -googles- Aurafacian, the spider-tattoo alien which is apparently parasitic and the tattoos can jump to other people and take over their minds like a less-invasive version of Marvel's Venom. Brainiac-5 volunteers to be the Aurafacian's host, and Jesse Rath has way too much fun hamming it up as a parasitic alien just ranting and raving.

Thankfully, while the whole 'investigation' storyline doesn't quite deliver, the actual superheroing part of it ends up being pretty unexpectedly fun in a decidedly 80's-superhero-comic-book way. Rip Roar steals one of Lex Luthor's super-weapon, the rather stupidly-named "Marathon Laser", modifies it into a "Fusion Cannon" (Megatron would be proud) and then goes all the way to an Antarctic base or something in order to melt the goddamn polar ice caps with said superweapon. There's just something so ridiculously cheesy about all of this. I love it. Supergirl and J'onn J'onnz use their super-speed flying and spinning to fix the melting polar ice caps (which is nonsense but at least it sort of works) while Dreamer, uh... uses some brand-new force field powers or something to stop a tidal wave threatening to destroy the city? What? Okay, that's kinda random.

The Obsidian North VR launch only really serves to provide William with a eye-rolling bait-and-switch confrontation, plus give  Alex something to do in all the chaos as the one lone sane person in National City pushing people too obsessed with their VR goggles out of the way of falling debris. Also it gives Kelly some relationship angst and she panics because she sees Alex in danger oh noes. I'm honestly still completely not invested in this relationship, and Kelly still feels like more of an accessory to me than anything -- although that little motorbike helmet sub plot is kinda cute, and at least Kelly gets some depth with the knowledge of her ex dying in a war or something. Still, there's this absolutely dire sub-plot about how Alex is so worried about Kara and William's investigation into a possible Illuminati organization not out of fear of anything logical, but she's afraid that Kelly would be sad if she's out of a job. Which is wrong on so many different levels, and they could've easily have changed it to Alex being afraid for Kelly's well-being instead of her feelings if her boss is evil.

Anyway, the episode ends with the Super-Friends deciding that Andrea Rojas and whatever organization Rip Roar is part of are not affiliated with each other since Rip Roar's plan would've fucked up Andrea Rojas's company stock (and also fucking killed her with a tidal wave), and Kara has to break the news to William that his vendetta is directed at the wrong target and also his buddy is evil ripoff Dr. Octopus. But oh no, surprise surprise, right after Andrea's proven innocent by dubious means, Leviathan's old grandma agent shows up in front of Andrea to give her a task!

There's also a B-plot about Lena Luthor's continuing descent into the foggy waters of villain/anti-villain/anti-hero territory as she and Ma'alefa'ak sort of negotiate a deal. Lena promises to rewrite Malefic's brain so he can actively harm J'onn (it wasn't made clear in the past four episodes, but apparently Malefic can't directly harm J'onn thanks to a mental block, which is why he's going for the people around him) while she wants to study some Q-Wave and telepathy stuff from Malefic's unique brain. We get some trials with random alien creatures that Lena just have in her basement, before Lena proceeds to double-cross Ma'alefa'ak with her brand-new mind control tech powers, because at least Lena has standards and she's not going to willingly throw J'onn under the bus like that. Okay, then?

Anyway, despite my ranting I still kind of had fun with this episode. I still do think that the Kelly stuff is pretty weakly written compared to all of Supergirl's previous romance attempts and sh still has very little personalitd being generically nice and being vaguely angsty in everything relating to her girlfriend. And while William Dey isn't the most nuanced character either, the simultaneous buildup to Leviathan, Andrea Rojas and whatever Lena Luthor's doing are pretty neat. Plus we get the absolutely goofy episode of a cyborg man with robot tentacle arms using a cobbled-together superweapon gun to melt the polar ice caps to make a tidal wave. That's fun.


DC Easter Egg Corner:

• Rip Roar was a minor villain from the first Young Justice series, a four-armed warrior from Apokolips who stole a "Super-Cycle" from New Genesis before he was defeated and sealed on Earth. After defeating him, the Young Justice team claimed the Super-Cycle as their own mode of transport.