Supergirl S03E02 Review: PTSD

Supergirl, Season 3, Episode 2: Triggers

It's another episode of Kara trying to come to grips with losing Mon-El, and this time she has to confront the fact that part of why she's dealing with it is because she is afraid she had doomed Mon-El to the same fate that she went through -- drifting through space in a claustrophobic spaceship. So they brought in obscure villain Psi, who is given a combination of her comic-book telekinetic abilities and the ability to project fear. It's nothing new in superhero fiction, of course, but it's still interesting to see Supergirl's personal hell. I did like that we're not giving Supergirl an instant 100% healing, but at the same time I did feel a sense of retreading old ground. Psi herself isn't poorly acted, and compared to the personality-of-a-cardboard-box Bloodsport last episode, she at least has a smug hammy mightier-than-thou vibe, but she's still hardly a well fleshed-out villain.

Again, a good chunk of what makes this episode bearable is the fact that Melissa Benoist is a pretty damn good actress. 

It doesn't really help that the B-plots this time around isn't super interesting either. The CatCo plot has Lena going around being a cheerful boss and kind of ignoring James Olsen and keeping looking for Kara (who tries to pull her "I'm too busy see ya" later trick on Lena). Kara and Lena's chemistry has never felt so fabricated as this episode, which just leads me to thinking that the entire CatCo stuff really should've just been left in the background instead of forced to be a B-plot every episode. Oh, Samantha Arias (I didn't catch her name in the previous episode), the mom with unexplained super-strength, turns out to be something more than just a throwaway character. She's Lena's new partner, and she has to take up the entire episode to convince her borderline-suicidal daughter that no, she's not a superhero mom. 

Meanwhile, Alex, J'onn, Maggie and Winn continue to be absolutely adorable with their discussion of DJ versus band. Oh, and M'gann gets a brief cameo.

Overall it's not a bad episode, it's just one that really didn't leave much of an impression and if I ever go on a rewatch of Supergirl in the future this will be an episode I'll go through and go, "oh yeah, the one with the fear psychic villain" and then promptly forget once it's buried in an avalance of better or worse (hopefully better) episodes.

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Psi, a.k.a. Gayle Marsh, is a Supergirl villain (specifically the original pre-Crisis Kara Zor-El version), although her comic-book counterpart was more sympathetic and doesn't have fear powers, fooled by the organization she works for that Supergirl is a force of destruction. She would eventually join the Suicide Squad and get killed.
• Samantha Arias is completely original to Supergirl, but apparently all news outlets out there have revealed her real costumed identity which I won't be saying here until it actually becomes relevant.