Supergirl S04E15 Review: Bald But Bearded

Supergirl, Season 4, Episode 15: O Brother, Where Art Thou

Playing catch-up! Supergirl's 15th episode starts off with an interesting flashback to four-year-ago Metropolis, where Lex Luthor is doing his usual grandiose megalomaniacal plan, and the show quickly proves that even if it still follows the utterly bizarre trend of giving Luthor hair (facial, this time, instead of head-hair), Supergirl definitely has a better handle on DC characters than the live-action WB movies do. Luthor quickly states in less than five minutes how he wants to show the world how he is numero uno, how humbling Kryptonians would be "for the good of humanity", while also casually murdering a bunch of policemen -- the humans he claims to be championing for. None of this jelly-bean giggling hipster investor nonsense.

We cut away to the present day, where... James gets shot! And also, simultaneously, Lex Luthor arrives at Lena, asking for help from Lena to cure his kryptonite-poisoning-caused cancer. And... and while I do think it's definitely obvious in hindsight that Lex was the one who ordered James shot in order to get Lena panicking and expedite her research on the Harun-El, I do think that the episode does make it simultaneously obvious but also tries its best to waylay us. Obvious distraction Manchester Black certainly wasn't behind it for the simple reason what we know Manchester is hammy and he would gloat over J'onn about shooting James.

Still, the focus on the Luthors and their fucked-up sibling dynamic is pretty damn great -- while she's still trying to exorcise the whole superpowers thing from the instant healing capabilities of the Harun-El serum, the fact that James is dying at the operating table being a motivator that causes her to get all panicky is relatively well-executed. I personally don't buy that nothing in Supergirl, the DEO or Brainiac's vast resources of alien technology can't fix what's essentially a simple bullet, but... eh, I guess James has been bleeding on the ground for a while until someone found him. We get a whole lot of fun scenes and Jon Crier's Lex Luthor is certainly a pretty fun take on the character. You're never quite sure how much of the things he tells Lena -- like the 'tough love' he claims to have shown Lena as being there to toughen her up -- is true, but there's a sense of logic to both the face-value and the clearly-manipulative interpretations.

While Supergirl and J'onn ends up getting distracted with hunting down Manchester Black -- who conveniently has been hacking into J'onn's mind to find the location of the magic staff of H'ronmeer from the last season -- there's a still piss-poor relationship amnesia nonsense plot as Alex gets angry at Kara for seemingly abandoning James in the hospital. But the focus of this episode is honestly pretty clearly Lena and Lex, and this subplot is just something to give main character Supergirl something to do. There's also a subplot with Alex and James's sister Kelly (who hates Lena) but that genuinely goes nowhere. The episode seems to really not give too much shits about the whole James storyline other than how it relates to Lena's motivations and... and I get it, I don't like James all that much, but it's bizarre either way.

One of the most powerful moments between the two, I think, is Lex's long, long story about his dying dog, and how his father's mistress -- Lena's mother -- showed far more comfort to Lex than his actual flesh-and-blood parents. Obviously Lex is manipulating Lena, but as Lex later points out -- that particular story, leading to a cheesy "you have light in you" line from Lex, ends up being effective due to it actually being true.

The big climax of the action scenes of this episode and Manchester Black's ambiguous doomsday plans ends when Supergirl zips back to the hospital, leaving J'onn to confront Manchester and his hammy "your god is a god of war, martian!" speeches. Manchester appears to burst into flames and die, but I'm pretty sure this isn't the last we've seen of him -- it'd definitely be a bizarre, shitty way to go out. Manchester did score a bit of a victory, though, by basically provoking J'onn to re-enter his Martian Manhunter form. Never liked how the show seems to really like portraying J'onn's natural martian form as something taboo, but it's still great to see him embracing that side.

James gets cured with the Harun-El serum after a convenient blackout, and Lena later confronts Lex about the blackout -- Manchester blowing random dams up wouldn't be enough to shut down the emergency generators, and Lex, clearly, has something to do with it in order to force Lena's hand. Of course Lex does, and he also reveals that he also arranged for "Jimmy" to get shot. And, of course, he's already taken the Harun-El cure. The huge revelation, of course, is that Lena's been manipulated by Lex all along. Eve Tessmacher ends up being loyal to Lex all along (she's been around since season two, I think), while the FBI guard that treated Lex like crap to increase Lena's sympathy turns out to be Otis. Lena gets taken out, while Lex and Otis walks up and massacres a huge amount of random FBI goons with the Luthor Mansion's defenses. Pretty cool!

Also, two thumbs up to whoever wrote the script for this one. Little moments like Brainiac and Lena having a little bonding moment about "little boxes", Brainiac and Dreamer's little moment of guilt for not seeing this coming, Luthor being a sexist dick to Tessmacher actually ending up being subverted when Tessmacher's actually a deep-cover agent, the hilariously over-the-top "he can lick it from the floor like a dog!" treatment that the FBI guard Otis is impersonating gives Lex...

Overall, a pretty wonderful episode. And it's not just the fact that we're bringing an A-game Superman villain either -- Lex is incorporated seamlessly into the mythos thanks to his relationship with Lena; and he has been a sizable ghost in the background even before his appearance. He's also... well, written a lot better than silly old Agent Liberty, too. Overall, definitely excited in the direction the show's taking. 

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Lex Luthor getting cancer caused by Kryptonite poisoning due to carrying around Kryptonite on his person for years is a fate that befell him in both the original timeline comics (eventually causing his apparent death) as well as more prominently in the Justice League cartoon. 
• Turning the sun itself red in order to depower Superman is a plan Luthor most memorably did in the 2010 comic storyline, The War of the Superman. 
• Lex Luthor, being of the "old" cast, insisting on calling James Olsen "Jimmy Olsen", is probably the best and most clever Easter Egg we've gotten so far. 
• The villain line-up for this episode -- Lex Luthor and his two cronies Otis and Tessmacher -- are the trio that menaced Superman in the original Christopher Reeve movie. 
• John Cryer actually was the actor that played little annoying comic relief Lenny Luthor in the much-panned Superman IV: The Quest For Peace movie.