Supergirl, Season 4, Episode 18: Crime & Punishment
This season of Supergirl is best described as "ambitious", and it certainly is. Tackling pretty heavy topics, and being pretty political about issues like deportation and whatnot, featuring a bigoted extremist with a sympathetic backstory as a main antagonist, and even from a lore standpoint, the pretty surprisingly well-done integration of Lex Luthor at the mid-season point to make him the main antagonist of the show, as well as the previous inclusions of the Elite and Red Daughter into the mix. This episode might be a sign of the show finally collapsing under its ambition, though, as it tries its best to sort of do too much while also simultaneously making a lot of the plot developments feel childishly simple.
Take Ben Lockwood, for example, who at this point has basically been degenerated from a scary-because-he-feels-so-real racist, charismatic extremist who has devolved into basically a Saturday morning villain that spends the entire episode in a silly "let's appropriate the DEO's guns and drag Supergirl into an ambush" plot. President Baker is also turning into an even grosser caricature of a mustache-twirling villain.
Likewise, my complaints about General Haley being inconsistent still stands, as the show really ends up flip-flopping between her different portrayals. For the purposes of this episode, turns out she has a heart, and apparently the combination of Alex using her feelings for her daughter as a leverage, as well as said daughter actually being terrified thanks to her conveniently-conducive-to-the-plot situation turns Haley into a Supergirl ally. In a vacuum, that speech about her teacher being missing because of the anti-alien sentiment should have been scary and effective, but it's so contrived and the buildupis so silly that it feels like they tacked on a relatively well-written speech into a minimal-effort plot.
And... I dunno, Supergirl's popularity ends up plummeting after Red Daughter's attack on the White House, but that scene with the random dumbass trying to shoot Supergirl with a handgun is a bit too silly and went on for too long. The other scenes are slightly more effective, like the man Supergirl saved asking her why she had betrayed all their expectations, or the random prisoner guy, Steve Lomelli, that she meets giving this big (and perhaps too-long) speech... but I dunno. It just feels a bit forced to me.
We need a plot-of-the-week, and the plot of this week is Supergirl and Lena teaming up to investigate Lex Luthor's prison cell and try and figure out his plans. I do love the sheer pettiness of Lex leaving behind a bunch of asshole notes about Lena, noting how she's been nothing but a disappointment and just being horribly emotionally abusive to her even without being around. Where the whole "America is against Supergirl" plot feels definitely forced, this sequence is Supergirl at its finest.
There's also Otis-Metallo showing up and letting loose the prisoners in the prison against Supergirl, but honestly, instead of a badass "superhuman takes five seconds to subdue a prison of normies" sequence that you'd think, it ends up being a wee bit longer, and it's not even as impressive as things like Marvel Netflix prison-corridor fights. I do love the bit where Supergirl speed-changes into Kara and pretends to be this sad, scared random reporter lady caught in the chaos and Otis just gives a ridiculously sesquipedalian response about the press... and it's just really hilariously convenient that Steve Lomelli turns out to be a huge Kara Danvers fan. And later on it's Kara Danvers that ends up obtaining the required information from Lex Luthor's hard drive, because apparently the world's smartest man doesn't know about Wi-Fi security, which is frankly pretty ridiculous.
In theory, Kara realizing that her more public and controversial alter-ego Supergirl not being the answer to everything should've been a triumphant moment, a huge revelation that you can't solve everything with super strength and heat vision... but everything surrounding that sequence was so contrived with so many genuinely laughable coincidences (that Otis would unleash a prison break, that the prisoner next to Lex's cell is a patriot, that said prisoner is also a Kara Danvers fan, that said prisoner actually has tangible information) that... I dunno, the episode just feels utterly lazy to me.
There's a B-plot that's neat but went on a bit too long with Brainiac trying to grapple with morality and whether he should delete the alien registry in the DEO. The Ethan Hunt joke was fun, the moment with Nia causing him to realize the 'right' answer is fun, but ultimately it's all sort of just there. The James Olsen PTSD plot is also sort of just there. So he develops superpowers. That's neat, but everyone saw that coming a mile away, and the show chooses the absolutely most boring way to reveal this to us. The therapy scenes are not interesting at all, and it's a shame because PTSD is such a pretty relevant topic but one that is handled in such a bland manner that it becomes very uninteresting to watch.
Overall, while this episode has a couple of neat moments -- Lena Luthor and Brainiac in particular -- the episode is just so clunky and messy that I just went out of this episode mostly unsatisfied. It admittedly could be a lot worse, but that's hardly a justification for giving a sub-par episode. The episode honestly feels more like a stalling tactic, and does this episode just have a bunch of story plot ideas for other episodes that simply wasn't finalized or something? I dunno.
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