Supergirl, Season 5, Episode 3: Blurred Lines
I'm trying to catch up to the CW stuff, and...this one is a neat early-season episode. It's still mostly focused on a threat of the week, this time around a combination of Malefic and an Aurafacian, an alien that can make tattoos transform into spiders or something. Of course, that honestly feels like a secondary part of the episode compared to the far more interesting drama regarding J'onn J'onzz's discovery of what actually happened in the past, as well as Lena and Kara's relationship.
J'onn enlists Nia and her dream powers to help him figure out what happened to his brother Malefic and why he was wiped out from the Martian hive-memory or whatever, and the little flashback that they go through serves as a pretty interesting backstory. Ma'alefa'ak is kind of a green martian mutant, unable to connect to the martian hive-mind but ends up having a far greater ability to dominate other minds. Ma'alefa'ak ended up being sent to live in like a monastery-prison, but this ended up breeding hate and resentment and causes Ma'alefa'ak to betray the green martians to the white martians. It's a pretty interesting story with obvious real-life allegories, but we blaze through this origin story to the huge revelation to J'onn. It seems to imply that it was M'yrnn J'onnz that, in a moment of shame and grief about what his son has done (and how his religious order has failed him), wiped out all memory of Ma'alefa'ak from the martian hive mind.
There's also a fun little decision to have Nia's interference cause J'onn to view the figures in the flashback as humans, as a nice way to get around budgetary constraints, but also to get the actors to actually act without hiding their faces behind CGI.
And J'onn is predictably disgusted that his father, a holy man, seems to be a massive hypocrite that ended up locking up his own son for mistakes that arguably is out of Ma'alefa'ak's own control. And Nia ends up struggling with hiding a secret through the episode until she realizes that she has to let J'onn know. Turns out that J'onn's resentment to his dad was misplaced, because Past M'yrrn was completely grief-stricken and was in no position to do anything, and it was J'onn who ended up committing the terrible sin of fucking with the hive-mind. It's an interesting twist that wasn't drawn on for too long, but man, David Harewood's acting in that scene when he first thought that it was his dad that fucked up... and the revelation that it was him all along?
The main storyline has Ma'alefa'ak go through a relatively simple storyline of disguising himself as Kelly's patient to gain access to a machine that'll fix his mind or something, but the added context of just how betrayed the poor dude must've felt, and what drives him as a villain, does recontextualize him as a genuine pariah of his people. I do like what they did with him, at least, even if the action scenes and whatnot are pretty much status quo for the show.
Lena's obviously manipulating Kara with guilt-trips into stealing Lex Luthor's notebook for her, and it's definitely an interesting development. Lena having AI-Eve basically be an evil Jiminy Cricket is interesting, and it's pretty great to see Lena actually believably manipulate Kara into helping her out without making it be too obvious. Kara's already desperate to make up for her own lies to Lena that she's going around zipping to Paris or whatever to get Lena's favourite scone, and it's easy for Lena to basically make up a sob story about how she's haunted by Lex and need closure. We also get a pretty cool conversation between Kara and Alex about just how different it is to use superhero powers and break the law to save the world or to help a friend, and we hang a nice lampshade about how Alex breaks laws left and right all the time. Ultimately, it's mostly setup, but a pretty great setup nonetheless.
The B-plots of this episode continue, with Nia and Brainy continuing to have relationship hijinks (which ends up in a bit more of an emotional oomph in this episode). The whole William Dey/Andrea Rojas Catco stuff mostly deal with the Aurafacian and that's all right I guess, but I'm mostly indifferent about it. It's solid, though, and I won't complain about it. I guess William's... part of Leviathan or something? There's also some Alex/Kelly drama, but that's just kind of boring and a huge, eye-rolling "you want to send me away?!" conflict that really ended up making Kelly look dumb. Kelly also ends up with the secret superpower of being able to see Ma'alefa'ak even when disguised thanks to the ambiguous thought-machine, and... I want to like Kelly, but she's now a plot device smooshed over with a flat romantic interest, and I'm not about that.
Overall, it's a pretty solid episode. The J'onn and Lena/Kara stuff are easily the highlight, and despite some middling B-plots, it's still a pretty nice watch.
DC Easter Eggs Corner:
- I didn't do too much research this time around, but I'm pretty sure the Aurafacian is original to Supergirl.
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