Supergirl S05E10 Review: Post-Crisis Revisions

Supergirl, Season 5, Episode 10: The Bottle Episode

With the Crisis on Infinite Earths over and the creation of Earth-Prime and the merging of all the various CW/DC shows into one happy Earth, it's understandable that there are going to be some hiccups, in-universe and out-of-universe, of the adjustment that people are going to have to the fact that all of the history of these various characters and shows are basically rewritten and revised -- and we know it, and the main characters know it, but there's still something strange knowing intellectually that the events of season one throughout season five, episode eight of Supergirl played out slightly differently in this new, revised timeline. (All of the plotlines from earlier this season about Leviathan and Obsidian North and Rama Khan remain, except Leviathan's hidden once more, and it seems we're still going to be following those this season, although there apparently are some revelations that aren't exactly carried over -- Lena's doomsday plan was erased out of continuity by Lex, apparently, and William Dey's history and motivations are a bit altered although it still involves a dead Russell Rodgers.)

And the biggest among those changes would be the fact that Lex Luthor is now World Hero #1, is the boss of the DEO, and everyone loves him, thanks to his little bit of machination when Godliver Queen was rewriting history, and for the most part, the episode and the show seems to want to let this sink in to anyone who doesn't really quite understand the Crisis proper. Lex Luthor is the boss of the DEO, and we get a particularly painfully-written exposition conversation between Kara and Alex early in the episode, and if that's not enough, Lex re-explains it to Lena again later on when he brings her up to speed to recruit her to his cause. Basically, this is the new status quo -- Lex gives Kara and Alex a bit of a pitch, they can help protect the world from threats (that are not Lex), and they can keep an eye on each other. And with Lena, it's playing to her angry "rarr I will never trust friends ever again' mentality because Lex tells Lena that, well, she knows to not trust Lex, so Lex is a valuable ally that she'll never have the danger of becoming friends with. Lex does admittedly do a couple of things to earn Lena's trust, like revealing that his deal with the Monitor was that Lena survives the Crisis no matter what with her memories intact, and there's that speech with the Truth-Seeker that he doesn't want to be alone after experiencing death.

And, of course, we get the very nice little bit of manipulation from Lilian, who initially attempts to be advising Lena, but is actually also trying to get on Lex's good side. Okay. And also, Lex finally discovers that Leviathan actually exists or something. And Gemmamae is apparently part of Andrea Rojas's board of directors, and wants to turn this whole thing into some Sword Art Online VR stuff. Neat!

The main plot focuses on Brainiac-5. Five Brainiac-5's! We've got 'our' Brainy, Cheerful Brainy, Punk-ass Brainy, Girl Brainy (played by Jesse Rath's sister!) and Dead Eyepatch Brainy. Apparently Al's new bar has became a refugee bar for a bunch of random multiversal orphans who survived the merging of the various different Earths, which Crisis on Infinite Earths tries to gloss over but it's pretty fucking traumatic for these people to have all their Earths wiped out, all the history wiped out, in favour of what we consider to be the 'right' history.

Turns out that one of the Brainiacs is from one of these doomed Earths, but he managed to shrink his Earth into a bottle (well, a cylinder), Golden Age Brainiac style, and he plans to recruit the aid of the alternate-universe versions of the Kryptonian Witches from season 3 to bring it back to full size... which, thanks to multiversal mumbo-jumbo, will cause both Earths to blow up when they cancel each other out. The whole episode is just an excuse to give Jesse Rath some fun over-acting the various Brainiacs, and we get to see our Brainy go through some self-confidence issues as the other Brainiacs question why he isn't like the other Brainiacs... and turns out it's because the terrible-makeup Brainy we've seen in the past couple of seasons is the result of his personality inhibitors, and he's finally restored to his full glory, with yellow hair and green skin. At the end of the episode, all the extra doppelgangers are either returned into the bottled Earth, or merged with 'the Big Brain', the Coluan hive-mind thing. But Girl Brainy manages to convince Our Brainy that he has to work with Lex Luthor without the other Superfriends knowing, because things will fall apart if they don't work with Lex to fight Leviathan. Okay, that's... that's actually interesting, and I'm a huge fan of allowing Brainiac to do more than just be involved in socially-awkward romantic plots. Which is still going to happen, unfortunately, judging by the fact that the first thing Brainy does upon embarking on this logic trip is to break up with poor Nia.

Ultimately, it's a very uneven episode, and the character piece for Brainy doesn't quite work with the inconsistent tone of 'haha sci-fi zaniness' that the episode ges into at times, plus the whole exposition, while necessary, does get tiring at times. It's an okay, enjoyable episode, if nothing else just to look at Jesse Rath's fun acting. But everything else is just pretty dang messy.

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• So basically this 'post-Crisis' universe with a lot of characters' histories being retroactively revamped and changed when the multiverse is merged into one is something that happened for the comics universe as well. And random multiversal 'oddities' and doppelgangers that weren't quite merged right are something that also happened in the comics as well, 
• Brainiac 5's new look, revealed to be his 'true' form (green skin, yellow hair), is far more accurate to the comics than his tacky silver skin makeup from the previous seasons. 
• The Anti-Life Equation is a major part of Superman's lore, being the thing that Darkseid is seeking for. It was the end-game for the final arc of the original DC continuity, Final Crisis, and in the comics, the Anti-Life Equation is a spoken formula that, when broadcasted and heard, will cause any sentient being in the universe to lose their free will and submit. In CW-land, it has been reimagined as a deadly virus. 
• Brainy asks his first doppelganger whether his 'face is made out of clay', a neatly stealthy nod to Batman villain Clayface. 
• Brainy's other theories is to accuse the doppelganger of being either a Martian or a Durlan, both shape-shifting species that have appeared on the show. 
• Brainiacs shrinking and putting shrunken cities (and sometimes worlds) into bottles has been part of the character's history ever since the original Brainiac debuted, with one of Brainiac's most memorable acts being the bottling of the City of Kandor prior to Krypton's destruction. For a good while, the status quo pre-Crisis was that Superman kept the Bottled City of Kandor and its population in the Fortress of Solitude, trying to find a way to safely restore it to its original size.