Supergirl fights corruption in the prison system
A simple, socially conscious episode manages to make every corner of the show's world feel relevant
TV Reviews Supergirl
Funny, thoughtful, moving, and socially conscious. Those are the elements that Supergirl does best, and they’re also the qualities that are on display in “Dream Weaver,” another solid episodic adventure that inches the season’s bigger storytelling pieces forward. I like that Supergirl is taking a more scaled-back approach to this back half of its final season. Instead of stretching beyond its means with big action scenes it can’t pull off, “Dream Weaver” tells a small-scale, self-contained story that’s impact lies in its pointed social commentary and optimistic spirit.
The most impressive thing about “Dream Weaver” is the way it, well, weaves together just about every major element of Supergirl’s worldbuilding. Sure it’s a little convenient that the kid Kelly meets at her social worker job just happens to have an older brother who’s involved in the robberies that Kara and J’onn are investigating, which just happen to be connected to a prison warden that Kara previously wrote an article about. But I’ll take a little contrivance if it means that all the elements of Supergirl’s world feel equally relevant for once.
In particular, “Dream Weaver” does a fantastic job making CatCo feel like a vital part of Supergirl’s storytelling, which hasn’t always been the case in the CW era of the show. The smash cut from Kara and Co. having a game night to Andrea demanding to know what the Super Friends do for fun is great. And William and Kara work really well as platonic colleagues with a shared passion for hardhitting journalism. Plus Supergirl locates a smart, relevant conflict in the idea that in order for CatCo to have the resources to report the truth, it has to be able to sustain itself monetarily. And that means figuring out how to frame a story in a way that makes people want to engage with it—something that Kara eventually realizes she has a unique ability to do as Supergirl.
But while Kara does some recon with her Supergirl powers this week, the key to cracking the case comes more from her journalistic side, as she and William buckle down and follow the money. It turns out an organized crime lord is bribing a private prison warden into using alien prisoners to steal the materials he needs to build a dirty bomb. Adding insult to injury, the corruption is happening within a work release program that’s specifically meant to help incarcerated people learn skills that can help them reintegrate into the world after their sentences are up—a program that Kara previously praised in an article.
“Dream Weaver” is interested in systemic abuse, like the kind that EMP-powered alien Orlando Davis (Jhaleil Swaby) faces in prison or that his little brother Joey (Aiden Stoxx) faces in his cruel foster home. In fact, “Dream Weaver” pointedly sets out to explore the cycles of inhumanity that make up so much of American society: The Davis brothers wound up in their abusive situations because Orlando had to turn to robbery to make ends meet after their parents died. If he’d had more social services to help him in the first place, all of their trauma and separation could’ve been avoided. Indeed, Kelly’s beautifully empathetic approach stands in stark contrast to those larger systemic failures. But there’s only so much she can do as one small voice in a much bigger broken system.
As is often the case when Supergirl tackles a complex real-world issue, however, the show’s desire to deliver an optimistic ending is somewhat at odds with the less sunny reality of how these situations usually play out. While the idea of Supergirl becoming a voice for the incarcerated is lovely, there’s also something strange about presenting a relatively simple fictional solution to such a complicated real-world problem. I couldn’t argue with anyone who found the scene where Orlando gets a full pardon and reunites with Joey to be just a touch exploitative when it comes to mining real-world pain for easy superhero TV pathos.
Still, within the world of the show it works well. And it’s clear that Supergirl has all the best intentions in the world when it comes to shining a light on the dangers of private for-profit prisons and the lack of humanity that’s so often granted to the incarcerated (and to kids in foster homes). It helps that before Supergirl has Kara swoop in as a hero, it lets her be frustratingly naïve in terms of failing to see that Warden Wyatt Kote (Tom Jackson) is clearly in on the scam. And I like the episode’s ultimate thesis that Kara has just as much power in what she chooses to speak about as Supergirl as what she actually does with her Kryptonian abilities, which she proves by giving William an exclusive interview that condemns prison abuse while still defending work release programs in general.
While Kara’s impulse is often to segment her double life, this time around she realizes there’s a real value to working a story from both ends—as Kara Danvers and as Supergirl. And Kelly comes to a similar realization too. After recognizing the limitations of what she can do as a social worker alone, Kelly decides to take up her brother’s Guardian mantle to help protect vulnerable people through vigilante means. And while, again, there’s something a little weird about using a fictional solution to solve a complicated real-world problem, the spirit is lovely—and a much better exploration of what it means to be the Guardian than the show ever really gave James. Plus it’s worth it to see Alex excitedly break out the vigilante gear she’s been storing for Kelly ever since Crisis on Infinite Earths. Even more than their dominance at game night, this is the scene that really sells Alex and Kelly as a perfect pair. The couple that vigilantes together, stays together.
Rounding out “Dream Weaver” is a sadly not all that interesting runner about Nyxly infiltrating Nia’s dreams. While Nia’s powers are cool in theory, Supergirl has never been the best at finding visually interesting visions for her. Here her dreams start to get pretty repetitive—at least until a trippy talking owl jazzes things up a bit. Still, tying Nyxly and Nia together is yet another smart, economic storytelling choice that brings Nyxly back into the fold while continuing Nia’s arc about missing her mom. If Supergirl’s season-long storytelling has yet to start fully cooking with gas, at least it’s fanning the flames in an interesting direction.
Stray observations
- There’s some nice hand-to-hand combat in the scene where Kara and J’onn free the kidnapped prisoners.
- Jhaleil Swaby and Aiden Stoxx turn in really lovely performances as Orlando and Joey, which goes a long way towards making the brothers’ story feel lived-in and complex.
- So are Alex and Kelly only going to adopt Esme or are they going to wind up taking over the entire foster home too?
- Where has M’gann been lately? Did she go back to Mars?
- I thought William was the only one assigned the Super Friends story, but I absolutely love that Kara and Nia have been assigned to profile themselves too!
87 Comments
The big thing I wish they’d done differently was have the corrupt warden (hey, synergy with Stargirl and it’s Shawshank reference!) try to bump off Kara for sticking her nose where it doesn’t belong. That said, I was a big fan of Bruno Mannheim and Intergang getting name checked, and really the episode’s vibes as a whole.
They had Intergang show up on Superman & Lois too. Perhaps there’ll be even more of them in the future.
-sam — I read “have the corrupt warden…try to bump off Kara for sticking her nose where it doesn’t belong” and coffee shot out my nose, I was laughing so hard! Reminded me of this poster Melissa Benoist held up at an women’s anti-Trump protest:
If they didn’t have so many balls in the air at once, it would be hilarious to watch this warden and his “hit people” keep trying to kill Kara…and never understanding WTF they keep failing! The only thing Kara’s worried about is their accidentally stumbling on her being Supergirl….
That bold type makes we want to see it written as Kara (Supergirl) Danvers, for old times’ sake.
Oh, my God, now that there are a couple characters who don’t know she’s Supergirl again, they have another window to adapt “The Late Mr. Kent,” my favorite episode of the ‘90s Superman cartoon!
I’d have rather the thing they’d do differently would be to have the corrupt warden…not be corrupt at all. Wasn’t there already a corrupt warden in season 4 helping Lex? Wasn’t there a few corrupt wardens in The Flash as well? It’s gone from a critique on the system to a tired cliche.
All Wardens Are Bastards.
A “B” feels about right. This wasn’t a very ambitious episode of Supergirl, and everything felt by-the-numbers down to the corrupt prison warden. But it was all well-executed, and agreed this really built Kelly’s transformation into Guardian in a way that never worked for Jimmy.What’s up with Nyxly? Last I recall she hitched a ride back with the Superfriends. Did her body not materialize in the real world or what? Nia’s decision at the end feels like her holding the idiot ball, when consulting with Kara would’ve likely raised a huge red flag. Also when did Nia become an expert on Imps and universal laws?To what extent have Intergang and Mannheim already been part of the show? I would swear we’d cycled through them by now.
Nia deserved better than to be the cause of this crisis too; she learned about trusting people like 2 seasons ago when she met that social media date and got kidnapped, but because shit ass writers, she once again has to play the stupid gullible moron.
Once again F Andrea and her bs news standards.
She is the most annoying character on the show.
Yeah, she’s somehow surpassed William.
Even Nia nods off when Andrea speaks.
I really wanted someone to tell her that Nia has a recognized medical condition and she can’t be reprimanded for nodding off. But no, everyone acted like narcolepsy isn’t a real thing covered by ADA.
I actually find her more tolerable than last season when she was trying to turn CatCo into a tabloid gossip mag.
She’s still turning it into a gossip rag!
Eh, not to the extent of being a BuzzFeed or TMZ clone.
she kind of is going BuzzFeed, though, with the split between actual news and whatever clickbait BS gets them eyeballs.
I appreciated that Nia was almost smart enough not to fall for Nyxly’s fifth-dimensional trickery & knew she shouldn’t trust her & should listen to the owl. But wanting to see your dead mom is a pretty powerful motivation
Yeah, I do appreciate when they have the sucker show at least some wariness.Like, switching gears, the Disney “Hercules” movie from 1996 or so … just before Hades is about to launch his grand scheme, he needs Hercules to give up his powers for 24 hours, but Hercules smells a rat. He eventually goes through with the deal because Hades is threatening his girlfriend so Hercules isn’t thinking straight, but I like that they at least made him smart enough to not just walk blindly into it.I was contemplating the possibility that Nyxly could get what she wants more reliably by taking her time and giving Nia more reason to trust her, but if she did that, Nia might start talking to J’onn or someone else, and then her plan would fall through.
Goddammit Guardian? Again? Really? I’ve known about this for months now and I’m still annoyed. Like, it was awful when James was doing it, why would it be any better as Kelly? And really this is just another thing that’s really annoying about most of the Arrowverse shows, in that they can’t just keep people normal. They couldn’t just have Kelly start her social services job and have that be her story line for the season. No she’s gotta give up on that almost immediately and become a superhero and that’s going to solve problems somehow. I really miss the these characters having social lives and jobs, now unless they work for Catco you pretty much get nothing from anyone else unless its superhero related.Speaking of Catco, I mostly get where they’re going with Andrea. Except for the Acatra stuff. I don’t know where that fits in in the long run.Nia’s really bad at spotting liars apparently. Nyxly was not being particularly subtle with her lies and the Owl pretty easily exposed that.And lastly, the power dampener thing. Like, I understand the abuse angle they were going with it but on the other hand, maybe you shouldn’t let kids run around with destructive super powers if they can’t control it. Like Joey’s powers are EMP’s and he was having control issues from the stress. Things could have gone very badly there and he could have fried most of the neighborhoods electronics.When this came up I immediately thought of OG Charmed and how they let super baby Wyatt run around with his powers in spite of him doing things summoning dragons in the middle of San Francisco and murdering men with swords and teleporting him and his brother around the world. Maybe don’t let kids have powers until they can use them properly.
Twitter was going ga-ga over Kelly-as-Guardian (even getting her trending) and it just made me roll my eyes. Especially since most of these people hated James in the role.
Oh yeah that reminds me, they released promo pics of her as Guardian and holy shit, they gave her a more comic accurate Guardian outfit and it looks so much worse than James version. And James’s version was pretty bad looking to begin with.I won’t post pics for people who don’t want to be spoiled but go look that up.
I’m pretty sure it’s just the same suit with gold spray paint.
Nope, very different design. Especially the helmet.
Yea, I took a second look at it, since I only briefly saw it before. I hope those braids are a part of the costume, as stupid as that is, and not supposed to be her natural hair.
Yeah, Guardian is fucking dumb. It was dumb when a man, it’s dumb as a woman. I also can’t fucking stand that it’s SUPERGIRL but we spend about 41 minutes per episode with CW relationship drama between her one-note sister and her girlfriend, that Nia is absolutely incapable of learning ANYTHING (gee, remember two seasons ago when she learned to be less trusting because a date she met online/on social media kidnapped her? Why does the trans character need to be so incessantly fail at common sense and not trusting the most obviously evil people? A trans person would be VASTLY MORE WISE to deception and dishonesty because of life experience, yet here we are, these shit g-d writers), her being gullible, actually ANY character whose constant gullibility is getting everyone in trouble, especially on a global/superpowers scale, is DEEPLY fucking frustrating because they’re the writing teams’ little whore helpers.
Not saying Nia is a whore; saying I fucking hate conveniently now totally stupid and with the judgment of a child ADULT characters who constantly heel turn to stupid 5 year old by a candy van when the writers need ‘drama’.The show is down watchers and it’s the last season because of absolute gobshite writing like this garbage, and because people are tuning in to see Supergirl, not her sister, Jimmy Olsen’s sister who is now Punisher Captain America vigilante-ing, their emotionally handicapped dating world, her quickly powered up a LOT friend Dreamer who still behaves like a 5 year old child’s gullibility (everybody is telling the truth when they angrily look at you and raise their voice to insist they are, even when you just met them and a wise dream owl is trying to tell your stupid gullible ass that this bitch is evil, everyone knows that the person is still telling the truth).It’s down watchers because Supergirl and Martian Manhunter BOTH have the powers of Kryptonians, hell MM has even more powers, and yet they both CONSTANTLY stand right in the way of any and all attack and take it on the chin and fly ten feet, every. single. time. SuperMAN however has been pleasing in that he actually bothers to dodge or block shit because SUPER SPEED AND STRENGTH. Fuck, even Titans has Superboy dodge and block when he is hours old with the mentality/maturity of a toddler. Supergirl is going off the air because the writers fucking SUCK and it’s turned into some variant of Gilmore Girls and immature Dungeon Master who constantly forces whatever circumstances required for his next stupid storyline.
I mean I feel the central issue with Guardian is a bigger problem in the Arrowverse shows in that everyone, literally everyone, has to be a superhero in some manner. Even characters where it makes absolutely no sense for them to have such an identity.The whole Guardian thing, the way it originated and so forth, has been pretty bad from the start and agreed here. However I also keep thinking that the origin of it is that the show can’t access the meaningful Bat-Clan characters, which does suck to a degree as I keep thinking how having Cassandra or Dick on this show would be such a potential strength for it. Hell, even having Damian around might be fun even if I generally don’t care much for him.
Oh I’m sure we’re going to see Mary turn into Flamebird at some point and Sophie into, I don’t know, Huntress.
I was thoroughly amused by the subtext though. “You know, I’m not sure I can really be my best self and truly help the community unless I give myself permission to put on a costume and rough up some motherfuckers from time to time. I mean, shit, everyone else I know is doing it.”
It’s nice that they are giving Kelly more to do but they should have done that two seasons ago. I also still don’t see any romantic chemistry between her and Alex. It doesn’t help that they rarely show more affection than two relatives would.
Tell that to Twitter. They are going ga-ga over Alex/Kelly.
If Twitter is all aflutter about something then you know that something is hot garbage.
ZERO chemistry. And can we point out that Alex’s ‘hero’ makeup looks like she is intentionally trying to mimic drag makeup? Because her makeup as ‘hero’ is absolute shite, like a 5 year old who gets into a makeup store overnight, but straighter lines (not that that’s any good point).
The relationship’s grown on me, but that scene at the end where Kelly comes home and Alex hands her a glass of wine and they chat feels like someone trying too hard to paint a perfect home life scenario. Like if they’d given Alex pearls it could’ve been a modern Leave it to Beaver.
I think that relates to one of my problems with Alex and Kelly’s relationship. It’s not written like a relationship that a character like Alex actually would have. It’s written to an inoffensively lame and perfect lgbt relationship.
I noticed that Alex was pouring 2 glasses of wine before Kelly arrived home, and she seemed surprised by her arriving at that moment, like “Oh, you’re home.” So why was she pouring a glass of wine for Kelly then? I understand that they wanted the two of them to be drinking wine on the couch while talking, but this just felt odd – who pours your partner a glass of wine when you have no idea when they’ll be home?
Kylo Ren would’ve pointed out that Nia’s need to reach out to her dead mom, “searching for [her] everywhere”, is her greatest weakness. In fact, behind all the chutzpah and magic tricks, she’s likeBatman: “just a little [girl] in a playsuit crying for mommy and daddy.”Whether or not Nyxly will point that out in the next episode, should she reveal any deception, remains to be seen.
– How exactly do people not know who Martian Manhunter and Sentinel are? Kara at least has the excuse of tying her hair back and wearing glasses, as well as working in a profession where not as many people pay attention to your face as you would think (especially since she doesn’t do TV stuff). Both J’onn and Alex are government workers, so their profiles should be easily available for someone of Andrea’s connections to get. Even if J’onn was never Hank Henshaw Post-Crisis, he should still be relatively identifiable, especially since he uses his human face most of the time.
– I tried to see if Esme was any previous character, but the only ones I could find were Esme Frost, a clone of Emma Frost over at Marvel, and an Esme who is Alfred’s girlfriend in the Epix Pennyworth series.
– Joey and Orlando, however, DO have comic origins. They’re both named after Joe Orlando, DC’s former Vice President.- Wyatt Kote, the warden, is made up for this episode, as far as I can tell.
– When I saw “Guest starring Tom Jackson” on the credits, I thought they were talking about the former NFL star/NFL Primetime co-host. A little disappointed it wasn’t him.
– So… I decided to look up Van Kull Correctional Facility on the Arrowverse Wiki and… most of the known inmates who ever were incarcerated there ended up dying at some point. The only exceptions before this episode are Reactron, Lena, and Lillian.
– So, I’ve been wondering this for a while, but does Alex ever keep in contact with her former DEO workers? Like, I assume she had people under her who liked her at the DEO, right? Also, does J’onn still have his bookstore dayjob, or does he just do Superfriends stuff 24/7 now?- The CGI mouth on the owl was pretty bad.
– Cypress Holdings is an actual, real life company. They do fences and landscaping in New Jersey.
– I get that we’re supposed to find the foster mom a bad guy and all, but one woman taking care of ten alien kids with superpowers can NOT be an easy job, especially since we never actually get to see WHAT said mom actually did to the kids. Though I suppose if the writers gave Kelly the job she’d be super ultra amazing at it.
– I forget… does Kelly have any fighting skills whatsoever? Also… how does being The Guardian help Kelly made a difference…? She’ll be an unpowered hero wearing a full body mask in a city with multiple super-powered beings who regularly fight super-powered enemies. Like, Guardian can make sense in a show like Arrow or maybe Legends, but Supergirl? Alex is useless enough as is, what can Kelly do that she can’t?
I assume Jon still has his PI business and that the office is still downstairs but we just never see or hear about it anymore.Also Alex and Jon wee agents of a secret government agency, one I suspect wasn’t releasing its agents names to the public.
Post-Crisis the DEO were very public thanks to Lex.
Still probably weren’t publishing their agents names.
That J’onn still works as a PI should mean someone would recognize his face and link him to Martian Manhunter, or at the very least it shouldn’t take Andrea much effort to track him down and be knocking at his door 24/7 for an exclusive.
Well you see he wears a hat as a PI so he’s unrecognizable.
The hat is made of the same material as Kara’s glasses.
Joe Orlando was also the main artist on 70’s Supergirl — when her costume was hot pants, pixie boots, and a blue blouse with the S on one side. It was probably her most popular era, but she wound up in a lot of weird poses on the covers.
yup
Got tied up a lot, too, didn’t she?I remember joking about that and suggesting that maybe she was into it, and kept going to Wonder Woman for pointers….
re: Alex’s old DEO people, I really would’ve loved to see Agent Piper Vazquez pop up again.and re: Kelly’s fighting skills, probably nothing huge but they established her as a military veteran when they introduced her, so…more than James ever had.
Slightly better motivation than “MAH CAMERA NO!!” too.
The foster mom was actually a bad person. You know they don’t force people to adopt foster kids and take care of them, right? They also don’t do ‘group fosters’, kids are moved around (unless some fringe situation, siblings, etc.) one by one. SO they older lady is obviously milking the system and took as many kids as she could to maximize her profits, then gives them one biscuit per day to eat. She clearly has more children than she can handle reasonably, and has the many kids for the payday (it doesn’t pay a lot, but it is ‘free’ state money, and bilking the system to get money and neglecting the children is something that is commonplace enough in foster care).
I am still waiting for some to say. Do you ever notice that Kara Danvers and Supergirl have the exact same scar on their foreheads? I can’t not see it.
When Alex said “I can’t think of a better person to be Guardian” I was like “How about someone who can fight, maybe?”
This show isn’t Flash-level bad yet because it at least still has something to *say,* which can liven up even the stalest episode, but the way it says it is just getting dumber all the time.
“I forget… does Kelly have any fighting skills whatsoever? Also… how does being The Guardian help Kelly made a difference…? She’ll be an unpowered hero wearing a full body mask in a city with multiple super-powered beings who regularly fight super-powered enemies.”If this show was more realistic the following episode would have Kelly immediately die in her first battle as Guardian against a super-villain. Why do shows like this think a normal person can suddenly become a super-hero with no powers and fight powered super-villains? It’s believable with Batman and Daredevil who have years of training off panel, but here …
Does anyone else wonder who’s now watching the kids at the foster home? It’s not like there’s a surplus, or even nearly enough, qualified people available at a moment’s notice to take over one.
Yeah kind of weird that they didn’t address that part.
I mean, they only ever showed three kids, and one of those only appeared for one brief scene, despite the house supposedly having 10 kids, so it wouldn’t surprise me if the writers forgot about that.
There must be a 9 or 10 year old who can make Kraft dinner, so it’s fine, right?
If only it took place in Japan, where they would basically be considered adults and live on their own.
Meh, whatever. Whenever this show tries to be socially conscious it’s at its worst. Hopefully it finishes strong, although it of course missed its best possible ending by having Kara die during Crisis.
-Pulitzer Prize winner Kara got absolutely snowed by the prison-industrial complex. I always wonder how much Supergirl intends to critique journalists with these storylines and how much is an accident.-Awww, Kelly and Alex on the balcony of deep thoughts talking about Kelly’s fear vision.-People you can trust rarely say “you can trust me,” Nia.-Did Nia’s dream sequences borrow the sets from when Sara/Legends were visiting Mallus’s death realm way back when?So are Alex and Kelly only going to adopt Esme or are they going to wind up taking over the entire foster home too?It would be so incredibly Alex Danvers to pivot from wanting a child to fostering a whole fuckin’ home full of them.
Kara won a Pulitzer, it’s all by accident.
GAWD thank you, Nia of all people has dealt with dishonest people so MANY times and trusted and learned, well, SAID she learned a lesson, but EVERYTIME with shit writing like this one of the ‘adults’ is suddenly a gullible idiot child and it’s infuriating as audience. It’s also STUPID that PULITZER AND Kryptonian Kara not only doesn’t intuit the evil warden, she doesn’t hear or see his pulse go up when he’s lying to her repeatedly? Fucking damnit man, the writers are so garbage. Then about 39 minutes of the episode doesn’t have Supergirl in it, the Supergirl TV show.Then the police arrested the greedy scamming foster mom, and leave the children at the house (TEN!) and two seconds later Jimmy’s sis is home, says nothing about a foster home across town with TEN CHILDREN living alone now. This is why the show is going off air, these things, and more. The writing is just SO lazy, with no guile or cleverness whatsoever.
Thank you. I thought I was the only one. Every episode, it feels like the writers have just thrown in the towel. The characters get more stupid, the subtext of any speech becomes microscopic, and the acting gets more wooden. How any character with an IQ above room temperature wouldn’t have seen through the most obvious villains this side of Snidely Whiplash should be embarrassing to anyone connected with the show.
Can’t spell “naive” with “Nia”
I would think having both parents out fighting crime every night would be a problem for fostering kids. That and Alex’s complete lack of job or source of income.
you as a functional adult would think, but none of the show’s writers would!
I think Alex might have a job as a P.I. She worked on a case with J’onn last season after she left the DEO. The P.I. business hasn’t been talked about this season so who knows if Alex and J’onn are still supposed to be private detectives.
Kara is a writers room special. At least one or two people in the room know that she’s a bit of a gullible dum-dum, and they (almost always good-naturedly) toss in lines to remind the audience of it. Remember when she revealed that her ‘worst [or best, I guess?] fictional villain of all time’ was Voldemort? She’s a well-meaning but dense fucking child! And it’s kinda funny!
But the people responsible for the overarching plot and character need to give her big wins all over the place. That’s just how they see the character.
I assume the other kids will go to different foster homes. I think Alex and Kelly will end up adopting Esme. At least their new apartment looks more appropriate for a family than Alex’s studio apartment.
Sort of a shame that in this version of Supergirl that she didn’t spend her early life-on-earth as ‘Linda Lee’ in an orphanage as she did in the comic book. There could have been a bunch of these stories with that younger actress.Interesting that in the series’ closing days that they’d go back to her very earliest days in Action comics.
I liked the episode but I did not like the ending. I do not want Supergirl to go the arrowverse route and keep adding heroes. For real like the Supergirl team includes Dreamer, Manhunter, Supergirl, Brainy, Alex, and now Guardian Kelly. That is 6 people fighting one villain, 7 if you include Ms. Martian. Like 4 of them have powers and they need all 6 to fight like one villain and their henchmen. I swear if Andrea becomes a superhero.
Nia: My mother loved owls.Nixly: No girl they’re evil, you can’t trust them.Nia: Well…….I don’t know. Ok, I believe you over my motherThis is going to be a long season.
Ugh, I am so done with Kelly. I feel like the writers have gone into full Mary Sue mode with her, where the story is in service to showing how wonderful she is rather than Kelly being in service to the story. And yet, I haven’t seen a single thing about her that makes me think she is the most empathetickest wonderfullest person ever to live; she doesn’t even make the number three spot in a room with Kara J’onn and Nia. (Granted, she does beat out Alex, who used to rough up aliens to get information out of them, back when we were supposed to applaud that.)And speaking of them all sitting in a room together … down-time scenes are nice, but I feel like they work best as a break from the action, not as a place to start the episode. When that’s where the episode starts, it feels like they have been sitting around doing nothing, just trying to kill time. Now I know that it may not be that way at all — they may have just completed some major exhausting heroics that we didn’t see — but it is the show’s job to set the tone, and volunteer what they’ve been up to.I mean, it’s weird: the two most powerful beings on earth, just hanging around playing charades or whatever because they’ve got nothing better to do with their time.
I’m so excited that Supergirl cast a real life superhero along with its fictional ones. Tom Jackson has been my definition of a superhero for decades and he’s far more impressive than anyone DC ever cooked up. He’s an actor, singer, university president, and mostly a philanthropist. At 16 he was living on the streets in Winnipeg, and when he made it he started feeding all of Winnipeg’s homeless every Thanksgiving. For decades he has produced and starred in musical tours across Canada to raise money to feed and help people. The most famous of those is the Huron Carol, but he has done others as well. It was such a joy seeing him here. I have to say, though, living in the climate we do and watching Kara get disillusioned when his character turned out to be corrupt, it was bittersweet. It made me realize that he’s the one person that if I found out he was an abuser would absolutely crush me. I hate that I have those thoughts when I see someone I truly respect, but I would rather the bad people get caught.
I didn’t know who he was, so I was listening to him and going “Is he Canadian…no, wait, is he Native American (First People up there, I think)…is he both?” Yup, both.By the way, TV rule of thumb: a guy that old, who you’ve never seen before, is Canadian and is only new to US TV. Doubly so on the CW.
North of 60!
I hope they make this version of Bruno Mannheim a cannibal as he’s sometimes been in the comics. Maybe he can eat Kelly & Alex and put an end to all the Guardian/Sentinel nonsense.(As an aside, how bad could this Apocalypse event in The Flash really be if both Alex AND Ryan Choi are being called in to help stop it? Unless Alex’s assignment is “Call Kara & J’onn”, I don’t get it.)Esme is going to turn out to be some kind of thousand year old wise old alien, isn’t she? You don’t waste that kind of precociousness on just one episode!
But while Kara does some recon with her Supergirl powers this week, the key to cracking the case comes more from her journalistic side, as she and William buckle down and follow the money.
WELLLLL, we’re told they did. But we never actually saw William get the tip from his friend, or Kara go through the shell companies. Also, William appearing with a TV News setup was jarring considering how much of Kara’s work was print-based in the past. This show’s outright hatred of the practice of journalism just stings even more now that we’ve seen Superman & Lois highlight doing the work.
For all my bitching about Dreamer, I have to take the opposite tack from the reviewer on this one. She’s having dreams, we’re seeing the dreams, and they feel fairly dream-like. You gotta take the scraps they give ya with Nia.
Also, it was established within the show’s dialogue that Nia is currently stuck having a repetitive nightmare that she can’t seem to resolve (or solve) by herself, and they did show that it’s affecting her real life by depriving her of truly restful sleep (or, alternatively, maybe this particular dream is constantly dragging her back into sleep. Six of one.) That could have been built up better over the previous half of the season for sure; it would have made Nyxly’s appearance in the dream a bigger deal for the audience, and it would’ve helped sell Nia’s willingness to accept outside help… from an imp… who’s obviously very sketchy… even as her dream finally changes just enough to tell her not to do it. Leaning on the obvious bribe isn’t unreasonable, but it feels a bit cheap.
So yes, this is not being done masterfully. But we’re talking about the Most Improved Golf Score trophy from Coneheads here, not an Emmy for writing.This week in CW cast rotation jokes: Lena’s “back east” and Brainy is… I dunno, fucked off somewhere, I didn’t catch the line.
Brainy is taking Kara’s dad to Argo.
“And it’s clear that Supergirl has all the best intentions in the world when it comes to shining a light on the dangers of private for-profit prisons and the lack of humanity that’s so often granted to the incarcerated (and to kids in foster homes).”And that’s what we need – a TV show with the best intentions.
Just wondering, but what will happen to the Kara Danvers identity when Supergirl goes wherever she goes at the end of the series? Will they say that she is on a really long assignment somewhere? Will she tell everyone her secret identity?
Caroline, I could not agree more. This was the most frustrating episode of the season. First off, the “judge” giving Orlando a “pardon” at the end was exploitative. It’s probably my own bias from working in the criminal justice system coming up here, but if all you had to do to get out of your prison sentence was commit more crimes as a prisoner at a guard’s behest then there would be very few people in said prisons. In this world, the one that this “broken system” is based on, Orlando and the other prisoners would have been tried, convicted, and given extra time for the additional robberies, not to mention the fact that in the US, judges don’t issue pardons (the executive does and it takes forever) and judges can’t just decide to let someone out of a sentence because they heard they were mistreated in prison. There’s a process. It takes a while. I know it’s the Arrowverse, but if you’re going to address such a hugely systemic problem that is modeled after our real one don’t act like a speech from Supergirl, beloved as she is, is going to fix it so that, the next day, he can show up in fresh new clothes and pick up his little bro from the foster home (which also wouldn’t just let him go like that).Speaking of, if I were running a foster home full of emotional, possibly traumatized alien children who were developing destructive superpowers you’re GD right I’d have power suppression bracelets on them. It’d be criminally negligent not to. The fact that the foster mom activates it during an actual meltdown in which the kid is threatening the home is not abusive. Not by damn sight. That was ridiculous. And another Guardian. F*ck me, guys. The first one was bad enough. You know, I really hoped that at the end Kelly was going to try to take over the foster home, thus fulfilling Alex’s life-long dream of being a mother and showing that there’s more ways to help people than to be a vigilante, while also completing her emotional arc of feeling helpless without superpowers and taking their relationship to the next level. NOPE. I hoped, but I knew where they were going. We all did. So instead of being in the system, where she actually found and helped a houseful of kids and would get to use her specialized skill set, she’s going to train with Alex and be a vigilante in a city that already has 5 of them, 4 of whom have superpowers that take out most of their threats on a weekly basis. All so they could bring back what had to be the lamest (and I say that with extensive knowledge of the Arrowverse) masked hero of them all. Sigh. Rant done.
It’s a little ambiguous what was going on with the power dampening bracelet. Was the kid being in pain the direct result of it dampening their powers, or does the bracelet have a separate “painful shock” function? And did the … not sure what you call it … house leader? … activate the bracelet when the kid started using their powers, or did the kid start using their powers BECAUSE the bracelet’s pain function was being used on them?
Not too shabby for this shows standards
Is it just me or has Nia’s desire to reconnect with her mother come out of nowhere? I guess it’s because of her Phantom-vision in the Phantom Zone, but before then she seemed ok with her mother’s death. Yes, she was sad when she died, but she got over and wasn’t obsessing over it for a long time – not like she was in this episode. Now suddenly she can’t seem to do anything and being able to talk to her mother is the most important thing in the world.