SUPERGIRL Review 4.20: “Will The Real Miss Tessmacher Please Stand Up?”
This post contains spoilers for Supergirl.
Check out our last review here.
We’re two episodes from the season finale of Supergirl and lines have officially been drawn in the sand. The tension between humans and aliens reaches critical mass after an alien murders Ben Lockwood’s wife. Definitely not the right thing to do, but you watch the person you love most be dragged off for no reason other than where they were born and then tell me how you respond.
Motherhood is important, as is Alex’s journey to try and become a mom while living as a single lesbian with an insanely demanding job. With that said, spending a quarter of an episode that’s leading into your season’s endgame on that plot seems… odd. Her story is important, but flashing over to it while you’ve got Ben Lockwood about to start a war on the streets of National City and Kara and Lena discovering Lex’s plan in Kasnia just makes it feel cheap. It makes a story you want to care about feel like a chore because more interesting things are happening elsewhere.
With that said, definitely on team Kelly and Alex now that they’ve had this journey. And Alex’s story does tie into the rest of the episode in a strange, roundabout way. When they’re waiting to find out about the baby, Alex says that Kara would tell her that there’s never going to be a right time. Kara needs to listen to her own theoretical advice and pull off the bandaid with Lena.
Kara’s secret identity is her own. I fully supported her not telling Lena while that was her decision. Now that we’ve seen that definitively change, I find myself with little patience for the wishy-washiness of it all. Lena will inevitably find out in the worst way possible because Kara dragged her feet when she should have been up front as soon as she made the decision. There are so many organic ways to drum up drama between characters. Here’s hoping we don’t see them choose the lazy option.
The secret identity nonsense aside, the two have an extremely productive trip to Kasnia despite Miss Tessmacher’s best efforts. All of Lex’s Red Daughter secrets are revealed, up to and including his source within the White House. Kara Danvers, being the upstanding citizen that she is, takes this information directly to the President. She gets black bagged for her efforts. Wonder how scared of Cat Grant the President’ll be if she finds out he’s kidnapped her protégé.
And then there was Ben Lockwood. Last week I was concerned that his son would backtrack on his limited progress because an alien offed his mother. Turns out the kid has his anger pointed in the right direction after all. Lockwood raids an alien shelter when they find the woman who killed his wife. After he gets the perpetrator, he orders the DEO agents to round up the rest in the shelter for “enhanced interrogation”, and that’s all that Brainy can stand.
The alien stands between Lockwood and the DEO to protect his friends, giving an impassioned speech about doing what’s right rather than following orders. Many of the DEO agents choose to lower their weapons, but Lockwood decides to dose up on hironel so he can take on James. So, now we’ve got a doped up racist agent of the government ready to rid the Earth of the “cockroaches” by any means necessary. Great.
Amped up Lockwood is, without a doubt, an incredible threat. Good thing the Martian Manhunter had time for a grand entrance. Supergirl has done a great job illustrating that neither empathy or force on their own can win wars. Kara’s compassion for the Red Daughter will be critical in the finale, but that doesn’t mean a fight isn’t going to break out. J’onn’s desire for pacificism is important, but his realization that sometimes you can’t meditate your way out of a war matters more.
Next week we’ll see Supergirl come face to face with her doppelganger. It makes tonight’s kidnapping pretty anticlimactic, but who really thought they’d be able to hold her for more than a few minutes anyhow? You know what to do if you had thoughts on this week’s episode!
