Supergirl: How Does She Do It?

November 25, 2015 1:50 PM - Season 1, Episode 5

While Kara is baby-sitting Cat's son, she must also protect the city from a series of bombings; Lucy Lane tries to rekindle her relationship with James.

-By the end of the episode, Kara discovers that Maxwell Lord orchestrated all of the bombings in order to test her strengths/discover her weaknesses, but she can't prove it.
-We the audience discover that Hank Henshaw has super-strength, but not the characters. Kara does briefly see his glowing red eyes, but only as she's regaining consciousness after a concussion blast.
-James and Lucy decide to give their relationship another chance.

*This episode was meant to air 4th, before Livewire, so there are continuity issues for Kara & Alex re: Mrs. Danvers' revelation about the DEO/Henshaw and Mr. Danvers, for Cat asking about Kara's Mom, and James/Lucy.*

posted by oh yeah! (5 comments total)

Another solid episode. Maybe the continuity-stickler in me is winning out over common sensitivity, but, I feel like the episode order switch wasn't that necessary (though presumably they'll put it back in the right order for the eventual dvd/streaming/syndication runs). The bomb plot in the show was almost entirely bloodless aside from poor Knox, and there wasn't a lot of disaster-porn or shots dwelling on the frightened populace. I was kind of dreading/apprehensive of this episode after the switch was announced, afraid it was going to be some kind of 'Man of Steel' level gratuitous carnage, so I was relieved that it hadn't gone all needlessly grimdark.
posted by oh yeah! at 2:23 PM on November 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

Did National City fall for the old "monorail scam"?
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 3:40 PM on November 25, 2015 [2 favorites]

I still like Cat more and more. I was surprised her son was so cute and sweet and nice and actually looked like her! I'd have him around more, that was kinda darling.

I was rolling my eyes at "hahah, you picked the monorail because you must know someone on it, Supergirl!"
posted by jenfullmoon at 5:33 PM on November 25, 2015

A feasible explanation for Supergirl taking the monorail and not the airport would be that she was capable of catching it while the FBI (ahem, DEO) was not, whereas they were perfectly capable of driving to the airport (and did). In fact, that particular point was mentioned earlier in the episode. Peter Facinelli's Diet Lex Luthor character is not really doing it for me. I mean, I know what kind of show this is so clearly Kara's sister is going to fall in love with him before he uses her to get at Supergirl, but could we do something marginally less predictable this time around?
posted by axiom at 8:51 PM on November 25, 2015

I mean, I know what kind of show this is so clearly Kara's sister is going to fall in love with him before he uses her to get at Supergirl, but could we do something marginally less predictable this time around?

I don't know, Kara has no reason to keep Alex in the dark about Maxwell's super villain monologuing, and since the show keeps telling us how strong Alex & Kara's sisterhood is, I can't see Alex choosing Maxwell over Kara. It's not like the Lex/Lois thing in 'Adventures of Lois & Clark', where Clark couldn't explain the truth about Lex to Lois without revealing his being Superman. I think Maxwell/Cat is more likely, since Kara wouldn't be able to tell Cat the truth, and she probably couldn't do it as Supergirl since she couldn't trust Cat keep it off the record.
posted by oh yeah! at 8:18 PM on November 27, 2015