"Call to Action" – Supergirl S04E06 Review

So another week, another bunch of "hate".

I still question the mixed messages of this season of Supergirl. They seem to want to have their real-world social/political commentary on one hand, but gussy it up for CW TV on the other. So the Children of Liberty are dropping leaflets and beating up people. But at least one of the "good guys" is torturing one of the bad guys for information. and Colonel Haley continues to be a weird presence: it's not clear if she's on the Chidren's side, or enforcing military discipline at the DEO when it's still not clear what the DEO is: a military organization, a FBI-like organization, or what. I'd say the creative team was trying to present a well-rounded picture of the military, but the CWVerse superhero shows aren't known for their well-rounded presentation of much of anything.

There are some parts that are just ironically amusing. Or amusingly ironic. Like Ben (Sam Witwer) pointing out that the indigenous people were wiped out by "alien" invaders after their version of Thanksgiving because everyone is sympathetic toward indigenous people, right? Again, I'm not sure if the creative team is just trying to do a variant on Shakespeare's "The Devil can cite Scripture for his purpose", or if they're trying to comment on the schizoid attitude of certain groups ("We're for immigrants, but we're for indigenous people, but immigrants wiped out American indigenous people, so... what were we talking about?"), or if the creative team is just trying to generate CW drama.

And we get Nia and her narcolepsy. And James and Lena having trust issues because secrets and lies! And Lena and Eve doing whatever they're doing with the haranel that seems to give them a way to make humans invincible. And let's not forget the dragon, because everyone loves dragons!

But what does it all mean? Glad you asked. On this week's "Call to Action", Supergirl breaks up a Children of Liberty (COL) attack on a couple in the park. She gets an assist from Manchester Black (David Ajala), who I thought was using a kind of passive-resistance sort of fighting, but I didn't see it. Must be my eyesight, although they transfer it to Braianiac-5 later. A guy gets away with his dog, and we'll find out later Manchester has captured one of the COLs, Petrocelli (Kirby Morrow).

We then get the usual number of CWVerse subplots. Lena wants James to go on a political round-table show and denounce the COL. James has a meeting with the COL scheduled at the same time, and although it's mostly unspoken, doesn't want to blow his rep with the COL. Lena isn't cool with that, and when James says it's his job, she reminds him she's his boss and orders him to do the show.

James ignores her and meets with Tom (Steve Byers), a COL with a dog who takes James on long walks through suburban neighborhoods. Every time his dog barks, Tom claims his wife is texting with a grocery list and fiddles with his phone.

Kara is sent to the show in James' place, after she and James find out Nia (Nicole Maines) claims she suffers from narcolepsy but hasn't found a doctor in National City. Kara invites Nia to her annual Thanksgiving dinner at her apartment, along with everyone else but Haley who gets an opening main star credit. Eliza (Helen Slater) is there for her once-a-year appearance and Kara thinks she may know a sleep disorder doctor. Nia lies badly to Eliza, claiming she's found a doctor.

Haley tells Alex not to dedicate DEO resource to hunting down the COL. Which again, I'm not sure if this is reasonable or not, since it's not clear if Haley is right about this being more of a FBI matter. It is, but it involves aliens. If we knew what the DEO's mission statement was... Haley also tells Supergirl she shouldn't be out doing random patrols of the city. And I don't get this, either. So... Supergirl is a DEO employee? Even if she was, I'd think what she does when she's off–the-clock is her own business. What will the DEO do if Supergirl "quits", but still fights alien invaders? However, Supergirl's relationship with the DEO, like the DEO's relationship with U.S. law enforcement, is a bit vague.

Manchester isn't having much luck with a captive Petrocelli, so after Hank invites him to the dinner party, Manchester goes there to ask Hank if he'll do mind scanning without spelling out he has Petrocelli. Hank figures non-permissive mind-scanning is violence and violation and tells Manchester he doesn't do that kind of thing.

Everyone sits down and talks around the dinner table. Eventually James talks about Tom and his dog, and Brainiac-5 finds an IR scanner in a COL mask they picked up. The group realizes the COL is planning an attack on all alien homes and they're using alien-smelling dogs to find the homes and then mark them with IR markers. When the sun sets, the COL will attack all of the marked homes.

Supergirl flies over the city and heat-visions the markers she can find. Brainiac-5 does the same thing on foot, and in a cool sequence, defeats a bunch of COL guys just by calculating the physics and dodging so that they hit each other. And... walking up a wall, which I don't get. He's Brainiac-5, not Spiderman. Even if he still has his Legion light ring, he should fly, not walk on walls.

They fail to get all the markers, and Manchester attacks one group. Another group terrorize an alien girl, and for some reason, that's never explained, she has an alien dragon in a terrarium disguised as a lizard. It grows to giant size and starts belching flame, and Supergirl takes it on. She calms it down and that's that.

In the wrap-ups, Haley admits Alex was right and the DEO are now handling the COL ASAP. She warns Alex not to disobey her orders again, and Alex tells her she'll do what she damned well pleases if it defeats the COL. Presumably, Supergirl is still working with the DEO.

James and Lena have a blowout fight where she admits she lied to him a few episodes ago and she traded with the DA to get James off the indictment hook. He gets all pissy and says if that's what love is then he wants no part of it.

Lena has been working with Eve to use the haranel (Kryptonian power source) to try and cure cancer. Using a test human heart in a glass cylinder. They discover their treatments have made the heart invincible.

What else? Jesse Rath still brings the funny, both with the aforementioned fight scene and in a bit where Alex tries to convince him to keep investigating the COL and keep it a secret from Haley. And Brainiac-5 loudly says that he will. He also hems and haws at the dinner party when Nia asks if he's stalking her.

Ben has Thanksgiving dinner with his family while secretly plotting the alien attack.

No mention of the evil Eurotrash Supergirl. There is an ad for the upcoming Elseworlds crossover where Alex imprisons Kara and doesn't know Kara is her foster sister.

That's about it. Another week in the aliens = immigrants season story arc. I'm still not sure if the creative team is trying to bring some nuance to the show. It'd be pretty boring if Ben and the COL were unrelentingly evil for the entire season. Or at least until after the mid-season finale, when they'll hopefully bring out evil Supergirl clone.

But as I said earlier, I wonder if it's nuance, or mixed messages, or just the creative team trying to keep the show interesting. You've got scenes of masked hooded figures beating up aliens. But then you have a scene with James beating up Tom while Tom says he's just trying to protect his family. You've got Haley, who runs hot and cold when we still don't know if she has a legitimate point of view.

For that matter, folks like Ben do sometimes have a seemingly legitimate point of view. As I noted, European immigrants wiped out most of the indigenous people. So don't COLs have a legitimate point of view about being wiped out by alien immigrants? Particularly since as they've noted, aliens have invaded Earth for the last three seasons. Or do we only worry about indigenous people when they ain't we?

So everything in "Call to Action" continues moving on. All the subplots--Lena, James & Lena, Manchester, Hank, Nia, Brainiac-5--moving along. And that's really the only things that are new: the COL thing is already in a rut after six episodes. Their plan this week seems a lot less sophisticated then their plan last week. I'm reminded of The Gifted, which does a much better jobs of having a sympathetic bad guy in the form of Jace Turner. He got kicked out of the SS, his wife left him, and he's preaching a coherent plan: "Let's show people that mutants are the bad guys" It helps that at least some of the mutants, like the Inner Circle, are bad guys: watch last week when Twist... twists a roomful of humans.

And they should have had Coby Bell to play Lex Luthor, rather than Jon Cryer as has been announced. Jon Cryer? Really?

Supergirl, by comparison, feels like it's trying to do the whole Marvel mutants "the public hates them" thing at a lot simpler level and substituting aliens for mutants. It's weak sauce, and I'm not sure the show or the creative team have the heft to pull it off.

But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong. What do you think?