​"Rather the Fallen Angel" – Supergirl S04E07 Review

"I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel." – Frankenstein

No, I have no idea what a quote from the Creature has to do with anything that happened in this week's episode of Supergirl. But then again, I'm not sure what anything had to do with much of anything in this week's episode. So the quote is a perfect example of the muddle we got.

Let's recap, shall we? James is still continuing with his boneheaded plan to "infiltrate" the Children of Liberty by pretending to be one of them. Sorta. Maybe. It only seems to work because Agent Liberty is just as boneheaded. AL seems to believe James will eventually embrace their cause. And then proceeds to hold Tom (Steve Byers) hostage to have James do what he wants. So I'm not quite clear if AL is serious about recruiting James or if he just doesn't care.

Tom tries to help James escape, but they both get captured, and as noted, Tom gets held hostage to force James to blow up the Statue of Liberty on live TV, or online, or something. James gives a moving speech about how his reputation means nothing, which would sound a lot more impressive if it wasn't coming from the most thinly-drawn character on the show.

Meanwhile, Supergirl ends up teaming with Manchester Black (David Ajala) after he almost gets killed breaking up a COL raid on a fission rod factory. They end up tracing the COL to the island near the Statue of Liberty where the COL has their base. When Manchester gets a bit too violent, Supergirl has second thoughts about working with him. Hank assures her Manchester is okay, and she goes with him to the island. But the island has de-powering mechanisms and Manchester has secretly sabotaged the yellow-sun grenade Supergirl is going to use to keep her powers.

The COL capture her, and Manchester reveals he offered up Supergirl in return for a meeting with AL. However, it turns out "AL" is an imposter, and Ben is in his studio preparing to send the video of James out worldwide. The COL guys leave Supergirl in the basement of the Statue of Liberty, but she manages to alert James. He beats up on the COL people with him, and Tom helps. Manchester realizes he's not meeting the real AL, gets the real AL's real name from the imposter, and then goes out and destroys the de-powering pylons since AL didn't keep his end of the deal. Supergirl breaks free and gets rid of the bomb the COL have planted in the Statue.

Manchester slips away and at the end and goes to the factory Ben's father owned.

In a seemingly unrelated plot, Lena begins her trials with the Herun-El serum. This leads to a lot of long-winded conversations with the test subject, 0331 (Michael Johnston). Or Adam, as we'll later find out his name is. He feels he's a worthless waste of a human being who needed a kidney from his brother, but the brother died on the operating table and Adam blames himself. This leads to a confession where Lena explains when she was four, she watched her biological mother drown and did nothing. And so she thinks she's just as evil as the Luthors who adopted her.

Adam tells her she's not bad, and accepts that he isn’t either, and begs Lena to perform the trials on him so he can have a meaningful life. Despite there only being a 15% chance of death, he dies. James has a new grasp of duality from seeing Manchester being both good and bad, figures he can accept Lena, and goes to see her. She gives him the cold shoulder and he leaves.

I guess Adam is the basis for the Adam reference in the Frankenstein quote. And he does have super-powers for three minutes until he dies. But other than a vague connection to laboratories and experimentation, I have no idea what Supergirl's Adam has to do with Frankenstein's Adam/fallen angel quote.

Before he goes to the steel plant, Manchester slaps a device on Hank that lets him experience everything Manchester has been through to either immobilize Hank so Manchester can make his escape, or to make Hank feel some of what he feels, or both, or something else, I don't know.

Like I said, the whole thing is a bit of a muddle. I don't know if Agent Liberty is actually trying to recruit James, or just extorting him into blowing up the Statue. I don't know what James' plan is. He either doesn't really intend to join them, or he's playing a long game by seeming to be reluctant to join them but eventually coming around.

I don't know what we're supposed to get out of the whole Lena/Adam thing. We find out a very little bit about Lena's background. But while Adam seems to be a mildly interesting and "realistic" character, he's dead by the end of the episode. So... what?

Manchester is supposed to be a shady shades-of-grey character: I get that. But I still don't know what his master plan is. Get vengeance on Agent Liberty for killing Fiona, and is willing to throw everything away to get it? But at the end of the day he's still a guy who has embraced brutality to fight brutality. There's no lesson out of this so far. Maybe at the end of the day, he'll realize he's thrown it all away and gained nothing. But right now it's the black guy fighting the white "racist" guys.

Which is another point that either puzzles or bothers me. If the Children of Liberty are some analogy for modern-day American racism, the fact they're all portrayed by/as scruffy white guys doesn't help. Ben is preaching human exceptionalism, but other than his attempts to recruit James, he's only got white guys on his side carrying tiki torches, going by last week. So are we supposed to think Ben and the COL are white supremacists? If not, why not recruit some non-whites as background extras? But if so, it's a club of an analogy used to beat the audience so hard it's giving me a concussion.

If the show is trying to comment on white supremacy, it's not doing as good a job as it apparently thinks. It seems to be going for the easy route ("Only white survivalist-types are members of the COL!") but mixing it in with all kinds of mixed messages. Like last year, when it had a Hispanic immigrant as a same-sex hater. Yes, it presents an arguably more balanced viewpoint, and argues that whites aren't the only ones who hate same-sex couples, but I don't think that's what they're trying to do. The creative team is so imbalanced in its "balance" the whiplash is giving me windburn.

Overall, "Rather the Fallen Angel" seemed like a placeholder while we wait for the big Elseworlds crossover starting on December 9. There were no big action set pieces, and all we found out about the main characters is what we learned about Lena. Colonel Parker and Nia didn't show up at all. Jesse Rath and Chyler Leigh had token presences, and without the comedy of either Rath or the long-gone Jeremy Jordan, it's pretty dull going. We had a little bit of a joke with Kara's (lack of) cooking skills, but that was about it.

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