"Suspicious Minds" – Supergirl S04E10 Review

Well, "Suspicious Minds" had a game-changer. Sorta. Maybe. Kinda. By which I mean there was an upheaval or such in the main cast status quo. *spoiler alert* Alex doesn't know Kara is Supergirl. That was a basis for the show when it first came out. As Kara notes, she became Supergirl to save Alex, back in the glory days of four years ago.

One gets the impression Alex will get her memory back in relatively short notice. Because Supergirl isn't big on changing the status quo. In fact, it's kind of surprising how many people know Supergirl is Kara. Yeah, everyone in the main cast except Lena, Ben, and Haley know. And I suppose if I think about it hard enough and check some wikis, I could figure out why a handful of DEO agents know. Overall, it's not really much of a secret identity, is it? Kara flies around without a mask and they barely, if ever, touch on the comic book explanations, either that she superspeed blurs her face or people assume she doesn't have a secret identity because why would she need one?

Although the latter doesn't hold up anyway, since Haley figures Supergirl has a secret identity and goes looking for it. But on with the episode that shows us Haley's hunt for Supergirl's secret ID.

The episode starts with another pointless little opener where we check in with the Supergirl clone. Doing not much of anything training with Kasnian missiles and fighters and tanks. It's kinda cute how the creative team keeps reminding us there's an evil Kasnian Supergirl duplicate out there. Since they introduced it as last season's cliffhanger and have basically done nothing with the idea in the subsequent ten episodes of this season. When she eventually takes center stage, it will be hard to take the clone seriously as a threat given she's had so little screen time doing so little.

Then we get into the meat of the episode, which is Kara is spending some quality time with Lena, but leaves when she intercepts a military transmission from a Colonel McCallister. Does Kara just normally listen for this kind of stuff? And how does she pick it out of the thousands of electromagnetic transmission and/or voices that blanket the world?

Supergirl flies off to some ship floating in Vancouver Harbor, sees McCallister get yanked overboard by a shimmering something, and tosses a bomb into the air before it can blow up the freighter. Mean ole Colonel Haley (April Parker-Jones) shows up with Alex and Brainiac-5 in tow. There's a couple of references to B5's real name of "Agent Dox", but I'd think Haley would be wondering where the heck he came from. He actually uses an image inducer and all: is she big on aliens infiltrating the DEO?

Haley tells Supergirl she no longer works for the DEO and to get out. SG does so, but Haley wants to have a way to control her and figures someone in the DEO knows SG's secret ID. And as I noted, a handful of agents apparently do. Alex has a pep talk with them and they all promise not to rat Kara out.

Meanwhile, B5 goes to Hank, who is now working as a PI under the name John Jones. And everyone seems to call him John, now. So I guess he's officially John Jones. Or J'onn J'onzz. Jesse Rath is still the best part of the show, as he not-so-subtlety tries to pay John to help Kara. John agrees to do so for free, and B5 leaves a big wad of cash anyway and claims it isn't his.

Kara and John work together and discover McCallister was running a secret government Morae alien project along with General Alfonso Tan (Russell Wong) and Haley. They talk to Tan, who in one of those instances of TV timing, is a target for assassination by the Morae, aliens that can turn invisible, although SG can see them as a shimmer with her x-ray vision. One Morae kills Tan and escapes, after a very impressive sequence where John cold-cocks a car and sends it flipping over. SG manages to reveal the other with her super-breath and Alex shoots it. When they mention Haley's name, the Morae kills itself rather than go back. This is all somewhat confusing, since the Morae is partially invisible, then becomes visible, then disappears from even SG's x-ray vision. Its kill-itself death is equally confusing: it looks like something else kills it at first.

Alex confronts Haley, after one of the agents (Donna Benedicto) squealed like a piggie and tells Haley about Kara. Haley admits she trained the Morae as assassins and yes, reality is messy sometimes. Alex isn't happy with this and wants to quit, but Kara convinces her to stay and fight the DEO from the inside. The Morae come for Haley at the DEO, because they found her address in the yellow pages or something like they did with Tan and McCallister. Brainiac-5 creates some counter measures and they manage to kill one Morae since Haley has ordered the agents to use real guns instead of stun guns. The other one gets Haley alone and prepares to kill her. But Supergirl saves Haley and imprisons the Morae. Haley goes all "Work for the government or we'll out you to the world" on SG, and Alex punches her unconscious.

And the game-changing part starts. The Danver sisters calls in Hank to mind-wipe Haley of any of her knowledge of Kara and to become an incompetent super-villain who is afraid of children. Oh, wait, that's Dr. Light in Identity Crisis. The mind-wiping works but Haley has a truth-detecting alien. Do DEO agents have a union? So the Danver sisters have Hank wipe the memories of all of the DEO agents, including the one who broke. To keep Kara's identity safe, they also have to wipe Alex's mind. That's the game-changing part, because we have a major cast member who no longer knows Kara is Supergirl. And can't know Kara is Supergirl. But still remembers Kara is her (foster?) sister.

This all sounds rather complicated, because we've had 3+ years of Alex on DEO cases, a lot of which involved her knowing Kara was SG. I suspect it will be glossed over or ignored, but you'd think it would take more than just a quickie mind-wipe by John. But rather hours of long memory-editing and removing and rewriting.

Such a mind-wipe would also suggest Alex becomes a lot more sympathetic toward Haley, since Alex no longer has any reason to be pro-alien. There's John, her former boss, and he was on Earth to protect Kara. So he'd either have to mind-wipe Alex's memories of him (what if Haley asks Alex if she knows any other aliens?), or alter her memories of why he was hanging around, or something. Like I said, it all sounds a lot more complex than the "John can mind-wipe everyone, they get a funny look on their face, and he makes it all better" two-minute approach they take here.

Judging from the previews for next week, Alex will start to get her memories back in short order and the mind-wipe has side effects because of how extensive the memories were. So maybe they'll cover the above. I doubt it, though.

In the side plots, the best one of the two is B5 trying to convince Nia she should become a superhero. Jesse Rath has all kinds of moments in this episode, including awkwardly asking Nia to dinner. Which when they arrive at a restaurant he calls a meeting. Nia is disappointed by this, and B5 realizes he stepped in it. He persists with trying to convince Nia to become a superhero, talking about his own dark past. Which I think is new since it makes him out to be evil before he became a Legionnaire/superhero, which wasn't a comic book thing that I recall in any of the various Legion retcons. B5 gives Nia a binder with costume ideas and code name suggestions, and at the end we see Nia looking at it contemplatively.

The other lesser subplot is that after Kara suggests Lena talk to James, Lena talks to James. He admits he's come to understand her position after trying to get in good with the Children of Liberty. Lena then tells him about her giving-superpowers-to-humans experiments, and James says he'll support her but has that ruh-roh look on his face that suggests that he has concerns about it.

I'm not sure what his concerns are, other than the "Yeah, Lena is a Luthor" attitude that a lot of people seem to have. Presumably a lot of people floating around have superpowers. Granted, we don't know how many of them exist on the Supergirl Earth. But there's already a ton of aliens with superpowers. Scientist-types who can give people superpowers is a pretty standard trope in the comic books. I could see it being a thread as far as someone like Agent Liberty (an absent-from this-episode Sam Witwer) stealing the process. But it's hard to believe people are that worried about Lena creating the process. So far it doesn't seem to be worth the concern they're building up over Lena having the process and eventually perfecting it.

It also makes James out to be a bit of a liar, since he doesn't support Lena or even seem willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. I could see some of the main characters distrusting her, but her lover and soulmate?

Overall, "Suspicious Minds" was a decent come back after the holiday hiatus. Other than Haley, the plots introduced in the first nine episodes get a mention (Agent Liberty, the Children of Liberty, Elseworlds, the Lena/James rift, the clone non-saga), but we're off to new stuff like Nia becoming a superhero, Alex forgetting Kara is SG, and the new SG/American government relationship. They'll no doubt circle around to the earlier plots eventually--Sam Witwer is still in the credits, so Agent Liberty is not far behind—but overall "Suspicious Minds" was a soft reboot of season 4. That could change, and probably will, as they weave the earlier subplots into the newer stuff.

And as my SO (call her "Columbo's Wife" if you prefer :) The real one, not Kate Mulgrew) noted, having the power of prophetic dreams doesn't exactly make one a superhero. Still, it was refreshing to not have them hit the alt-right angle they hit in the first nine episodes, thanks to the CoL and Agent Liberty being out of the picture for the moment. They'll no doubt return to hitting on the real world for stories torn from the headlines, because it's Supergirl and The CW. But until then, we can bask in slightly more... comic book-type plots and CW soap opera stuff.

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