"What's So Funny About Truth, Justice, and the American Way?" – Supergirl S04E13 Review

And so we come to an adaptation of a relatively recent "classic" in the Superman canon. For those not familiar with it, "What's So Funny About Truth, Justice, and the American Way?" was a 2001 story in Superman #775 by comic book writer Joe Kelly that examined Superman's relevance in the modern era. The Elite, led by Manchester Black who is a lot more obnoxious in the comics than in Supergirl, leads a group of vigilantes calling themselves the Elite. They kill terrorists and aliens, create a lot of mass destruction, and don't worry about any innocent bystanders caught in the way.

While doing all of this, Manchester goes on about how Superman's morals are outdated, and he's a hypocrite because he doesn't kill and therefore his opponents eventually escape and go on more rampages. Eventually, Superman challenges them to a fight on Io and seems to kill the rest of Manchester's team. He temporarily lobotomizes Manchester's mental powers and then says he really only rendered the other Elite members unconscious but made it look like he killed them to show what real unrestrained power looks like and how things could go wrong if Superman ever gave up his moral code and became as bad as the Elite.

Comics being comics, Manchester went off the deep-end and became a full-fledged bad guy before killing himself when he tried and failed to break Superman. The rest of the Elite have wandered around for a bit, retiring or becoming members of Justice League Elite and then fading in and out of existence with various retcon and reboots at DC.

That brings us to "What's So Funny..." on Supergirl. We're in a CW superhero show, and even though Supergirl's version of Manchester Black has been on the show since S04E04, it's just now he's putting together the Elite. They're as relatively origin-less as in the comics, but we had Menagerie introduced an episode ago. The Hat gets a brief mention as an old friend of Manchester's, but we don't find out any more about him than in the comics. Coldcast isn't a member (so far), and instead one of the Morae from a few episodes ago is a team member.

The Hat (Louis Ozawa Changchien) kills a prison guard, takes his place, and gets Manchester out of prison. They break Menagerie out of her cell and the Morae joins them. They take out Supergirl and J'onn and escape. Naming themselves the Elite, the group starts killing anti-alien types and doing social-video-type stunts. Although they don't go after the Children of Light, but rather the various governments that have been capturing and torturing aliens. Manchester eventually challenges Supergirl to a showdown. Which turns out to be a bar sit-down in Manchester, England. Manchester suggests Supergirl deal with normal crime while the Elite deal with anti-alien types. Supergirl isn't having any of that, and it turns out that the meeting is a set-up. Manchester plants the Morae on Supergirl to find out where President Baker's anti-alien-spaceship satellite is when she inevitably confronts him. And there's some mention Supergirl put a tracker on the Elite.

Oh, and President Baker (Bruce Boxleitner) has set up an anti-alien-spaceship satellite. Supergirl isn't big on this, and Supergirl goes to Alex. Alex still doesn't remember Supergirl is her foster sister Kara (and they changed the opening narration to reflect this). But apparently Supergirl and Alex have joined forced in the past. Alex tells Supergirl to do what is right, and then does it herself and goes to Devil's Tower where the satellite controls are. The Elite head there and Supergirl says she put the tracker on them during the bar. Although she knows they're going there anyway.

There's a big fight between the Elite and Supergirl, Alex, J'onn, Dreamer, and Brainiac-5. The Morae gets to the satellite controls and sets it to fire on the White House per Manchester's instructions. Alex gives Supergirl her supersuit, and Supergirl flies up to the satellite, diverts it, and then destroys it. At the end, Baker is PO'd but Supergirl claims she had no choice but to destroy the satellite. Which… she did have a choice as far as we could tell. The Elite escape and going by the previews, will return next week. I guess we're supposed to believe she lied, which rather muddles her "taking a stand against Baker" stance by not really taking a stance.

There are several subplots going on, as you can tell from the above. Baker has gone from a generally nice guy to an anti-alien type. Everyone talks about how he's not acting normal, so if he's a shapeshifting White Martian or something remains to be seen. He meets with Ben for what is initially a photo-op, which doesn't make a lot of sense. Yeah, Ben somehow got out of prison even though he threatened to blow up National City's equivalent of the Statue of Liberty. But would the President really want to publicize meeting with him? When Supergirl stands up to Baker, Baker makes Ben his new head of Alien Affairs.

Ben is having problems with a Children of Light (CoL) leader Cooper (Michael Adamthwaite, a HITG of Canadian-produced TV). Cooper calls out Ben for losing his street cred and being neutered. Which is odd, since this is the first we see of Ben hobnobbing with any politicians. After a call to his wife, Lydia, and leaving a message on her answering machine, Ben meets with the CoL leader, rages out, and beats Cooper with an Agent Liberty metal mask and then asks the others if they want to dispute his being in charge. No one does, and Ben puts his calm face back on.

Nia is training with Brainiac-5 at the Fortress of Solitude to perfect her powers. Brainiac-5 is still iffy about causing a paradox because he knows about Nia's descendant in the Legion of Super Heroes in the 31st century. Nia goes behind his back to get information on her home planet of Naltor from Kal-Ex, Supergirl's caretaker robot. Brainiac-5 takes it pretty well, likely because they can't have a man berating her. Then they fight and Brainiac-5 builds Nia gloves that harness her "dream powers", whatever that means. Brainiac-5 then loses his Legion Flight Ring to Hat, who gives it to Manchester so he can fly after Supergirl.

Manchester is trying to get J'onn to drop his pacifist ways and appears to be provoking him into becoming a more violent hero.

Finally in a subplot that doesn't seem much connected to anything else, Lena and Eve (Andrea Brooks) move into the DEO to work on Lena's experiments in giving humans superpowers. But Lena doesn't trust the government, and gets Alex on her side as a secret ally. So Lena left James because he didn't want her giving her research to the government. And this week she's... not giving her research to the government. Just the results. Oh, and James gets a lead on Lena's medical experiments and has reporter Mackenzie (Jaymee Mak) look into it.

Overall, I barely liked "What's So Funny…?" Mainly because of The Hat, a minor character who I liked in the comics but never got enough play. The character still doesn't get any background or origin. But I'm a sucker for teleporters who can pull weapons out of their hat (literally!), and pitting him against two precog types--Nia and Brainiac-5--works well. He also has just enough personality to be interesting. The Hat makes a decent partner for Manchester, which is more than I can say for Menagerie (Jessica Meraz), who seems to be along for the ride. Or the CGI Morae, who has no personality and no dialogue. Which means its presumed motivation--to get back at the U.S. government that trained it as a killer--is left to the audience's imagination rather than stated.

The episode isn't subtle about its political allegories, but then again it never has been. The CoL hate (alien) immigrants, the President is dancing with the CoL, Ben gets described as a KKK Grand Wizard, and Manchester has dialogue about how the Elite goes low while Supergirl goes high. There is a bit where he challenges Supergirl's "hope" attitude. But it's nowhere as strong as the comic book story where Superman defends living in a dream... a dream of a world with dignity, honor, and justice becoming a reality. Supergirl doesn't get to make that kind of speech (yet), primarily because she's surrounded by friends and allies. She already lives in a world with dignity, honor, and justice, at least on her side of things.

In the comic story, Superman goes up against the Elite alone and pretends to be a brutal killer. The season isn't over yet, but it's hard to imagine Supergirl doing that. For one thing, the Elite in the comics were a new bunch of "modern" superheroes, sharing the beliefs of some comic book fans--Superman is an old fuddy-duddy with outmoded morals who isn't cool, hip, violent, social-media-conscious, and "dark". Supergirl on Supergirl is relatively naïve, but she doesn't have the backlog of 50+ years of what some thought was the bland superheroism Superman had.

That also means Supergirl and J'onn are splitting Manchester's spotlight. Manchester appears to be getting J'onn to become the more violent type rather than Supergirl. He's blown of Supegirl as a possible alien retreat, but is focusing on the more pacifism-inclined J'onn? And condoning both of them for not doing what needs to be done. It gives David Harewood as J'onn something to do, but it weakens the show's focus on Supergirl. Granted, there are nine main stars on Supergirl so sometimes Supergirl tends to get lost in the shuffle on her own show. Given that, letting Manchester spend more time on J'onn and less on Supergirl lessens the focus on her even more.

For another, Manchester is a sympathetic character in Supergirl. The Morae is sympathetic. We don't know much about the Hat and Menagerie yet. The Hat doesn't appear to be an alien, so why does he even care? Yes, he didn't have any reason to care in the comics, either, but there the character was so two-dimensional we didn't bother with wondering why. Put him up against Manchester, who lost an alien girlfriend and is out for revenge, and it's pretty weak sauce. So at the same time two members of the Elite are sympathetic, two of them aren't. It's an odd dichotomy.

There are lots of little bits that are still good. Brainiac-5 has an intellectual rivalry with Kal-Ex and shows up at CatCo in a really unsubtle disguise. Nia has "the right stuff" as a superhero: she's expanding her horizons, learning about her background, and giving a pep talk to Brainiac-5. Alex appears to be slowly putting together the clues pointing toward Supergirl being Kara. Even Colonel Parker is a little more sympathetic when we find out Baker violated protocol and didn't tell her about the satellite. They could bring her onto Team Supergirl pretty easily. Whether they want to or not remains to be seen.

Overall, "What's So Funny?" was a decent episode of Supergirl. Good fight scenes, some interesting smaller bits of characterization, bits of humor here and there. Its weak spots are using the original comic book story as inspiration, and the whole political allegory which is blatant and unsubtle. I thought they were going somewhere with Ben being shoved aside by the organization he created. But nope, he's back in teeth-baring mask-beating mode by the end of the episode.

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