"Fallout" – Supergirl S04E02 Review

I've said it before, somewhere or another, and I'll say it again. I don't like people beating me over the head, no matter how much I agree with them.

That brings us to tonight's Supergirl, "Fallout", and Supergirl in general on and off last year, and the first two episodes of the current season. Part of it is that the whole analogy is so strained that… well, they're trying too hard. For instance, Marsdin (Lynda Carter) says she could fight impeachment but it would cause chaos. Umm, if she's an alien she is in violation of the Constitution and that warrants impeachment. The fact she's a nice alien doesn't make a difference.

For another example, a few minutes later Alex says the DEO's job is to protect all citizens, including Marsdin. Unless Marsdin somehow underwent naturalization and kept it a secret, and then successfully ran for President, she's not a citizen. The DEO is only a U.S. organization, right? They have no authority to do anything with aliens outside of the U.S, or deal with them except how they interact with U.S. citizens.

But I suppose that's what you get when TV superhero writers tackle complex social and political issues while trying to create TV "drama" and intrigue and romance at the same time. And a political expert writing an episode of Supegirl would probably result in a very boring episode. So you gets what you pay for.

On to the recap. After it was revealed that Marsdin was an alien (nobody seems concerned it might have been trick photography), the U.S. is in an uproar. Marsdin isn't going to fight impeachment even though she violated the Constitution, which is awfully generous of her. She doesn't seem to have any remorse that she lied directly or indirectly to millions of people. As someone notes, Marsdin swore an oath. Kind of hard to preserve and defend the Constitution of the U.S. when you're in the process of violating it.

Supergirl breaks up a protest outside the White House that turns violent, catches a flagpole, and dramatically plants it in the middle of the street. Then onto the main episode. The DEO agents are arguing among themselves about the Marsdin revelation. Which boils down to one guy, Jensen (Anthony Konechny) making the anti-Marsdin argument. Yes, there's only one nameless DEO agent directly arguing with him. But as we'll find out, Alex, Brainiac-5, and Hank are all on the pro-Marsdin argument. Or at least the pro-"DEO is intended to also protect good aliens" argument.

Which raises the question of what the heck the DEO's mandate is. I thought it was to protect the U.S. against aliens, too. That doesn't necessarily equate to all aliens, sure. And the DEO director until recently was an alien, albeit in disguise. But the DEO reminds me of the Phoenix Foundation over on nu-MacGyver: their mandate seems to be whatever the heck the plot requires. And the plot from week to weak seems to require them to be everything.

For that matter, why are there so many alien immigrants on Earth? You get the impression there's some kind of big intergalactic disaster or tyrannical force that they've all fled to Earth to escape. It also seems to have been going on for a while: we'll later meet a reporter who is an alien. Unless he has some kind of weird pro-reporter alien power, that means he's been on Earth long enough to get through college and get a journalism degree. So the whole immigration thing has been going on for quite a while.

What I'd like to see in real life is Trump revealing that he's an alien. We're all thinking it, right? :) The number of whiplash cases throughout the world would be off the charts. "But when we said that aliens hiding among us is good, we weren't talking about Trump!"

Onto the main storylines. Kara goes to L-Corp to get information from Lena on Mercy. Who used to be Lex Luthor's head of security and "frequent dinner guest" (aye aye, nudge nudge, wink wink), and like an older sister to Lena. Mercy has killed an L-Corp programmer and taken his laptop, and uses it to hack the L-Corp mainframe and shut down Brainiac-5's image inducer. Lena stops Mercy's attempt and restores the image inducer programming before any other aliens are revealed, and turns Brainy's image inducer back on.

Mercy then comes after Lena. Kara is stuck with Lena and can't get away to change into Supergirl. Which results in some amusing hijinks as she "accidentally" does stuff like sneezing and tripping while secretly using her powers. Eve (Andrea Brooks) demonstrates some unexpected skills with electronics, which she claims she picked up working as a bunny at a theme park.

Eventually Lena and Kara get to the basement. Lex's exo-suit is there, and Mercy is after a power sleeve from the suit. Lena gets the other power sleeve, the two of them fight it out, and Kara manages to slip away, change into Supergirl, and defeat Mercy.

Speaking of Brainiac-5, he's ordering pizza when his image inducer fails. Nia is there looking for an espresso. Because you go to a pizza place when you're looking for espresso. The owner Massimo (HITG Fulvio Cecere) and the staff see Brainy for who he really is and grab some baseball bats. Nia gets in Massimo's face and tells him to serve the damn pizzas. Massimo stiffs Brainy, since Brainy ordered a dozen pizzas but walks around in the next couple of scenes carrying only five boxes.

Brainy thinks Nia Nal looks familiar. And if anyone else knows who Nura Nal is in the comics, you'd understand why. Although Nura is from an alien planet and Nia presumably isn't, so I'm not sure what the connection is supposed to be.

Brainiac-5 is rattled by the whole confrontation and his probability calculations are off. And credit to Jesse Rath: he's one of the best things about the show right now. He's no Jeremy Jordan, but Rath provides a different kind of humor while providing chemistry with fellow show star Chyler Leigh. Alex assures Brainy she's got his back and he rather moan-inducingly says all aliens deserve an Alex Danvers and she's a true friend. Ahhhhh...

The Nia bit leads to a scene where James is on the fence about writing an anti anti-alien editorial. He claims to be for balanced reporting, which is strange because when Cat Grant was in charge, CatCo never seemed to be that concerned about balance. New boss, different than the old boss, I guess. Nia tells him that he should do the editorial because she's transgender and understands hate and prejudice because of how someone looks. And it's about justice, not balance. James does the editorial. He even gets a speech to the CatCo staff after one employee pranks an alien employee, saying CatCo won't tolerate hate crimes.

It does seem odd to have a transgender lecturing a black man about prejudice. Such are the weird social/racial/gender politics of Supergirl.

Hank looks for Fiona, the alien from last week that Agent Liberty killed. The Martian Manhunter (isn't that a sexist name?) fails to hunt down Fiona. Maybe because she's a woman and he's a Manhunter. Hank does find that she has a photo of a local beat cop, Petrocelli. Petrocelli doesn't know where Fiona is. Petrocelli doesn't know anything about the local anti-alien rally either. Hank somehow finds it anyway and we hear Agent Liberty giving a speech about how aliens and their super-powers are putting "real" Americans out of their jobs and everyone cheering even though Agent Liberty isn't that great a speech-maker. He says, "If I'm being honest..." at one point, which is the kind of tell a speechmaker should never use. It also seems to me people wouldn't trust a masked guy so readily.

With Marsdin resigning, VP Baker (Bruce Boxleitner) steps in to assume the position. And at least as of tonight, they broke my expectations and made Baker a seemingly nice guy. Baker chats with Supergirl, admits he had some concerns she wouldn’t support him like she did Marsdin, Supergirl adjust his tie, and he goes off to his swearing-in ceremony.

Meanwhile, the DEO captures Mercy and already had Otis. The brother and sister convince Agent Jensen to turn traitor and get them out. They have a dispersal device and a vial of kryptonite, and spread the kryptonite in aerosol form into the atmosphere to bring down Supergirl.

That brings us to the end of another Supergirl episode. Like I said, it's kind of a weird one. There are weird messages, like the whole "I'm a transgender and you a black man should be against prejudice" thing. The creative team seems to be doing an anti anti-immigrant message by equating aliens with immigrants. But they're not, and they're having to twist plotlines into so many knots--aliens have super-powers and are taking humans' jobs away, Mexican immigrants... don't have super-powers; the show's President is pro-alien immigrant, the real-life President is anti-illegal immigrant--that it's hard to determine if they're really trying to send a message, or if it's sloppy writing, or if they're shooting and missing.

The basic story beats were okay, and the performances by the main stars and guest stars were okay. David Harewood still seems to be a bit adrift since Hank has retired as DEO director. Like tonight: he finds the rally just because... he happens to find the rally. There's no connection I could tell between anything he's investigating and the rally.

So okay episode, dragged down a bit by the messaging. I feel like they're hitting me over the head with their messages. I don’t care if I agree with a message or not, if the messenger is beating me over the head. I think the creative team is taking "story beat" a bit too literally.

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