"Blurred Lines" – Supergirl S05E03 Review

First, a disclaimer. This may be my last Supergirl review for a while. Watchmen started up tonight, and when it comes to a showdown between Supergirl and Watchmen... Watchmen wins every time for me. Unfortunately, I only have time for one review on Sunday nights. Unless Watchmen blows chunks, and somehow turns out inferior to Supergirl, Watchmen it is. I find it hard to believe it'll be worse than Supergirl: the titles of the first six Watchmen episodes are out there, and they're already far better than anything Supergirl has produced. But we'll see.

Once Watchmen ends, it'll be back to Supergirl. I don't know I'll miss much on Supergirl until the Crisis crossover starts up. The show is taking the same two steps forward/one step back approach it has in previous seasons. And so while things happen... nothing seems to happen.

Which brings us to "Blurred Lines". Three episodes into Season 5, and we're already got betrayal, soap opera antics, conspiracies, "social justice", and mediocre super-heroics.That's not to say the show is a write-off... but it's not must-see TV, either. I don't feel a compulsion to learn Lena's master plan for humanity. Or J'onn resolve the issues between himself and his brother Malefic. Or Nia and Querl patch their relationship back together.

Which brings us to Lena's master plan, and J'onn's issues with Malefic, and Nia and Querl, and a few other things. Kara has a lunch date with Lena, and tries to buy her off with Lena's favorite lunch items from around the planet. Meanwhile, Lean has discovered the secret to solving humanity's problems is her brother Lex's journals. She guilts Kara into stealing them from a military base where they're under lock and key, claiming they're the key to helping her overcome her nightmares about Lex. Kara is all-to-happy to do some breaking and entering for her bestie.

J'onn gets Nia to use her dream powers (whatever the hell they are) to probe his memories and find out what went down between him, M'yrnn (Carl Lumbly), and Malefic back in the good ole days on Mars. Nia's dream powers prove more effective than Kelly's Obsidian tech last week, and J'onn soon discovers he's the one who wiped the memory of Malefic from the Martian collective.

Nia is sick of Querl reading poetry to her. She finally decides to tell him the truth, and he walks out on her saying he's built to give 100%. Which makes him sound rather stalkerish, and pretty petty when he walks out on Nia since he said truth in a relationship is best for both parties.

Meanwhile, a spider alien is running around killing a geneticist. Then she goes after a doctor. This whole part is a muddle, since the spider alien can turn into a spider or a human, and has possessed a special forces soldier as its current host. But if it can turn into a human as Alex says at one point, why does it need a host? And what is the part of itself it leaves in the dead geneticist's heart? And why is it capable of going one-on-one with Supergirl? One gets the impression there's some kind of Spider-Man homage going on here, but the villain makes such a feeble impression it's impossible for me to tell.

In the opening scene, we see William (Staz Nair) threaten the geneticist. And then Spider-Woman (sorry, Marvel) kills the geneticist. Then she goes after some other doctor later in the episode. When Supergirl defeats her, someone superspeeds through and kills Spider-Woman. William meets with mysterious Strange Man (Larry MacDonald) and says he can't do it much longer. So is William connected to Leviathan? Three episodes in and we've seen him as a snotty journalist, a soup-kitchen worker, and an agent of something that may or may not be Leviathan.

In yet another subplot, Malefic snoops in Kelly's apartment, spots a photo of her friend Pete Andrew (Sean Astin), grabs a lot of extra mass from somewhere, and approaches Kelly in the Pete form so she'll help him get his memories back. Kelly does so, discovers Pete is Malefic, and finds she can now see through his shapeshifted forms because of a bond that springs up between her and Malefic through the Obsidian tech. Since she's a threat to Malefic, Alex has her leave town and James goes with her. Writing Mehcad Brooks out of the series. I won't miss him, but I was just getting used to Azie Tesfai as a series regular. Too bad she's leaving for the time being.

All of this is because Malefic gets his superpower back, which is the "power of inception". Which lets him mind-control anyone. He almost makes Kelly kill herself, so if he really wants to pick off J'onn's friends, he'd just get close to them one at a time and have them kill themselves. But this is The CW, so Malefic will no doubt come up with some convoluted plan, and run off at the end of each episode when he's foiled. Only to return again. And again. And again.

This week's Supergirl goes in a lot of different directions at once. We get Malefic, and William's sponsors, and whoever hired and then killed Spider-Woman, and Lena. Lena discovers at the end Lex was planning some kind of mind control scheme. So we've 1-2-3-4 major menaces, and none of them are well defined. Lena is the only one we care about right now, since we actually know the character and there are some stakes there. I want to like Malefic, but there are unexplained things like his White Martian ally last week the creative team hasn't bothered to explain, and Midnight.

Malefic is representative of the problems the show, and the comics, have had with J'onn J'onzz for decades. You've got a character who has Superman's power set. And telepathy. And shapeshifting. And invisibility. And phasing. And mind control. Malefic should be able to kill J'onn's friends in record time. But he dicks around instead, making him a secondary threat on Supergirl.

Hopefully the creative team will pull some rabbits out of their hats, but it feels like Supergirl, so far, is just building up to a mid-season finale where the real threat will emerge. Not to mention the Crisis crossover. I liked Supergirl more when the show wasn't part of the CWverse. Now they've got to cram Supergirl into the Crisis crossover with all the other CW shows.

Overall, I wish they'd drop at least one, maybe two, of the major menaces. Or confirm Leviathan is behind Spider-Woman and clarify what they're trying to do. Leviathan has been ominously mentioned since last season's finale, but does anyone know what their objectives are?

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