Here’s one of the best moments from last night’s episode of Supergirl. The fight scenes were actually pretty great, and seemed to be done in a way that actually used the show’s low VFX budget to good effect. This moment felt like it borrowed from Chronicle, in a great way. Read on for more of the best and worst moments from “Hostile Takeover.” Spoilers ahead…
Worst: All of the stuff involving the Kryptonian villains. For one thing, the Kryptonians talk in this weirdly stilted fashion that doesn’t quite work. “Have you ever known me to break my promises…. husband???” (How many times a day do you address your husband or wife by their title like that?)
For another, we haven’t seen much of General Astra and the rest of them since the show’s second episode, and there’s a lot of groundwork the show has done on the rest of its set-up that’s sadly missing here. We’re supposed to care about the childhood relationship between Kara and Aunt Astra, and we just don’t. (Apparently Kara got Aunt Astra busted, because Astra came to visit Kara and then Kara’s mom arrested her.)
Also! The thing where Astra is an eco-terrorist, who tried to prevent the destruction of Krypton and is now trying to prevent humans from destroying our own planet, is just so, so heavy-handed. Ugh. It’s like, yes, fracking will cause the Earth’s core to explode. Sure. Whatever. Oh, and this episode makes excessive, pointless use of the “villain got caught on purpose
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Best: Supergirl loses it at her holographic mom. I loved this moment. Any time Supergirl’s grief and rage at being almost the last survivor of her species, sent alone to a brand new planet, comes out, the show is on fire. The touch where she just lets loose with her heat vision is beautiful.
Worst: Cat Grant’s suddenly got her own child that she abandoned. This felt a little too random, and was clearly thrown in just as a counterpart to Kara’s own feelings that her mother abandoned her. Not every single episode needs to have “A” and “B” plots that dovetail quite so neatly. Of course, the show may actually bring in Adam as a character at some point, and then maybe I’ll feel differently. But for now, it felt cheap, and random.
Best: Everything else about the “Cat Grant gets hacked” storyline. Including the walking embodiment of male privilege getting pwned. And all of the funny stuff about what’s in Cat’s leaked emails, including her asking Idris Elba out on a date. And her getting dared by Anderson Cooper to go on some reality TV show. Cat Grant is pretty much the best character on this show, in general.
Worst: James Olson tells Winn to go for it with Kara. First of all, this comes right after Winn has set James up to go get caught breaking into the male privilege guy’s office, to eliminate a potential romantic rival. And Winn has been a total jerkhead to James in general, because he saw Winn and James hugging. But even though Kara has been pretty clear that she’s got no interest in Winn, James still tells Winn it’s better to love and lose, blah blah blah. Maybe James just wants to see Winn crash and burn. I dunno. The whole “Winn has a crush on Kara” subplot is probably the show’s achilles heel right now though.
Best: Cat unmasks Kara. It’s a weirdly sexy moment, in which Cat confronts her assistant with all the evidence that she’s Supergirl, and they kind of flirt. Forget the Winn-Kara-James love triangle, I am now 1000 percent a Cat/Kara shipper, now and forever.
Best: The final fight scene. Although Martian Manhunter is being awfully casual about revealing to random strangers that he’s not human, just a few days after he almost died to keep his secret. But now that we, the viewers, know, I guess it no longer matters. But I love Max Lord hitting the Kryptonians with his awesome alien-fighting weaponry, then pausing to pose and preen instead of pressing the advantage. Oh, and that’s Astra’s husband, a newly introduced sidekick who is apparently replacing the sadly missing Faran Tahir.
Charlie Jane Anders is the author of All The Birds in the Sky, coming in January from Tor Books. Follow her on Twitter, and email her.