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“Not Kansas” brings us a frustrating mess of an episode. Kara Zor El chooses to leave her life on Earth and return to her Kryptonian home of Argo. Reign is temporarily defeated and the DEO deals with a lone gunman on the loose with an assault weapon. And a million other things happened. Almost literally…
Return to Argo
Supergirl, Mon-El, and the quick chemistry of Lena subdue Reign and pull Sam out of Reign. Supergirl asks Lena if she can synthesize more of the stone of Yuda Kal so her Kryptonian city of Argo can continue to thrive. Lena agrees and Kara begins plans to leave Earth and return to Argo. She and Alex talk about always being there for each other, Kara has a going away party from Lena and Supergirl has a send off from the DEO. She and Mon-El are about to say goodbye and instead she invites him to come to Argo. He can pull a gravity doohickey thing and contact the Legion to come and get him. Serena and Alura greet the two upon their return to Argo and we start to settle into Kara’s new chapter. Kara meets up with her childhood friend Thara Ak-Var who is now chief of police and Kara begins to have accidents happen around her that keep her very suspicious about things in Argo. In the midst of this Mon-El decides to unload all of his feelings about her and she responds in kind because she talks about her dream from the very beginning of Season 3 where he is with her. [If this season turns out to be a dream there’s going to be some serious “ain’t having it” around here – just sayin.] It turns out that Serena has a whole witch following and one of them monologues their goals and objectives. We see Serena coming to Thomas Coville praying over the old Fortress of Certitude. It rises up from the ashes, Sam robots back into her WorldKiller responses and we’re basically right back where we started before.
[Grunting] Guns. Bad.
James is Guardian-ing it up…on the basketball court…by himself with Winn in his ear. They are finally alerted to a bank robbery and as Guardian responds the thief opens up on the responding police officer and James with an assault style weapon. After DEO study Winn deduces that the weapon used comes from the manufacturer that produces weapons for the DEO. J’onn and James go the manufacturer who is empathetic to the fact that an assault weapon was used inappropriately but he’s not willing to say that they shouldn’t be sold. J’onn puts the pressure on to find out the retailers that sell these to citizens. The DEO begins compiling a list of possible folks that have bought these weapons and James picks out his assailant. 
They do a background check and find out he has a grudge against his former employer and J’onn and Guardian go to confront him. J’onn talks him down from using the weapon. J’onn also decides and announces to his DEO forces that effective immediately he is going to replace guns with other scientific weapons that Winn will design. He understands if his agents will not be on board with this decision and some walk away from the job. Oh, Lena and James disagree on citizens being armed. She’s packing and he’s against it.
Everything Else and the Kitchen Sink
*M’yrnn announces that he is near death and that he and J’onn must perform a ritual to pass on his memories to J’onn. J’onn is understandably disturbed and in denial at first; but, eventually agrees.
*Lena figures out the formula for what will surely be black kryptonite.
*Guardian is playing basketball in broad daylight by himself. It’s weird.
*Serena and her Sisters of the Some Such steal Kara’s ship to get back to Earth.
*Thara Ak-Var and her husband are having first-Argo problems with the construction of their gazebo. Seriously.
*Sam and Ruby are reunited.
*Alex decides to put her drink down and looks into the National City adoption agency.
Closing Thoughts
This episode was a hot mess. The sheer lack of emotion from nearly everyone associated with Argo is difficult to handle. Kara is reunited with her mother, her childhood friend, and her society. Of course it’s going to be awkward. This was stilted. Even her and Mon-El’s coming together on their feelings seemed forced for the sake of moving the story along. And we have another social justice issue of the week handled with as much finesse as using a sledgehammer on a thumb tack. J’onn’s decision to take the guns from the DEO with wandering and sometimes dangerous aliens with who knows what powers is ridiculous. The writers decide to undo everything that has been done to Sam/Reign and bring things back to where they were – except that Serena and company are now on Earth to fight alongside Reign and Coville. Why? What does Serena have against Earth and its inhabitants? Does she want a cleansed world for her and the Argo-ite’s? Does she want to rule on high? If we’ve established that Reign can be bested by her own logic and not every human being needs to be wiped away then where are we going and again, why? Yes, we’re two episodes from the end of the season but there was so much crammed into this episode that the storytelling got lost and jumbled and, frankly, just bad. We’ve had episodes of rich character development and storytelling that is compelling. This return to Argo for Supergirl should be a momentous occasion and this feels like a parenthetical addition to an already crowded storytelling plate. It’s a shame.
News:
“Make It Reign” Season 3 Episode 22, Monday June 11 at 8e/7c on the CW
Supergirl learns the true depth of Serena’s nefarious plans for Earth. Supergirl, Mon-El and Alura must devise a plan to stop her before Serena gets to Earth. J’onn prepares to say goodbye to his father.
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Geoff I’m going to codename you Subbie now.
“as much finesse as using a sledgehammer on a thumb tack.” – okay this line totally wins for the week!
Things I liked/didn’t like about the gun plot…
Likes – they addressed it which is fair, they had Lena bring a fair counterpoint to the debate, and they debated the classification of a weapon like we saw used – I agree it’s only good for hunting people because if you need it to take down something you’ve likely messed up the meat which makes it impractical to use as a hunting to gather food weapon.
Dislike – it is the most heavy handed plot ever on the series I feel when it comes to social commentary…they’ve done clearly social topics before which I don’t mind but this was just so heavy handed, Lena didn’t really get to explain her side which felt off, James basically ran a DEO op which took from the actual DEO agent characters in the series, and J’onn choice to go non lethal with defenses felt super fast because they’ve been in shootouts before yet haven’t changed their tactics so why now and also it’s arguably naive to ditch all lethal weapons because some bad guys can only be taken down with them – also we’re dealing with multiple species on this series so what’s non lethal to one may be lethal to another and how do they explain that?
This plot should have been it’s own episode or at least half the episode but with so much going on we only really got the highlights version which didn’t go over well like other topics have in the past.
J’onn’s powers are basically non existent on the series sadly.
Mon can be left on Earth without Kara; he can pack his cape and get ready to go home – I get they couldn’t get Tyler for it to be Clark with Kara but still the forcing of Mon into places continues to infuriate me!
The Argo scenes are just such filler to me currently, they should be emotional but instead of reuniting with her previously believed dead mother and telling her all about her life and Alura debating her choice to send Kara away because Kara is so jumpy due to heroing we get Kara and Mon in a garden with a very borderline problematic moment just to push that plot and it’s the biggest why of all I feel. I know some fans love it but Mon/Kara just feels so rushed and forced to me I just can’t understand the desire to continue the relationship beyond friendship; if they have Kara cheat that will be a blow to me the show can never undo and even if they had S1 quality for 6 more years, I want this show to go as long as “Arrow” at least but ideally more as long as they do the characters right, I would always say that is a knock against the show because Kara Zor-El Danvers is not a cheater.
I don’t mind Alex going the adoption route but if she’s going that route she has time to get a kid so why not find someone to raise the kid with as single parenting is hard! I don’t know if they’re setting this up in order to do a commentary on what it’s like for singles, people in arguably dangerous professions, queer individuals or in Alex’s case all three to try and adopt but if they aren’t why even go there? They could have wrapped up the kid plot last week with the great J’onn-Alex balcony scene; we know she wants to be a mom we don’t need to see this to get it. It’d be one thing if she wanted to biologically have a kid, you could argue the rush then but adoption – she has time so slow it down and let her find Mrs. Right first!
“Can I be a mom and an agent at the same time?” – YES!
I’d love to see Caitlin Parrish as the showrunner for a season personally!
Sam was so underused this episode!
Don’t apologize John you’re discussion is fair!
Here’s hoping in S4 they’re applying the “Lena knows she’s just not telling Kara she knows she’s Supergirl” approach because it is so ridiculous to say Lena doesn’t know they’re the same person!
“What job?” – ha; fair John!
YES Montifesque, I love her but Alex is a functioning alcoholic who’s been drinking a long time so she should be shown still taking drinks post this episode – she is not someone who can just quit cold turkey; Alex is an emotional drinker and given her adoption path shouldn’t be easy based on her occupation and marital status she would definitely turn to the bottle a few times. If they say she can quit cold turkey suddenly it will definitely be out of character! I do disagree about raising Kara though as she’s pretty functional so Alex did well I think!
No to making Lena evil!
I hope the mirror works Green Butterfly as if M’yrnn dies Sam lives because I enjoy Carl on the show but I feel Odette would be good long term and plus Sam deserves to live; protect Sam Arias and give us her trying to balance things in S4 by coming to terms with Reign and having to figure out her normal strength powers because she’s totally Kryptonian still and should have the same powers as Kara at least!
“we can get more Legion.” – and they can take Mon home!
Thanks for the shout out John!
We better win the battle of saving Sam – no killing Sam!
I feel that’s definitely going to be a two part feedback submission for a lot of fans because what they think of the season finale may not match what they think of season three as a whole so expect a lot of feedback there.
Thanks for filling in so we can continue to get a podcast recap each week Geoff aka Subbie!
Thanks Aaron! I’m glad to help out when I can. John and I enjoy podcasting together and with Karen everything is fun. Thanks for your detailed thoughts on this ep and all the shows you listen to. GSM is a better community because of you!
Some blog post thoughts…
Thinking about this episode in a series whole way I would rate it more a 6 probably but in the season which it aired I feel it’s an 8 because while it does jump around it’s not as weird as last week’s. On their own most of the plots work for an episode but as a whole as you say it just feels packed. I’m getting more and more the frustrations of fans regarding different aspects of the show; I still feel they can get back to the season one goodness if they try but they need to begin that path back in S4 because otherwise I’m worried about the series as it went from this very refreshing series in the superhero genre to something that still has good plots at times but overall feels like a shell of previous character aspects.
Personally my love for Chyler Leigh has me dedicated to her and I still feel that great potential of the show is still there so I can’t walk away from the series but again I get why you see more people saying “Enough is enough!” and voicing out their dislike about certain plots because we all want the show to be the best it can and right now it’s kind of all over the place…I don’t know if that’s just due to some out of character seeming choices by characters or just the fact it feels more and more like there’s a lot of telling about things without a lot of showing if that makes sense or maybe it’s a mix of both. “Supergirl” is still my favorite of the DC superhero shows but I am noticing more and more “What?” moments; Kara especially doesn’t feel the same and I think that along with the underuse of the other original characters is really starting to be a glaring thing for a lot of fans.
The thing that bothered me the most about the gun plot was it felt weird to see James, a non agent, basically running the operation; I don’t mind him helping to supply information on the guy or say how he feels about guns but it felt really out of place that it was he and J’onn at the business rather than Alex and J’onn. I get they don’t know what to do with James but having him at the DEO doesn’t help because then you only sideline another character for him to have something to do and that doesn’t work. I also wish they had let Lena express her a opinion a bit more because while we know they want to go with the “guns need to be controlled” plot Lena still had a fair point about why she has one so I felt they could have given a little more time to the counterpoint side so the point side doesn’t feel so heavy handed.
“Guardian is playing basketball in broad daylight by himself. It’s weird.” – I get they were going for a humor bit there but it just fell completely flat to me because I don’t get excited by Guardian and it’s like “Where did he find a random basketball court and ball?” so it was just a miss; it’s not like Kara helping to assemble furniture because she’s looking for any way to help it just felt random.
I can get the argument for going from lethal to non lethal weapons as the first line of defense plot but I feel it’s also naive currently to say it’s the best option for every situation because they are dealing with powered individuals who sometimes take down even Kara on a first go and are immune to non lethal approaches so you need something to keep them in check otherwise they could destroy the city and no one wants that. Then this kind of opens itself to the debate of what is a non lethal weapon because what’s non lethal to one species, take kryptonite for example, may be lethal for another so what do they do then? I got the concept of what they were wanting to say but I don’t know if it works practically in their line of duty and it felt really fast because they’ve faced shooters before but never gave up their weapons or asked Winn to make new ones so to do it in one episode as you said felt very sledgehammer-y. You can still do action sequences without the shooting so I don’t have any fears those scenes will disappear but I do question if this will downgrade bad guys to keep it competitive for the DEO and others or will this be an excuse to have more power people on so they can help and how will that effect the series, I would think not in a good way as you risk devaluing the non powered characters “for their own safety” and risk overloading the series with characters which is arguably what’s happened currently. There’s nothing wrong with an ensemble show but we haven’t even had enough Supergirl yet on the series, she’s there she’s just had these others coming in too working more to take situations from her rather than work with her so it feels imbalanced to some fans, to pull an “Arrow” if you will – it didn’t go big ensemble until at least S5 so give Kara the same time to grow before you do Justice League essentially. The show was already arguably an ensemble but you have to manage your character count otherwise you have a lot of moments but nothing that really feels like it’s getting you emotionally because you only get like a minute with each and that’s not enough to really tell a fleshed out story.
Kara is not Clark so the vibe that they’re making her a female him is also an issue I’ve felt the more they have Kara do things; I know she doesn’t like Kryptonite but she was never so naive about it until Clark started his speech in S2 and I get protecting your identity but she told everyone and their mom who she was S1 when given the chance plus she was always “Lena isn’t Lex” so the idea she suddenly had a problem telling Lena who she is feels like drama for the same of drama and that’s not good, you want plots to feel organic not manufactured and because Lena has given her really no reason to have reservations about telling her it just feels inorganic she hasn’t told her to try and calm any situation.