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“Fallout” sees more character development and further progression of the alien hate that serves to divide the entire country. Supergirl must figure out how to change hearts and minds!
Mercy Graves, The Forensic Files
Mercy, mercy, mercy! Ms. Graves takes it upon herself to murder an IT programmer from L-Corp and uses his computer to hack the image inducer tech that disguises folks like Brainy, whose inducer goes down first. Unfortunately for him it’s at a bad time as he’s surrounded by alien hating neanderthals. Thankfully Nia Nal is onsite and defends Brainy with all of her Catco prowess as a member of the influential media giant. The two of them kinda flirt afterwards. I won’t lie, it was steamy. Anywho, back to Mercy. Kara comes to L-Corp to bribe Lena with Big Belly Burgers and fries and get any information she can get about Mercy. Lena dishes out pretty much everything. Mercy was an assistant to Lex, maybe more, and she was also a mentor to Lena growing up because Mom kinda sucked at that job. Learning that Mercy has hacked into L-Corp Lena puts a quick stop to it so Mercy has no choice but to come to L-Corp herself and get to the servers. In an unlikely super team up we get Kara, Lena, and Eve running around L-Corp trying to stop Mercy and not get killed simultaneously. Kara can’t get away from Lena to rip her shirt open so her saving them as her Kara persona doing her Super stuff is the best part of this episode. Mercy and Lena face off with Kara present. Mercy tries to trigger Lena with all of her shortcomings compared to mastermind brother Lex but Lena ain’t buying what she’s selling. Kara gets away, Supergirl’s it and stops Mercy. Mercy and bro Otis while being held at the DEO convince young padawan Jansen that he should come to the dark side and he lets them escape. They use the Daxum lead dispersal device to blast kryptonite and we leave Supergirl falling from the sky…
Time to Editor Up, there, Jimmy
In the midst of all of the alien hate, Nia, having seen Brainy attacked for having the neanderthals simply see his visage, encourages her Editor-In-Chief James Olsen to cowboy up and get his powerful and influential role of the Catco Empire to calm people the heck down. He deftly CEO dodges Nia but thanks her for her passion and for revealing to him that this is a personal matter to her because she is a transgender woman. After a royally stupid office prank pulled on a Catco fellow employee James is struck to remind his people of the mission of Catco, balanced reporting, and the Golden Rule. Inspired by Supergirl’s televised message to the nation, he does decide to editorialize his thoughts.
J’onn J’onzz, Private Investigator
J’onn is still concerned that Fiona has disappeared so after a very uncomfortable taking up of a beat cop from her neighborhood he decides -after going back and talking to Director Danvers at the DEO- that he’s better off investigating on his own. He goes to her apartment and finds that she was engaged to a man named Manchester (keep that in your mind, folks) who is in England currently and he figures out that she was on the hunt of some of the alien haters. This leads him to an alien hate monger symposium led by none other than Agent Liberty. Liberty stokes the fires of his base with some good hate speak while J’onn watches on. Oh, and President Marsden has stepped down and Bruce Boxlietner VP Baker takes over with Supergirl’s blessing and her straightening his tie.
Closing Thoughts
Sigh. There was a lot of good, dare I say great, to this episode. Kara super-ing it as Kara, Alex fidelity-ing it up with Brainy, the development of Nia, James actually doing his thing as Catco CEO, and the backstory between Lena and Mercy. Unfortunately all of these moments are couched in this overall story of the divide between humans and aliens with absolute ZERO nuance. I get turned off by fictional stories painting groups of people with a common viewpoint as total extreme ignoramouses. I’m really, truly hoping that next week will give a fuller back story of Agent Liberty but even so it won’t fix this tired storytelling. I need to drown my sorrows in an apple and olive pizza. Ok, maybe not.
Cougar’s Comic Corner
Brought to you by our own xForce11, Mr. Geoff Gentry. We’re doing our best to keep Maid of Steel at its absolute best! The first appearance of Manchester Black is Action Comics Volume 1, Issue 775.
“Extra-sized issue! Has Superman become outdated in our modern world? A new aggressive team of metahumans called the Elite certainly thinks so, and they’re about to wreck the Man of Steel’s truth, justice, and American way. And if a lot of innocent bystanders get killed in the process, so be it!”
Find it at Comixology or Part of Superman: A Celebration of 75 Years!
Next time on Supergirl!
Season 4, Episode 3, “Man of Steel” The story of how Ben Lockwood became Agent Liberty is told.
Feedback
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Get well soon Karen!
As John said thanks for feeling in Subbie so we can keep getting these episodes each week; I look forward to the GSM reviews each week!
No to olives; pepperoni only thanks.
That was grade A Bane impression John!
Jimmy is fine for James John. I can appreciate James’s reservations at first because he made a good case for waiting but by near episode end I was becoming frustrated with him as he saw things weren’t changing so he could have responded sooner than the very end but that’s just me. The workplace harassment was important to show but also felt slightly like in there just for the sake of being heavy handed almost…overall I’d give them a success on the plot handling but it could have been slightly better too in fairness. I’m loving CatCo James – more of this version of him please show!
I thought Mercy said she got the Kryptonite from the Black Market?
I agree Geoff, I’m loving the organic and challenging situations the Graves siblings are creating for the team; I’m giving them all the credit because really they’re doing everything, yes Liberty may be paying the bills but the siblings are really the ones executing and crafting some of these plans. Not since Max have we seen this level off good execution so I say bring on more of it!
Jensen was just a tool to help the siblings escape.
I call it overload John, as you said it’s not to say X or Y is wrong or you dislike the person who said it it’s the idea that all day long you are hearing certain catchphrases or buzzwords and you just get tired of it at the end of the day. Yes these are important issues to show and I’m glad they’re addressing them but you can debate them without using buzz phrases essentially; use your own terms or just plain words to discuss something as not everything has to include a key word or statement to get your point across.
NO TO EVIL LENA!!! So dumb Lena doesn’t know Kara and Supergirl are the same.
As John said how did no one at the rally question who was behind the mask? They just saw an alien impersonate someone in their mind so why would they yell to take off the mask? Had they de-masked Liberty at the end the scene would have worked for a tension builder but as is he felt very generic in that moment to me.
Ok I know Montifeque hated this episode but I have to say I LOVED his feedback this week because I got every thing he said which is a first for me so yay for that! 🙂
I agree with Blackhawk fan, there are legit concerns some people have about aliens in National City and just in general it’s fair to ask about diseases coming in with new people so I agree not everyone who voices concerns are bigots so it would be nice to see some more middle ground thrown in with the goods and bads. It’s like the gun debate James started – yeah it shouldn’t be the DEO’s go to move but given who they face you shouldn’t take a form of protection from them either; also they face people with different biologies so who’s to say a gun shot isn’t safer than a non lethal option for most which turns out to be lethal for that one individual? I fully admit some things are strictly black and white but there’s certainly more gray than people give credit for, I’d argue 90% of debates can be solved with a middle ground solution if people really want to try…the other 10% is for black and white issues.
Great points re Marsden Windsor!
Aaron you rock! Thanks for your thoughts and this “NO TO EVIL LENA!!!” YESSSS!