My Thoughts on Supergirl 5x17
Okay, here’s the thing... We didn’t need an entire episode illustrating how Lex is perfectly in control of his new reality and that he’s leagues ahead of his opponents. We already knew this, and had been seeing enough snippets of this sort of action in previous episodes that we didn’t really need an entire episode about it.
The only two sources of plot movement on a large and small scale came from Lena and Eve. With Lena’s kindness overriding her sense of betrayal, she traveled just a smidgen closer to resolving the rift between her and Kara. Eve thought she was getting out from under the season’s omnipotent baddie, only to find herself under the thumb of an equally vile overlord. In both instances, Lex reached out and wrenched both of them right back to where they started.
If that isn’t a precise illustration for how Lex’s presence has essentially arrested any and all plot development in the show this season, I don’t know what is.
- It had some beautiful visuals, and that is a fact. One shot that particularly caught my eye was one shot over the upper level banister while Lex and Lillian were playing chess. Made me a little disappointed that it wasn’t Lena spying on them, but still cool.
- The only interesting plot reveal out of the entire episode is that Lex caused the death of Jeremiah, and that’s only because I figured that Jeremiah dying was just a hand wave to get Alex stuck in VR.
- It’s a shame that Lex has so taken over the show that a Lex-heavy episode is no longer synonymous with a Lena-heavy episode. If anything, I expected to see some scenes where he and Lena had a chance to bond on an emotional level-- such as defending Lena’s pursuits to Lillian at family dinner, or playing chess, or having drinks.
- Is there a reason the Fortress of Solitude has a sun-eater casually chilling behind an unlocked door? Asking for a friend.
The scene between Lena and Kara at CatCo was beautiful, and was a perfect first step to them healing. It’s a shame that Kara’s sensitivity seemed to evaporate during the scene at the Fortress. Finding the missing people was important, but not so urgent that Kara couldn’t have paused to explain that Lena might know of four other ways to track q-waves, but they didn’t have Lena to call on anymore. Instead she just brushed Lena’s concerns off in a fit of moral superiority and dismissed them as inconsequential to the urgency of the task at hand.
It definitely reinforces the idea that Kara might be kind and sensitive as Kara Danvers, but cold and cruel as Supergirl. That sort of dichotomy won’t fly if Kara really wants to fix things with Lena.
