Wednesday, November 29, 2017

Recap: Supergirl 3.5 "Damage"

Lena is back this episode (yeah!). She's central to this week's crisis, as it turns out that the lead bomb she built last season to get rid of the Daxamites has apparently poisoned a bunch of children in National City.

Before Supergirl okayed the detonation last season, Lena had thought the device was safe for humans. But, I'm not sure I understand how it would be. In fact, it strikes me that "lead poisoning" should have been a predictable outcome of detonating a lead bomb, but whadoIknow.

Anyway, a bunch of sick kids are now in the Luthor's namesake hospital, which makes it look like Lena caused the lead poisoning for profit. Ouch.

In response, Lena schedules a press conference to announce that she's stepping down from the L Word, I mean L Corp, and CatCo, pending the investigation. And, as Crooked Lena walks to the podium, the crowd chants "lock her up." Make National City Great Again!


Someone in the crowd then shoots at Lena, but hits James. He's okay, but this means that Lena goes into hiding at Sam's house. She's there, alone, drinking a bunch of wine, when Kara comes over. While alternating between an American and British(?) accent, Lena drunkenly tells Kara that being a bad person is in her DNA as a Luthor.

Someone somewhere is probably writing a way better Lena/Kara fanfic retelling of this scene right now in which Lena is confessing that she knows Kara is Supergirl (and that she's in love with Kara/Supergirl, obvs). I mean, I get that Lena's central conflict is that she feels like she'll never be able to be a good person because she's a Luthor. But, get over it, girl, you're a gazillionaire. And, can't just one person in the DC-verse be perceptive enough to know when their friends are superheroes? Can't everyone be queer? Is this too much to ask?

Speaking of which, as anticipated, Alex breaks up with Maggie because she wants kids and Maggie doesn't. But then they hook up one last time, just to make the breakup more complicated than it has to be, I guess. This breakup makes me sad, but it's also not close to my personal top 10 list* for worst queer moments in pop culture. To look on the bright side, at least Maxwell Lord is out of the picture.

On the lead poisoning front, Kara and Sam put their heads together and figure out that the lead poisoning actually came from a public pool. Lena was framed by that asshole whats-his-name dude who she stole CatCo from. Lena confronts the dude, it backfires, and she swiftly finds herself in a perilous situation. By perilous, I mean that she wakes up on an airplane full of chemicals, which is being flown on auto-pilot without other humans on board, sort of like a Supergirl/Airplane! mashup:


(Hey, remember how casually racist and misogynistic 80s movies were? Fun times).

ANYway, the DEO catches Lena's mayday distress call and Supergirl swoops onto the plane. Despite previously having stopped a mega-ship the size of the Astrodome from leaving the Earth's atmosphere, Supergirl struggles to keep a small cargo plane aloft. Nevertheless, she succeeds in saving Lena. She then gives the asshole-whathisname a stern talking to, and L Corp develops an antidote for the sick kids. So, her name is cleared. (All of this happens in a matter of hours, I guess).


Then, in the final scene, we get another hint that Sam might be a meta-human or something. It turns out that she was actually shot at the press conference, as well. Her shirt has a hole in it, but she didn't get injured at all. Hmmmm.

Deep Thought of the Week: *The list, in no particular order and which may change on a daily basis:
  • Dana Fairbanks - 11 years later and still, queer women ask, whyyyyyy?
  • The end of Xena - see above.
  • Tara's death in Buffy - ditto. The early aughts were rough for queer women's icons.
  • Justin and Brian breaking up in Queer as Folk
  • Jenny's Wedding
  • All of the main characters in Transparent being supremely unlikeable and/or really bad people.
  • The ending of 95% of 1990s movies featuring queer female leads. 
  • The superfluous heterosexual relationships in Pitch Perfect and Bend It Like Beckham.
  • My idea for a Love, Actually queer reboot not existing yet.
  • The plot of Loving Annabelle, where a female student-teacher relationship is romanticized. 

Note: In November 2017, CW/Supergirl Executive Producer Andrew Kreisberg was suspended after allegations of sexual harassment.

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