I’m finally back on track! At the time of writing this we are still in the same week as these episodes were aired! Go me! I can’t promise that this will continue but you never know! So what has been going on in the CW-verse this week?
Supergirl S3 Ep4 – ‘The Faithful’
Supergirl comes up against another real world problem this week as she faces a bunch of religious fanatics who are willing to put others at harm in the name of their god. The issue for Kara is that the god these people pray to is her, led by a guy that was on the plane she saved in S1 ep1. At first it just seems to be a harmless group of people preaching about Supergirl and the Kryptonian God, but things escalate when Supergirl saves a man from a burning building. It turns out that he set the fire deliberately in the belief that she would save him.
In an attempt to shut things down Kara goes to see the leader and asks him to stop, he sees through her spectacled disguise and continues to blindly follow his understanding of Rau’s teachings. Kara is pissed because he is misinterpreting the teachings to justify his actions. In true religious extremist style, the leader set the probe up under a sports arena and sets it to explode in the belief that Supergirl will save them all.
Unfortunately the probe contains Krypton soil samples laced with Kryptonite so Supergirl can’t get near it to shut it off. In the end she burns a hole through the floor and the probe explodes deep underground. It was interesting to see Supergirl struggling, how do you fight someone’s belief? How do you convince them they are wrong? She can’t understand why these people would pray to her and it takes Jimmy giving her a traditional pep talk to explain that people seek miracles when the odds are against them. She is something physical that performs miracles all the time!
Meanwhile, the mysterious woman Samantha is displaying just how much of a bad mum she is, choosing her work over her daughter. She is overcome with guilt and breaks down in front of Lena and then Kara invites her to a girls night, they don’t even know her!! They chat about their love lives and children, which gets very awkward for Alex and then later at her daughter’s school, all her new friends, Lena, Kara, Alex and Maggie watch until Alex leaves, upset because she still wants kids, she loves Maggie but wants to have a family, what is she going to do?! Alex is incredible, badass and fragile at the same time.
It was a good episode, mainly because of the different kind of threat Supergirl had to face and I’m really engaged in Alex’s story, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t well up a bit during her final scene. In other news, a weird looking woman appears to Samantha and says she will reign one day soon, clearly indicating her powers will appear soon. Also we see that the probe explosion woke the sunken Kryptonian pod, giving rise to something from within! The show is improving but there is still a long way to go.
The Flash S4 Ep4 – ‘Elongated Journey Into the Night’
The Flash gave us a brilliant episode this week. Lot’s of fun and even though there was some dark moments quite funny. We even had a guest appearance from the awesome Danny Trejo aka Machete. What is he doing in a CW Superhero show you ask? Read on!
In answer, he plays Breacher, Gypsy’s dad! He has come to Earth to see if Cisco is worthy of his daughter, which of course he instantly decides he isn’t. This leads to some hilarious scene between the pair as Breacher hunts Cisco across the city. In the end of course Cisco proves himself a hero by standing up for what he believes. We even learn that Gypsy’s real name is Cynthia! Funny scenes and a satisfying ending to that mini story arc.
Meanwhile, the rest of Team Flash are dealing with the latest Meta created by Barry. Frank Dibny, an ex-cop turned private investigator thrown off the force for falsifying evidence. Barry was the one that go him fired resulting in a less than friendly relationship. They get onto his trail because the Mayor is being being blackmailed by someone, turns out it was Dibny. Long story short, Dibny didn’t know he had been affected by Dark Matter and is only discovering his powers. Managing to escape from some thugs by stretching all the way to the ground. His body has become incredibly elastic but he can’t control it. When he sneezes it is literally hilarious!
The moral this week comes in the form of Barry feeling guilty because even though Dibny faked the evidence in a murder case, the suspect was guilty, he was doing it for what he thought was the right reason. In the end, Barry and Dibny settle their differences when The Flash reveals his identity in order to encourage Dibny to save the day by catching a helicopter! Barry goes even further by offering to train Dibny to be a superhero, and he accepts! The Elongated Man is on his way!
It was an episode of little joys, Danny Treyo hunting Cisco and attacking Dibny was great, the effects of Dibny’s powers were appropriately ridiculous and Hartley Sawyer nailed the characterisation. I look forward to seeing more of him in the future. There’s another hint at Caitlin’s personal issues as she returns home to find a message “We miss you, come back soon” carved into her door. Who was she running with? Barry and Joe agree that his return from the speedforce was most likely planned by someone, and Dibny says someone called Devoe asked him to keep tabs on the Mayor. Barry recalls this name from something the evil flash/Savitar said to him last season. Is Devoe the Thinker?
A much better episode, lot’s of fun and brilliant jokes while still doing the traditional Superhero thing. The only thing that jarred me was the weird slow mo pregnancy celebration scene! What was that all about?!
Legends of Tomorrow – S3 Ep4 – ‘Phone Home’
The title of the episode tells you all you need. This is E.T. with superheroes. Almost the entire plot of the film is crammed into 45 minutes of utter dross. I’m fine with pop culture references, this week however it is E.T. overload and they even say themselves that’s it’s like E.T. IF YOU SAY IT YOURSELVES IT DOESN’T BECOME AN HOMAGE, IT IS JUST POOR WRITING.
In 1988, young Ray Palmer befriends a baby Dominator (which is displaced from it’s own time). The Legends go back to this time to stop Ray Jnr from being killed thus erasing Ray Snr. it’s a bit creepy stalking a child but the team discover the baby Dominator the kid is hiding and make steps to remove it. Cue some intended hilarity which doesn’t pay off. Ray Snr is mistaken for a toy, Ray Jnr and the baby Dominator bond over musicals, Nate flirts with Ray’s mom to stop the Dominator being discovered but Ray Jnr overhears her being less than nice about him so he runs away with the alien.
Sara is attacked by mummy Dominator which rips the location of the baby from her mind, it then pretends to be Ray’s mum to try and find the child, seducing Nate in the process. Zari chases Ray Jnr but they are captured. The worst scene comes in the form of the baby Dominator mind controlling some government agents into acting out a scene from the musical allowing the heroes to escape. During their escape Zari uses her amulet to make the bicycles she and Ray Jnr are travelling on fly, yes……..exactly like the fucking film.
The baby is returned to the Dominator and we do get a cool scene where the whole Legends Team go trick or treating with Ray Jnr in full costume, complete with Zari wearing her comic costume.
I was much more interest in the little side plot of Jax and Mick being suspicious that Professor Stein is hiding something from them. At first they think he has been using the jump ship to secretly meet up with the Time Bureau (even though Jax should have been able to suss this out through their psychic connection). In reality (poor choice of words I know), Stein has built a device that allows him to communicate with his daughter from within the time stream. When they find out that Lily is going into labour, Mick and Jax suggest taking the Waverider so Stein can be there at the birth of his grandchild. The boy is born and is named Ronnie. Seeing that Stein is missing a lot of his life on Earth (irrelevant with a time ship) Jax decides he needs to break up Firestorm! Good luck!
Poor writing, sub par acting, questionable effects and jokes that’s didn’t land, overall it was a terrible episode. There was no advancement in the season arc and I wasn’t engaged at all. At this rate I can honestly say I don’t know if I will finish the season. I will watch up to and including the crossover but after that…..who knows.
Arrow S6 Ep4 – ‘Reversal
It’s time that Oliver took a step back from the limelight this week. He is no longer the Green Arrow and Felicity is having issues too! I’m going to assume that the title ‘Reversal’ is referring to Oliver and Felicity’s changing dynamic as I’ll talk about later and it was actually really refreshing. We finally get some hints at the season arc but there’s still a lot of problems.
Remember Helix? The ‘Hacktivist’ group from last season? Well Elena is back asking for Felicity’s help. It turns out that liberating their leader Kaiden James might not have been the best idea in the world as he is now talking of something that will affect the world and result in a huge amount of collateral damage! Oliver and Felicity’s date gets interrupted with her having to run off to be with the team, just like he used to do all the time. She even blows off Oliver to help Elena. Not being able to let her go off on her own, Oliver ends up messing up Felicity’s mission to help Elena.
About half way through the episode we learn that Kaiden James’ plan involves sending Black Siren to steal the fingerprints of people who have access to an internet domain vault. Once he has access to the vault he plans to blow up the internet. Yes you read that right, the plot seemed like something you would see in the 80s before the internet was so dominant. Apparently Star City has a giant underground vault containing serves that run the entire internet! Needless to say Team Arrow stop this plan with Felicity using her super hacking skills but it’s what comes after that is more interesting. Kaiden James never actually wanted to blow the internet up. He just wanted Felicity to take down the firewall so he could install a bit of code for some reason, is he going to frame her for something?
Ridiculous story aside, there were some great bits. Diggle sending Felicity home when she starts blaming herself for things going wrong was the prefect display of his renewed confidence in his own leadership. Oliver being ‘Overwatch’ for the team was brilliant and some Olicity sexy time being interrupted by a phone call from Slade Wilson was just funny! One other thing, Felicity has recruited Elena onto her startup company and she immediately suggests they should work on an affordable version of the spinal chip she has. That’s another recurring character then, although using the name Helix is probably a bit too soon. If you ignore the core story then this was actually a really good episode. I’m going to leave you with one thought though….does Wild Dog use real bullets?
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