Verdict: Supergirl flies back onto screens with a midseason premiere that’s extremely fun and thematically sturdy, but over-reliant on plot contrivances and lacking in compelling bad guys.

Review:

It’s been almost two months since the last Supergirl, and in the interim, Kara Danvers kept plenty busy by jetting over to Earth-1 to take on the Dominators with the help of a menagerie of super-powered friends. Add the long wait to the prestige of Kevin Smith’s name in the credits as director after his sterling work on two of The Flash’s best episodes of 2016, and Supergirl Lives had plenty of expectations on its back. The winter finale left a pretty blank slate for the season’s back half with the main threat of Cadmus defeated and Kara’s worries over her parents put to bed for now, so just how those expectations would be gratified as a mystery in of itself.

It’d be disingenuous to say that this episode bears the weight of two months’ expectations. It’s an episode that accomplishes a lot, both thematically and in terms of innovating within the familiar form and structure of this show, but it’s also an episode that strains to reach those goals, crafting awkward situations where the hands of the writers nudging their characters into position are all too visible. And, for an episode about slavery and persecution, it’s disappointingly gun-shy about really delving deep into those themes. Yet while it’s one of this season’s more obviously flawed episodes, it’s also one of its most purely fun, and there’s some really encouraging forward momentum with the show’s plotting and character arcs that indicate a subtle change in direction for the season’s back half that takes good advantage of that aforementioned blank storytelling slate.

One of the most pleasing things about Supergirl Lives is that it abandons the freak-of-the-week format that, albeit more loosely than in season one, has guided a lot of this season so far. Instead, it’s a mystery that quickly segues into a rollicking interplanetary adventure with a simple quest objective to be accomplished. That’s a change in form that pays real dividends throughout. For one, it’s really fun to see Supergirl take advantage of one of its major differences to its CW counterparts, which is the regular presence of aliens. Season two has put aliens, and the themes of prejudice that they naturally flag up, front and centre, but Supergirl Lives is the first episode this season to really lean into the sci-fi of it all, with intergalactic gateways, spaceships and a fun variety of alien species, with a Dominator even cropping up at one point for a bit of shared universe interconnectivity. Moreover, the alien planet setting gives the episode a distinctly different feel to the typical urban settings – while there’s not enough of a defined threat to really communicate the notion that Kara and Mon-El are completely trapped without any help at all, there’s enough of a sense of isolation and displacement in the red filter and ominous surroundings that it does come across as a new kind of challenge for the show, and Kara to tackle. And in a 22-episode season, crafting the formula into different shapes is what keeps a show from spinning into repetition, so it’s good to see Supergirl staying on its toes with the stories it tells instead of running through the same template week upon week.

Thematically, Supergirl Lives pivoted from the first half of the season’s focus on all kinds of prejudice to that age-old struggle between what’s right and what’s easy. It’s a theme that, unsurprisingly, fits like a glove in the world of Kara Danvers, Earth and Krypton’s foremost idealist, and Supergirl Lives smartly utilises this season’s wider focus on ensemble storytelling to ensure that there’s a handful of fresh perspectives on this struggle beyond Kara’s point of view, from Winn’s brief bout of the yips to Alex’s wobble over her relationship with Maggie. For the most part, though, it is Kara’s story, and her dynamic with Mon-El, that proves to be the most interesting take on the episode’s themes due to the solid and well-observed characterisation that’s on display throughout.

Part of this lies in the way in which Supergirl Lives so effectively expresses Kara’s defining characteristics, which are her all-encompassing selflessness and willingness to believe that any obstacle can be overcome. Supergirl found its way to creative success by focusing on these characteristics, and they’re everywhere to be found in Supergirl Lives in different situations which illustrates how immutable her heroism is. One of the best expressions of this lies in the introduction to the slaver’s plot, which begins as an insignificant loose end picked upon and investigated by Kara the reporter before switching to Supergirl to apply a hands-on solution to the problem by travelling to the planet itself, showing Kara’s ability to make a difference however she can. The very point of Kara is that she’s almost unchangeable in this no matter the adversity, and Supergirl Lives empathetically reasserts this by constantly tracking the different forms of heroism that she embodies, from empathetic journalist to superhero to (extremely brief) leader of the downtrodden in the slaver’s cell.

In contrast, Mon-El is someone who is, throughout Supergirl Lives until the very final moments, a hero when it suits him. He’s not an anti-hero by any means, and Supergirl Lives indicates throughout, much as it constantly flags up Kara’s proudly outward heroism, that Mon-El has a heroic disposition that he plays down to keep himself in a more comfortable situation. The importance of Mon-El’s characterisation is that he functions as a realistic foil to Kara, contrasting her absolutism with a pragmatism that’s tailored more towards practical concerns (in essence, it’s fight versus flight, no pun intended), but without seeming callous and cruelly apathetic to the plight of those around him. Supergirl Lives finds that balance precisely and walks that line throughout, ensuring that Mon-El is always portrayed as more self-absorbed than unequivocally selfish, so that he both can oppose Kara earlier on without losing our sympathies, expressing the limits of her refusal to acknowledge grey areas, and then flip over into selfless heroism without it seeming like a jarring character shift. Kara and Mon-El’s story is an area in which the script really finds a thematic focus and specificity that it somewhat lacks in the subplots, but Melissa Benoist and Chris Wood are also vital to the simple success of Kara and Mon-El making for an engaging pair for their long time together on screen. Wood and Benoist do an excellent job of playing up the opposing sides of their characteristics while maintaining a basic, shared undercurrent of goodness that makes it entirely plausible that these two people enjoy each other’s company and feel compelled to push each other forward as people. They’re so fun as a couple of friends amicably sparking off each other that there seems less of a need to gun the accelerator on making them into a couple now, so here’s hoping that Supergirl invests more time into their friendship before the inevitable turn into romantic territory.

Supergirl Lives is a lot less cluttered than some of the later episodes in the first half of the season, so it only really has two major subplots to speak of. They both have their moments of dramatic intrigue or character comedy, but for the most part, they work better in theory than in execution. The theory of them, at the very least, makes absolute sense. Winn is a character who’s been kept in stasis all season at the DEO as the chipper comic relief and tech support, so it makes sense to push him out of his comfort zone and offer him a real sense of uncertainty. And Alex’s brief moment of doubt with Maggie picks up on one of the best ideas that this season has put forward regarding her character, which is her sense of insecurity in pursuing her own identity and desires when she’s been defined in relation to her sister for so long. The actors give their absolute all in bringing emotional realism to their arcs – Jeremy Jordan has more shades of Winn to play with than he has all season, from the livewire edginess post-accident to infectious joy after taking an alien out, and Chyler Leigh brings thoughtfulness and empathy to every line as Alex, alongside a deepening of her dynamic with Floriana Lima’s Maggie.

Yet the execution is often quite lacking, even if the means are admirable. The central problem is that basic credibility seems to be subordinate to the writers’ intent, which leads to moments of awkward contrivance that change characterisation just to railroad the characters to a particular point. For instance, Winn’s moment of self-discovery on the planet is a fun bit of catharsis, but Alex’s insistence that he comes through and flippant disregard for any of his complaints before sauntering off to find Kara is a little odd for a typically empathetic character, making it abundantly clear that the writers just really want to leave Winn alone. Or in Alex’s subplot, there’s the problem of her conflict with Maggie. It’s not the concept of it, but rather the suddenness with which it comes up and is then resolved in two very brief scenes that do little to establish the emotional specifics of their conflict. Alex’s problems with Maggie are also completely left by the wayside in the interim, and there’s no specific moment where she learns her lession that she ought to patch things up with Maggie, which creates the sense that she’s flip-flopping just so the writers can have some early drama in their relationship. Both arcs have a thoughtful amount to say about the conflict embodied by Kara and Mon-El, as Winn has to operate out of the safe bubble he’s crafted for himself while Alex makes an impulsive decision that is assuaged by a thoughtful reconsideration of her problems, so the problem lies only in how they’re integrated into the episode, as if the writers came up with their stories and crowbarred them into a finished script.

Another frustrating point is that Supergirl Lives shies away from some of the hard-hitting ideas that its story naturally flags up. A slaver’s ring of aliens abducting humans is a story that slots perfectly into a season that’s been predicated on exploring the tensions between the dominant race and the demonised and exploited ‘other’ figure, but the episode’s interest in it is cursory at best. The villains, which includes a brief but disappointingly shallow cameo return from Dichen Lachman’s Roulette, are established as cruel and exploitative, but that’s about it – the effects of their slave trading are hand-waved away, and their treatment of the humans they’ve captured, shutting them in a force-fielded room, doesn’t really convey any mistreatment on their part at all. An episode can only take in so many themes and stories, but for the episode to shy away from even quickly exploring the cruelty that can come about when people are stripped of their humanity and of their free will by persecutors who believe themselves to be superior feels like a curiously missed opportunity, as the slavery story is only a framework for the episode’s other thematic concerns.

Supergirl Lives is not Supergirl at the height of its powers (just like Kara isn’t at the height of her powers on Slaver’s Moon, I know), and there are a few missed opportunities here that indicate a slightly slapdash construction of the episode in which some realistic motivations and explorations of themes that are right in the path of the story are simply skimmed over. Still, middling Supergirl is still enjoyable, affecting and thoughtful television, and it is fun to see the show deliver a more straightforward romp with a relatively simple but well-crafted character conflict at its centre with Kara and Mon-El, restating its core values at a time where they seem more relevant, and more powerful than ever. Most of all, it’s a solid launching pad for bigger and better things to come in 2017. What could those bigger and better things be, exactly? It’s still a mystery, with the rest of the season currently an intriguing question mark. Onwards and upwards…

Odds & Ends

• There’s a brief hint of this run of episodes’ bad guys, as the hooded aliens from the winter finale pop back up on Slaver’s Moon to look after Mon-El. We don’t know enough about them at this point for any judgement to be made, but their links to Mon-El have a lot of potential.
• And speaking of Mon-El, we have our biggest hint yet that he’s not quite who he says he is when the Dominator allows him to pass, respectfully bowing to him. I’m not going to say he’s definitely a Daxamite prince, but it seems like a safe bet for a reveal soon enough.
• J’onn can’t make it to Slaver’s Moon because its atmosphere is toxic to Martians. It does, however, have an atmosphere that works just fine for humans who entered the portal without helmets.
• Kara turns in an 8000-word piece on Slaver’s Moon. And I thought my reviews were long. Jeez, Kara.
• Hiatus news: Supergirl was renewed for season three a couple of weeks back! It was a lock for renewal, but it’s a relief that we didn’t have to wait in suspense for weeks now.
• Next episode: Livewire the third, as the persistent electric metahuman returns for another attempt on Supergirl’s life. Honestly, you would think she’d have learnt her lesson by now.