It took 12 episodes, but KryptonSite finally has a reviewer! Everyone give Louis Rabinowitz a warm welcome as he reviews last night’s episode “Bizarro!”
Summary: Bizarro splits itself between fun, solid superhero action and turgid, undercooked personal drama, resulting in an episode that’s intermittently effective but terminally uneven.
Review
Every superhero show has its own set format, and as a show where many of its channel-mates are traditionally formulaic procedurals, Supergirl has possessed a set formula from pretty much episode one. The format of a roughly 50/50 split between traditional superhero fare involving colourful villains and CGI brawls with the latest foe of the week, and personal drama generally set inside the walls of CatCo has generally worked effectively for the show thus far, even if it’s often created a lack of cohesiveness when the two storylines are too disparate to feel like they’re happening at the same time.
For the first time in a while, the gap in quality between the superhero action and personal drama in Bizarro is noticeably large, with this split format creating the unusual phenomenon of an episode that shows the very best and very worst of Supergirl, often within the same 5 minutes. Coherency isn’t a problem here, as the action and drama are more inter-connected than usual, but the quality differences across the episode are starkly noticeable.
It’s the superhero action involving the titular villain that’s the strongest element of Bizarro by a country mile. Maxwell Lord has been a consistently enjoyable, if completely derivative (a strange blend of Lex Luthor and Tony Stark) villain since his early introduction, and his beefed up role in this episode only serves to highlight just how much more interesting he is than Supergirl’s actual Big Bad, Astra. Peter Facinelli has gotten the character’s entertaining smarminess down to a tee by this point, but he managed to develop his interpretation nicely here by adding sinister shades to the charming exterior, showcasing the inherently patriarchal nature of Lord through his unnerving mannerisms in his interactions with Bizarro.
The ending the character receives this episode is also a very intriguing one – it’s hard to imagine that Alex’s rash, potentially illegal imprisonment of Maxwell Lord won’t incur some pretty serious consequences later on down the line, so it’s a smart development that might lead to a storyline that finally features Alex at its centre. It’s also quite an ethically messy act for a hero to perform, and the hint at the end that Supergirl is ready to deal with the ethics of this situation is an encouraging indicator that it could tackle subject matter that’s unusually murky and adult for a pretty family-friendly show. Compared to the dour, muddled motivations of the insipid Kryptonian foes, Lord’s moustache-twirling, theatrical villainy is a far better fit for this light-hearted take on Supergirl, so I can only hope the show keeps him as a recurring villain moving forward.
Bizarro herself is also a general success. Her appearance leads to some enjoyable Supergirl vs Supergirl aerial duels presented with the same consummate skill that you’d expect from this creative team, but Bizarro delves a little further into what exactly makes this tortured, twisted clone tick. The arc presented for Bizarro of being brainwashed but coming to believe that the brainwashing is false is well-trodden ground and is therefore a little too conventional, but it’s acted effectively by Melissa Benoist and then Hope Lauren, who imbue palpable emotion into dialogue that’s, well… limited, to say the least.
Most of all, though, Bizarro manages to confront the innate tragedy of the titular character. Ultimately, Bizarro is a woman who’s been exploited by a powerful man and stripped of her own agency, acting as the face of Lord’s evil ambition so that he doesn’t have to face any kind of scrutiny, and can simply continue to hide in the shadows. That’s a concept that fits well with Supergirl’s feminist themes, and while the aforementioned idea isn’t explored to the depth that it could have been, Bizarro does take pains to point out that Bizarro’s actions aren’t really her own, and that she really is just a victim framed by Maxwell Lord, giving the villain a particularly poignant and sympathetic end to underscore that. It would have been easy to present a boilerplate evil twin with no real characteristics, so it’s good to see that Supergirl opted for a more nuanced take.
Considering how solid the superhero action was here, it’s disappointing that none of the dramatic subplots come close to hitting the mark, with one in particular straying into troubling territory. Kara and Adam’s short-lived romance subplot starts off well enough, with an endearing date scene that takes advantage of Melissa Benoist and Blake Jenner’s in-built chemistry to portray a genuinely likeable central couple that showed signs of possibly working well in the long term. Unfortunately, after that solid little scene, it all goes downhill. From there, Kara and Adam’s storyline plays like two episodes’ worth of development on fast-forward, careening from the first kiss to Kara’s kidnap to break-up at a rushed pace that misses the opportunity to truly exploit the dramatic implications of any of these developments. Adam actually exits the episode over ten minutes before the end, in a cursory final scene that amounts to this romantic subplot abruptly fizzling out with all the promise it held vanishing rapidly. It’s a shame, because there was potential for this to be something more than a generic reminder of the difficulties of a double life – as it is, Adam’s impact on the show and Kara’s arc feels negligible, with his presence feeling completely superficial in retrospect.
Kara and Adam’s subplot at least showed potential, which is something that cannot be said for the unfortunate developments that James Olsen is saddled with this episode. James has always been a bit of a troublesome character for Supergirl, with unlikeable and slightly disconcerting undertones often lurking below the friendly façade, and instead of trying to alleviate this character issue, Bizarro essentially doubles down on James’ unintentional flaws, damaging his likeability even further in the process. James’ attraction to Kara, which was only hinted at in previous episodes, is now apparently full-on love with no particular reason for this change, with James close to confessing his feelings to Kara in a similar way to Winn just a few episodes ago. The fact that James already has a girlfriend is given lip service, but there’s a vaguely unpleasant air to how Lucy’s own viewpoints aren’t even considered here, with James’ desires placed ahead of any potential objections (it’s most likely due to scheduling, but Lucy’s absence only compounds her lack of agency and the fact that these decisions are being made over her head).
The central problem highlighted by these scenes is that Supergirl is creating a tangled web of crushes and relationships that’s founded upon fundamentally uninteresting relationship drama – love triangles can be a generic, irritating source of cheap drama, so the love square that Supergirl is currently serving up (with Adam gone, it’s no longer a love pentagon at least) is quickly becoming a major drag upon the show as a whole.
Bizarro isn’t a bad episode of Supergirl – the Bizarro/Maxwell Lord material is typical of Supergirl’s best episodes, with fun action and engaging, nuanced villains. Unfortunately, the relationship drama simply isn’t up to scratch, coming across as rushed, lazy and kind of questionable all at the same time, with hints at developments that aren’t too encouraging. Coming after last week’s terrific episode, which blended two engaging halves with strong thematic links between both, this is a disappointing step down for Supergirl, even if it’s not the weakest episode the show has served up thus far.
Odds & Ends
- In this week’s cliffhanger, Kara is attacked by a strange parasite at home in a lead-in for next week’s take on the famous For the Man Who Has Everything. Supergirl has taken to linking together otherwise disparate episodes with a cliff-hanging lead-in, and it’s a fun idea that makes this show just a little bit more serialised.
- Good to know that the legacy of really sparsely furnished prisons in Greg Berlanti’s superhero shows is alive and well.
- Winn’s generally improving as a character after his confession to Kara, though his use of ‘friendzone’ this episode wasn’t his best moment.
- Apparently Kara and Cat’s relationship will be ‘business only’ now, which I’m doubting due to the fact that Supergirl has made me suspicious of any supposed changes of status quo regarding Cat Grant.
- Cable cars get a pretty raw deal in superhero/supervillain confrontations.
- How much time has passed in-universe? The flashback to 3 months before would seem to be set before Lord even made an appearance.