Supergirl #2.21 “Resist” Review

A breathless penultimate episode gets a boost from an all-star guest cast and exciting action sequences that are just rousing enough to compensate for the cluttered story.

Review:

Resist! It’s a title that jumps out with political connotations that wouldn’t have existed a year ago, for an episode that takes on an undeniable subtext of relevancy despite its outsize comic-book plotting and relatively conventional alien invasion premise. It’s fitting that Supergirl is returning to allegory as it heads into its two-part finale, because this has been a season that’s been a fascinating experiment in tracking a tumultuous political climate and turning it, on the fly, into fun escapist television. The run of powerfully insightful episodes that dealt explicitly with the persecution of immigrants back in the winter was written back when Barack Obama was President, and Hillary Clinton was expected to follow, after all, and that suggests a drastically different approach to the one the show should have in the midst of a Trump presidency. It would stand to reason that an episode trying to reach back and tie up ideas that were cooked up in a very different political climate would be a messy experiment torn between cautionary tale (which Supergirl arguably was back in the fall) and haunting real-world parallel.

Resist is a messier episode than usual, and that can easily be chalked up to the enormous scope of the thing. This is an episode that’s carrying out an elaborate balancing act for 42 minutes without catching a breath, and it’s bound, arguably, to become a little tangled up in itself from time to time. Yet as an invasion story with a political edge that’s tasked with entwining several disparate plot threads from throughout the season, this is an impressively cohesive episode that benefits from being the most flat-out entertaining that Supergirl has been in ages. There are more substantial reasons as to why Resist works, but a lot of it comes down to the way in which it’s fun. We have three Cat Grant speeches for the price of one. Alex and Maggie infiltrate a government agency as a couple. Air Force One is somehow involved. Cyborg Superman is referred to as R2-D2. The writers threw everything at the wall for this one, and credit where credit is due: the relative restraint of this season’s back-half makes the freewheeling craziness of this episode all the sweeter.

At its core, Resist is quite a simple story with an inordinate amount of bells and whistles on it. Conceptually, the invasion of the Daxamites is not very interesting. The Daxamites have no defined worldview – they’ve gone from downtrodden working-class Krypton clone to totalitarian murderbots over the course of this season – and Rhea, as a character, is bland as they come, with only her creepy and obsessive love for her children (both surrogate and real) there as something resembling a redeeming characteristic. It’s the bells and whistles, then, where Resist takes off. One of the most enjoyable parts of the episode, especially in comparison to last year’s finale where Non took centre stage, is its focus on women as the main power players in the invasion scenario. There’s Rhea, who is not exactly a feminist, but on the side of the angels, Resist brings in Cat Grant and President Marsdin as the cheerleaders behind the resistance effort. All of these characters are portrayed by actresses who have become cult favourites one way or another, and it’s delightful to see them spar and circle each other, whether it’s in the showdown aboard Air Force One or during Cat’s speech later. In a season that’s arguably marginalised the show’s female voices in favour of the male characters, the women-centric nature of Resist is a welcome return to the kind of drama and character interactions that Supergirl does best, and most originally in its genre.

After almost an entire season on the bench, Resist marked the grand return of Cat Grant to the fray, and she quickly makes up for lost time. This is, categorically, the Cat Grant-est episode of Supergirl to ever have aired (there, put that on the DVD box!). It’s her, after all, who gets the episode’s defining emotional moments within each of the three acts. We also get the fullest and most nuanced depiction of her character yet – one that builds upon the humanities and vulnerabilities introduced in her final appearances before her hiatus and runs with them. Her story to Supergirl of her discoveries while on her travels away from National City of the secret to happiness is a particularly illuminating evolution of the character, as it shows her going beyond the superficiality of the media empire that defined her in season one to tap into the core questions of happiness and morality that have plagued every hero from time to time. It feels right that Cat Grant would understand and internalise those life lessons, returning for further sage advice sessions having seemingly conquered all of the internal conflicts that define humanity. It’s also her rousing speech towards the end that forms the backbone of Resist’s thin but effective political subtext, bringing to the fore the ideas of personal empowerment in the face of overwhelming subjugation that have been on so many minds lately (just take all of the marches, whether for women’s rights or for science, that have unfolded worldwide since January as an example of why the individual’s role has become such a societally important concept) that have unfolded worldwide in a way that feels true to her character as a public figure and a beacon of wisdom to not just Kara, but the whole city. Needless to say, Calista Flockhart doesn’t miss a beat on her return to the show, slipping into the same razor-sharp, knowing attitude that’s defined Cat since the start while bringing out the greater openness and warmth that Cat acquired over time from Kara. I’m aware this was just one of a two-episode guest appearance, after which she’ll likely head off into the wilderness again, but this was a welcome reminder of why Cat Grant is so important to this show as a mentor figure and as an embodiment of its themes of empowerment. Can she never leave again?

While this is a much more ambitious effort than last year’s two-part finale, there are some parallels between them that illuminate the changes in Supergirl’s storytelling, for better or for worse. Both Resist, and last year’s penultimate episode, Myriad, featured an agonising moral choice in which the villain’s plan could be stopped at a cost. Where Myriad went wrong, however, Resist chooses a better path. That episode’s choice was to stop Non’s Myriad plan, affecting the entire world by killing eight per cent of National City with a bomb. It’s the kind of moral quandary that’s surface-level interesting, but deals with two vague casualty numbers that had no weight because none of their impact could be shown to their fullest extent. Resist’s choice is more intimate – destroying Rhea’s ship and kneecapping the Daxam fleet would cost just two innocent lives; but those lives in question are Kara’s best friend and girlfriend. As a consequence, the impact of that lever, were it to be pulled, is much more tangible, as we check in consistently with Mon-El and Lena throughout the episode, and have seen their relationships with Kara deepen across the course of the entire season; we know that the cost of losing them, even if they’re a drop in the ocean statistically, is agonising. This gives Supergirl the opportunity to interrogate Kara’s morality in a really interesting way, because there’s nothing stopping Kara from sanctioning the blast on the ship and saving the city other than personal attachment, which could easily, as Kara suggests, be seen as grossly selfish and hypocritical if she were to reject it. It’s also important that Resist is smart about this moral choice. Exposing Kara’s choice to pursue human connection over cold hard numbers in a way that risks the entire city is a worthy dramatic angle for the episode to pursue, but we know that it’s all moot – Mon-El and Lena are too important to die at the same time, and it’s the penultimate episode, so Rhea is safe too. It’s easy to see that Supergirl is bluffing, so that’s why its choice to push that moral quandary to the background for the episode’s second act is a shrewd one, as it makes the stakes of the final act feel more tangible as it’s not resting on an obvious-fake out, and allows the episode to focus in on Kara at the moment that matters the most. Resist displays some of season one’s familiar messiness elsewhere, but its handling of its emotional stakes shows a greater finesse in storytelling that last year offered with a very similar scenario, and that’s not for nothing.

Resist already has a stacked deck with Supergirl, Cat Grant, the President and pals versus Rhea, so it’s surprising to see it throw in a third party with the return of Cadmus as an uneasy ally of sorts to Kara. Cadmus was the cornerstone of a lot of early season two’s explorations of prejudice and how it could become radicalised and violent, so to throw it into a scenario with its own political implications is a loaded choice. Resist does its best to grapple with those implications where it can. The uncomfortable idea of teaming up with a woman who treats the alien attack as a vindication of her xenophobia is tackled well, with a constant mistrust shown by the heroes towards Cadmus for their past actions. Their team-up also takes a worthy zig-zag away from conventionality – the reveal that Kara and co never trusted them and cooked up a contingency in case of inevitable betrayal is a great one because it shows the lack of emotional attachment that was put into the alliance; meaning that the heroes kept their beliefs and never bought into Cadmus’ narrative for a second. Thematically, there’s also a good case for Cadmus’ inclusion, as they represent the ‘kill ‘em all’ unilateralism that’s made its way into the political mainstream lately, unable and unwilling to separate the individual from their grouping as they maintain their suspicion of all aliens. Yet something about their role in the episode doesn’t work. Their betrayal isn’t surprising, so it isn’t treated as a twist – yet it still feels so weightless that you wonder why Supergirl bothered to even suggest they were trustworthy at all. They could be taken out from the episode, and virtually nothing would have to change aside from the fact that another MacGuffin would be needed to beam up Kara to the Daxamite ship. With so many distinctive and complex characters circling around, including several who haven’t appeared in a while like the President and Cat, and given the robustness of the episode’s themes anyway, Cadmus’ inclusion is perhaps an overreach – the point at which Resist’s ambition to tie up everything in season two surpassed its ability to create something dramatically cohesive. It’s arguable, anyway, that the villainous organisation had a fitting enough send-off in their last appearance and didn’t need this ‘last time around’ return.

Resist is a great penultimate episode on the whole, one that energises a previously listless season arc through the patented technique of throwing everything it has against the wall in an attempt to create a definitive statement about this disparate season of television. For all of its flaws – Rhea, as mentioned, remains incredibly uninteresting as a villain – this felt like a confident fusion of season one, in its focus on women and broader scope, and season two, with its political undertones and extensive ensemble cast. The season finale has a tough job on its hands to outdo this one… but the return of Tyler Hoechlin’s Superman, squaring off against Supergirl for a fight with a hell of a lot of family history behind it, is the kind of thing that might help. See you next time, last time…

Odds & Ends

• Supergirl finally pulled the trigger on the teases that the President was an alien, fleshing out her backstory as a formerly persecuted refugee with a very personal stake in ensuring alien rights. It’s a thematically potent idea to have an outsider as President, and she fits into the narrative in a way the weird and directionless teases from before didn’t suggest.
• Cat continues her hot streak of figuring out secret identities: first the Flash, and now James Olsen as Guardian, simply looking through that prominent slit in his eyes. She has to know Kara is Supergirl, right? Right?
• A quick moment of appreciation for Alex jumping off a building while firing her gun. That’s the kind of stuff Hot Fuzz could never have dreamed of.
• Remember when Cyborg Superman was exciting, and not just David Harewood growing under a plastic headpiece?
• Next: the season finale! Supergirl vs Superman! Supergirl vs Rhea? Supergirl vs… General Zod?