How the week flies, dear readers! I am back with the scoop on the latest installment of Supergirl, and ready to dish for those of you who want to know what’s up without actually watching an episode.

If you still want to watch the episode, I suggest you do so before you keep reading. Mild spoilers ahead.

This week Supergirl focused on the fallout of the discovery that their beloved president is, in fact, an alien. We see all of the premiere’s subplots attempt to tie themselves together with the common thread of “How do you feel about the President being an alien?” Unfortunately, this only serves to create some weird friendship-maybe-romantic-subplot for Brainiac-5 and Kara’s men-tee, Nia, who comes to his rescue when Mercy Graves attempts to hack L-Corp’s image inducers and out every alien.

Even more unfortunate? James Olsen’s refusal to issue a statement on the anti-alien groups, when he is one of the few characters who should most be able to empathize with this marginalized group. Although a heart-to-heart with Nia, who outs herself as transgender (I love the diversity here), still doesn’t help him to face his fears and talk about his feelings on this all too real issue. Honestly, at this point, Nia should have just written the article herself; it would have been better than the tired “we don’t hate here” statement James gives his employees after one of them pulls a “prank” on an alien in their midst.

 

Meanwhile, Kara is stuck in L-Corp with Lena, as they try to stop Mercy from directly accessing the mainframe in person, and renewing her attack on the aliens of National City. Watching Kara pretend to be scared so she can get away from Lena during Mercy’s attack is so painful, and makes one wonder how Lena still doesn’t have doubts that her best friend is Supergirl. I suppose it works out in the end, as it allows us to see a somewhat high-tech fight between Lena and Mercy until Kara can get away long enough to change clothes and save Lena from, well actually I’m not sure what from since Lena was holding her own. However, perhaps Supergirl’s appearance in the building while L-Corp was on lockdown will give Lena the push she needs to start considering the hero’s secret identity. This viewer can certainly hope.

I’ll give Mercy Graves this much: she is great at finding the weak links wherever she goes. Jensen, the alien-hating DEO agent, didn’t stand a chance against her scheming. And, rather than allow for a slow burn on his betrayal, Jensen immediately breaks the Graves siblings out of detainment and joins them in their activation of a Kryptonite bomb (similar to the lead bomb that forced Mon-El to leave in season 2). We see the detonation of this bomb, and Supergirl’s resulting, and immediate, plummet to Earth as our masked leader, Agent Liberty, speaks to a roomful of his alien-hating peers and J’onn, who has somehow stumbled upon this meeting.

In supreme honesty, I need this anti-alien plot to hurry up because I would like to get to the main event of Red Daughter!Supergirl. It seems a little unfair to keep hinting at it in the last few seconds of the past couple of episodes and then not actually give it to us.

Rating: 2.5 Apple and Olive Pizzas out of 5

Stray Observations:

-Isn’t it a little messed up to be anti-alien at the DEO (where you deal exclusively with alien-human relations)?

-Comedic relief from this all too real pseudo-racism plot through this sad excuse for an interrogation. Alex is all talk, while Mercy Graves’ brother sounds like WikiBear.

-Thinly veiled Game of Thrones reference to cover up a plot-hole for where exactly they got Kryptonite. Cool.

-I’m waiting (hoping?) for J’onn to come back to the DEO. No offense to Alex, but he seemed to be a lot less aggressive than she is in these tough situations.

-Suddenly Lena can hack? That came out of nowhere.