Tuesday, 8 August 2017
Supergirl
DVD, Smallville S10 (Supergirl)
Small-time anti-immigration radio host Gordon Godfrey becomes the host of the mysterious black cloud that came through a tear in the Universe at the beginning of the season and, continuing the trend of the first two episodes, we have our third returning character in as many episodes with Clark's cousin Kara, aka Supergirl (title gives it away!), who has returned to Earth sent by Jor-El to mop up this dark mess as he has no faith in his son. So she's there, and her plan is to reveal herself to the world, thereby attracting the evil to her so she can battle it, only it doesn't work out that way. Taken at face value, especially with a jaunt to a creepy club that wouldn't have looked out of place in 'The Matrix' trilogy, full of chains and shiny black leather, you'd think this was a very basic episode, but it does in fact go a little deeper and have things to say, and pertinent things, too, for Clark: should he give up keeping his abilities a secret and become a beacon of hope that is fully public, as Kara has done? And is his self doubt what is holding him back from being who he should be?
Godfrey is inspired under possession of the blackness to wage a media war against vigilantes and their special powers, and doubts begin to creep in to the general population. Not that there weren't already doubts, it's always been a battle to keep saving people in spite of their blind ignorance and stupidity that can make them laud one day and condemn the next, but the issue isn't simply about super-powered people: Lois is back from Africa (so we never did get a single scene of Perry White!), and on full reportage mode, going after Godfrey to discredit him so his actions won't harm The Blur, or Clark, as she knows he is. I was surprised that Godfrey, even under the control of some weird alien creature wouldn't have recognised Lois was his chauffeur, or when she dresses up in leather as a patron of the dodgy club, why he didn't instantly realise who she was, especially as she'd made herself and her agenda known to him in close proximity! Her plan backfires and she ends up literally tied in knots as bait to draw in a superhero for the darkness to take over, and with Clark still feeling the doubts over his ability to carry off the destiny he's always trained and sweated for, it would have succeeded in preying on him since it was able to use doubt as an entry, if not for Kara stepping into the breach.
I liked that idea in the story, as doubt is something everyone feels, no one is really, truly 'pure of heart' as Kara is, with no wrong, no ulterior motive and completely selfless, but there were touching moments when she and Lois discuss such things, and even more when Kara tries to teach Clark to fly on top of the windmill in Smallville - it's like the scene in 'Star Trek: Insurrection' where Anij teaches Picard to slow down time and live in the moment, this time a butterfly the emblem for Clark to concentrate on instead of trying to block out all the noise super-hearing curses him with. It's a beautiful moment, but it is just a moment that he's soaring up into the air, because like the apostle Peter walking on the water, he suddenly looks down and loses faith, plummeting through the roof of the barn and proving he's not yet ready to face the evil. The person really affected by this week's theme of identity (and if they hadn't already used that title it would have been perfect for this one), is Oliver Queen, who, like Lana Lang, talks to his dead parents, recognising a resolve in himself that he can no longer accept others risking themselves for him. It culminates in his announcement to a group of reporters that he is, in fact, Green Arrow, much to Lois' surprise, since she went to all the trouble of setting Godfrey up to prevent the final chapter of his book (where he unmasks Arrow), from being published. But Oliver feels that it's the only way, although I have to suggest that the whole purpose of having a secret identity is to protect those around you!
Still, it is a touching decision to reach, mainly from his experience with Chloe - Lois thinks Chloe will be back, and I, like Oliver, hope so too, as it wouldn't be fair to finish out the series without her. There are things that prevent the episode from quite reaching its potential, with some convenient shortcuts for Clark and Kara to come to Lois' aid: they don't know that Godfrey is the host of the darkness, but they see him talking on TV and can hear that his voice sounds evil, or something! Then they look on news feeds and find a shot of him going to a club and it just so happens that Clark sees a shot of Lois as the chauffeur! Totally ridiculous, and they could have come up with an organic way for them to discover her situation and Godfrey's. Not that taking easy shortcuts is a new thing on the series, it's all about that, one reason it's rarely satisfactory. But even saying that I'd give this the accolade of being the best of the three episodes so far, even though by a small margin, for its good character scenes.
That doesn't mean I didn't notice the poor quality of the CGI, which definitely has the air of being done on the cheap this season, whether it was Kara holding up the sign (which almost turned into a fabulous save by Clark), to the cloud of ravens smashing through Godfrey's window, to Clark and Kara on top of the windmill - it all looked fake, and I don't think it's just the time it was made. It's probably also why the main cast has been stripped down to four (Tom Welling, Erica Durance, Cassidy Freeman, who doesn't appear this episode, and Justin Hartley), which I at first thought was so they could have recurring characters more often, but now I suspect is also a budgetary move to make a tenth season viable. You can tell that things, which they're trying to do big, are looking ever smaller, like the rally for Godfrey's book with its small audience, Clark and Lois talking off to the side so as to disguise the scale of it, and a number of scenes like that where things were very focused in. Ironic, then, that it's the small, personal moments that make this close to being a good episode: Clark and Kara on the windmill, Oliver talking to his parents, and Lois and Kara discussing whether a super-person needs anyone else. If they concentrated on these moments instead of being tied up with bombast and the expectations of fights and large scale action, the series would be much improved.
**
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