Superheroes! They are dark and vengeful and their lives are full of miserable carnage. Or carnivorous misery. I dunno. Point is, superheroes are existentially dismal and violent. So when Supergirl teamed up with the Flash, it was just an orgy of death and angst. Oh wait. No, it wasn’t.
Spoilers ahead…
Seriously, the latest episode of Supergirl was the greatest thing ever. The only complaint I have is that it emphasised that the Flash was visiting from another universe — which means the two heroes can’t just cross over constantly, and Supergirl can’t just show up on Arrow to deal with all of Oliver’s weird random villains. We will never see Supergirl take down Cupid. It is sad.
Actually, my other complaint about last night’s episode is that it was somewhat overstuffed. The writers felt the need to try and resolve the whole “National City doesn’t trust Supergirl any more after she turned evil” thing, as well as the “James Olson inexplicably doesn’t want to be with Supergirl, even though he’s totally in love with her” thing, all in one hour. Which meant that there was an ending that came out of nowhere — right after the episode spent a lot of time telling us that Supergirl would have to be patient and take it slow, and wait for people to change their minds about her, and it would take a lot of time.
It felt cheap and random. But back to why this was the funnest episode ever. First off, we get Cat Grant giving her ’90s dating advice: Kara should be a lighthouse and shine her light, and make James Olson jealous, and use The Rules, and then James Olson will come to her. And there are a few funny bits in which Supergirl obsesses about how nobody trusts her any more, no matter how hard she works:
And then the real fun starts. The Flash comes to Supergirl, crossing over from his own universe, and catches Kara after Silver Banshee tosses her out the window. Leading to the Flash trying to put out a fire on Kara’s chest without touching her boobs:
I love how her sweater was on fire for ages but is apparently totally fireproof. She’s wearing an asbestos sweater — maybe after she set all her sweaters on fire under the influence of Red Kryptonite, she went out and bought extra flame-retardant ones.
And then Kara is all like, I gotta get back to the city. The Flash still thinks he’s dealing with an ordinary human, until…
Also great? The long explanation of the multiverse, like the Earth where the Nazis won World War II, and the Earth where we’re all evil — the Flash visited that Earth, and it sucked. But wait, asks a randomly jealous James Olson — how does the Flash move fast enough to visit other universes? Ummm….
The look on Kara’s face when she realises she’s holding an ice cream cone is my favourite. My absolute favourite. But did the Flash steal an ice cream from someone else? This is a serious question!
But even the Flash cannot stand up to the withering CG-enhanced stare of Cat Grant, who is calling him Supergirl’s sidekick and making up silly names for him:
All of the stuff with Supergirl and Flash bonding over superhero stuff is great. The Flash’s advice about just slowing down and letting stuff happen is great. All of the teamwork is great. Just bloody fantastic.
Oh, and I almost forgot the best line of the evening: “Let’s settle this like women.” Because the superhero/supervillain throwdown is mostly female, and the Flash is being statistically accurate. GO FLASH.
The Flash is just so stoked to be hanging out with an alien. He loves her spaceship!
My favourite bit? The Flash’s reaction to Supergirl’s “cunning plan”:
85 per cent chance of punching! ! ! ! ! !!! ! !!1 111 1!!
Oh yeah, so this episode does have villains. In fact, a villain teamup to go with the hero teamup. Siobhan Smythe randomly turns out to have banshee powers because of a family curse, as she learns from her magical aunt who uses the word “Muggle” non-ironically. So she decides to break Livewire out of the DEO sciencell so they can team up:
And then Livewire is all like, “You need a makeover.”
Inexplicably, this is not followed by a montage of Siobhan coming out of a dressing room over and over again while Livewire keeps shaking her head at outfit after outfit, to the tune of “She Bop” by Cyndi Lauper. Why not? Because fate is cruel.
Instead, Siobhan’s makeover is kind of hideous, alas.
Winn — who has gotten a LOT more watchable now that his “crush on Supergirl” storyline is dead and dusted — has an actually touching moment where he tries to bond with Siobhan, as two people whose fathers turned out to be shitty. But Siobhan has already had her evil makeover and it’s too late to reason with her.
Anyway, Silver Banshee and Livewire take Cat Grant prisoner, and this leads to an ending that I both love and hate. I kind of love that ordinary people step up and decide to save Supergirl, because I love that kind of shit. I loved the construction workers helping Spidey in Amazing Spider-Man. I love ordinary people coming forward to support their heroes. It’s great. But here, it feels a little unearned. And Flash gets sidelined.
I do love the hunky firefighters with their hose and everything. Also, Livewire being like “I HATE HELICOPTERS” was hilarious, because of course Cat Grant put her on traffic copter duty.
Also, Supergirl gets taken down way too easily by just a bit of electrocution. Jeez, she’s got Kryptonian invulnerability. But again, I also love as well as hate that ending.
And then, Supergirl has to help Flash go home to his own universe — with a race!
And then Kara kisses James Olson, but he’s brainwashed, yadda yadda. Whatever. I was rooting for James and Kara to get together until they dragged it out so much, and did this weird “James is jealous because Kara has a new super-friend” thing, which was overplayed and silly. James is better than that. Oh, and James is brainwashed because everyone in National City is brainwashed, because those evil Kryptonians, who are the slowest bastards on the planet at activating an evil plan, have finally gotten off their tuchuses and launched their fiendish scheme for world domination. FINALLY.
But all in all, this was a balm to our souls, and it felt as though the Flash was handing each of us, personally, our own ice cream cone.