Wednesday, May 3, 2017

Supergirl - Alex


While the show's B-story continues to slowly develop a relationship between Lena Luther (Katie McGrath) and Rhea (Teri Hatcher) leading into the show's season finale, most of "Alex" is devoted to the abduction of Kara's (Melissa Benoist) sister by a childhood acquaintance who discovered her secret and now hopes to leverage it to get Supergirl to break his father (Gregg Henry) out of prison. How far will Supergirl go to save her sister?

Superman, and to a slightly lesser extent Supergirl, stories can be hard to write. When you are dealing with a nearly unstoppable hero the threats either have to be equally powerful or have a strong emotional and psychological thread. One of the most common Superman stories isn't about what the Man of Steel can do but what he should do. "Alex" delves into this water as Kara finds her powers useless in the search for her sister and, much like Alex's (Chyler Leigh) girlfriend, has to think of other ways to save a loved one.

While Rick Malverne (David Hoflin) isn't that memorable a villain, his knowledge of Kara and Alex and the time spent into creating a proper death trap does work to ratchet up the tension. Of course there are plenty of plotholes here that aren't really dealt with including how our villain disables and redirects Alex's tracker, why he is immune to mind control, why J'onn (David Harewood) can't find Alex's mind in the city, and why Winn (Jeremy Jordan) isn't able to trace the live video feeds of Alex's cell back to their original source. Kara and Maggie (Floriana Lima) butting heads about the best way to find Alex also adds some fuel to the fire as well.

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