{"id":10322,"date":"2016-02-09T13:23:07","date_gmt":"2016-02-09T18:23:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/?p=10322"},"modified":"2016-03-01T13:57:34","modified_gmt":"2016-03-01T18:57:34","slug":"review-supergirl-s1-e13","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/2016\/02\/09\/review-supergirl-s1-e13\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: ‘Supergirl’ S1 E13"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"107726_wb_0182b\"<\/a><\/p>\n

After Supergirl<\/em>\u2019s cliffhanger last week, it was a little disorienting for Kara, as well as us viewers, to have the episode seemingly pick up somewhere else. However, it didn\u2019t take long for last week\u2019s monster to be revealed as a Black Mercy, a telepathic plant-squid hybrid that traps its host in its dream world while it (presumably) feeds off it.<\/p>\n

The Black Mercy is borrowed from a classic Superman<\/em> episode similarly entitled \u201cFor the Man Who Has Everything.\u201d While I haven\u2019t seen the Superman<\/em> episode that inspired this week\u2019s episode of Supergirl<\/em>, I have seen the Supernatural<\/em> episode that also rips off the same story. And though Supergirl<\/em>\u2019s attempt at this familiar storyline has its own good points, as I watched the episode I couldn\u2019t help but think that Supernatural<\/em> pulled it off much better.<\/p>\n

With Dean and Kara both trapped in their respective shows, Dean\u2019s struggle to accept reality was much more emotional, and therefore way more captivating for viewers. As soon as Dean wakes up in his virtual reality, he knows it isn\u2019t true, but he also doesn\u2019t fight it. He would rather stay in a place he knows is fiction because at least in this new place his mom is alive.<\/p>\n

Kara on the other hand also wakes up aware that things aren\u2019t right, but she immediately decides that she wants to go back to real life. I would have preferred to see Kara struggle the way that Dean did, with self-awareness but also desire to stay anyway.<\/p>\n

Another way that Supergirl<\/em>\u2019s rendition fell flat was that the episode spent so little time in Kara\u2019s dream but instead spent most of its time outside it where Alex, Hank, James, and Winn were trying to get Kara back.\u00a0That’s part of the reason this episode, which should have been heartbreaking to watch, felt so detached.\u00a0We didn\u2019t get to spend enough time with Kara in her dream watching her continue to struggle until she got to the point of complete acceptance.<\/p>\n

Kara\u2019s total 180 after what we assumed were days that had passed inside her hallucination was the only thing that saved the story. Seeing Kara have completely forgotten about her\u00a0regular life\u00a0filled me with sympathy for her that had otherwise been lacking throughout the the episode. I only wish we could have spent more time in her new reality to watch her get to that point.<\/p>\n

I feel like the writers think that since Cat is such a popular character that means she needs to be in every episode. I wish that they\u2019d decided not to include Cat in this episode so that they could have spent the time in Kara\u2019s dream that was instead wasted on doing nothing new with Cat. Though as usual Cat\u2019s scenes were saved by her one-liners.<\/p>\n

Some other high points of the episode that happened outside of Kara\u2019s consciousness was that sense of family that Supergirl<\/em> is always so great at delivering. One of my favorite themes of Supergirl<\/em> is that the family you choose is just as important as the family you\u2019re born into. There was so much of that theme throughout this episode with Winn and James there by Kara\u2019s unconscious side, and with Hank\u2019s dad-like overprotectiveness of Alex and Kara. It\u2019ll be interesting what dynamic this lands the three of them in once it\u2019s revealed that Hank covered for Alex after she killed one of the last members of Kara\u2019s real family.<\/p>\n

Overall it wasn\u2019t Supergirl<\/em>\u2019s worst episode by a longshot; I mean we did finally get to see Superman\u2019s face, after all. I do\u00a0believe that it could have maybe been broken up into two episodes, one that focused mainly on Kara\u2019s struggle within her virtual reality, and one that dealt with the ensuing battle once Kara got free. And though this episode didn\u2019t live up to its Supernatural<\/em> counterpart, it definitely managed to hold its own.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After Supergirl\u2019s cliffhanger last week, it was a little disorienting for Kara, as well as us viewers, to have the episode seemingly pick up somewhere else. However, it didn\u2019t take long for last week\u2019s monster to be revealed as a Black Mercy, a telepathic plant-squid hybrid that traps its host in its dream world while<\/p>\n

Read More<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":206,"featured_media":10323,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2405,2,176],"tags":[3299,3046,3298,2699,3271,1058,2661,600,2497,1023,1047],"class_list":{"0":"post-10322","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-comic-book-tv-shows","8":"category-television","9":"category-television-reviews","10":"tag-black-mercy","11":"tag-cat-grant","12":"tag-dean-winchester","13":"tag-hank-henshaw","14":"tag-kara-danvers","15":"tag-review","16":"tag-supergirl","17":"tag-superman","18":"tag-supernatural","19":"tag-television-2","20":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/206"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10322"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10322\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}