Tuesday, March 29, 2016

Supergirl 1x18 Review: "World’s Finest" (Cuteness on Infinite Earths) [Contributor: Deborah MacArthur]


“World’s Finest”
Original Airdate: March 28, 2016

I think it’s amusing to imagine this crossover happening with any of the other DC shows out there right now, and how things would not have meshed as well as Supergirl and The Flash do. It’s always kind of baffling when The Flash crosses over with its sibling-show, Arrow, because the tones of the two shows are so different. Arrow is brooding, dark, perpetually rainy and desaturated while The Flash has a lot more brightness to it, more humor, and more lighthearted plots. Even though we know that — literally, in-story — Supergirl and The Flash don’t belong to the same universe, the way they blend together is natural and terrifically fun to watch. The tone of the shows go well together, the lighting and coloring of the shows go well together, and (this is the most important bit) Kara and Barry go amazingly well together.

For those of you who don’t read my The Flash reviews: I do this thing at the end of every review where I choose a puppy GIF that best represents Barry’s emotional state for the episode, on account of the fact that Barry Allen is a human-shaped puppy made of angel giggles and the sun’s rays at Golden Hour. Kara also exhibits decidedly puppy-like qualities. The two of them together? Too much puppy to be represented by one single GIF, so be warned of multiple adorable GIFs in the following review. It still doesn’t do justice to exactly how adorable this super-duo was throughout this episode, but I suppose we’ll have to settle for what we can get.

KARA AND BARRY


The first hurdle in any crossover event is always “How can we get these characters to meet each other?” and Supergirl tackles that by just, you know, having the Flash coincidentally swoop in as Kara is blasted out of the window of the CatCo office building by Siobhan’s banshee shriek. Is it a million-to-one chance that Barry would transport to that place, at that time, and have enough forethought to actually catch the woman randomly falling from the sky? Yeah, you bet it is. Do I care that something so astronomically unlikely happened? Nope. Not if it gets these two adorable dorks together as instant BFFs.


Well, first Kara has to get over the disorientation caused by Siobhan’s scream and realize that a strange, superhero-suited individual showed up out of nowhere. Barry lists a bunch of other CW heroes — none of whom exist in the Supergirl universe — and realizes that, oops, he’s zipped his way onto a different Earth. Earth-3, everybody! Barry enlists Kara’s help in tracking down people with the know-how to get him back to his Earth, but there’s no S.T.A.R Labs and no S.T.A.R Labs technicians. A world without Cisco Ramon? I’d want to leave, too.

The mission to return Barry home is interrupted by Siobhan breaking Livewire out of her DEO prison in order to kill Supergirl, Cat Grant, and — from Siobhan’s perspective — Kara Danvers. Because apparently that’s what Siobhan needs to do in order to get rid of the banshee curse that was put on all the women in her family, and she’s instantly okay with committing murder because she’s clearly a sociopath. Seriously, her aunt tells her that using the scream erodes her soul or whatever but she only used it a few times and still lands on “murder in the first degree” as the only solution to her problems. Aaaaand Winn wants to date this woman, why?

Supergirl and the Flash team up to stop Livewire and Siobhan — now calling herself Silver Banshee — but a lack of proper planning means their first attempt goes awry. Apparently, Kara has been low on the planning and high on the desperation ever since the city turned against her, and her “let’s just go do it, it’ll be fine!” approach to superheroics isn’t exactly the best one when they’re dealing with two fairly powerful enemies. This screw-up is very embarrassing for our heroes.


They survive to try again, however! It’s a good thing, too, since Cat Grant gets kidnapped and used as bait to get Supergirl and the Flash to some park, where Livewire and Siobhan are waiting to kill them. Livewire can literally go anywhere there’s electricity — why does she give her enemy warning, thus giving them time to regroup and think up a plan (and devise earplugs to protect against her new ally’s power) when she could sneak-attack them through computers? Eh. Moving on.

In a little twist of the way these things usually go, it’s not Supergirl or the Flash who save the day (though Kara is the one who saves Cat Grant, specifically) but the citizens of National City, who realize the error of their Supergirl-shunning ways and rise up to stop the attack against their hero. Some firemen blast Livewire with a hose, dousing her powers and catching Siobhan up in the electricity spike at the same time, and help Supergirl to her feet. It’s unbelievably cheesy. It’s so cheesy that the scene should have been preceded by a Viewer Discretion Is Advised warning to anyone who suffers from lactose intolerance. But I don’t really care, because occasionally I enjoy some cheese in my superhero shows and at least this means the city’s not against Supergirl anymore.

It proves that they are still unbelievably fickle, of course, but they’re no longer against her.

With the villains’ villainous activities stopped and the villains themselves in jail (actual jail, not a secret DEO underground prison, because Barry somehow gave National City the technology required to keep metahumans locked up) all that’s left is getting Barry home. Barry figures that, with his speed and Kara’s strength/speed combined, he could possibly cause a dimensional breach that would send him back to his Earth. I’m not so sure how he could pinpoint exactly which Earth he’d be sent to, but, whatever. Puppies running in a field!


After saying goodbye to his new BFF, Barry goes home. I try my hardest not to think about the fact that these two darlings can never check in with each other or talk about silly things or be proper BFFs again because they’re separated by differently-vibrating realities. Who else just wants to go ahead and assume that Cisco’s going to devise something that allows Barry to Skype to other Earths and Kara will be the first buddy he adds to his contacts list? Because I’m adopting that as my headcanon and you can’t stop me.

NO MORE PUPPY GIFS


Here is where the puppy GIFs have to end, sadly, because although we get one final bit of adorable when Kara invites James over to her apartment so they can just kiss already, it’s really terrible timing. As soon as they kiss, James gets a dazed look on his face and walks out of Kara’s apartment without a word. Kara is understandably confused by this, but goes to her window to see that James isn’t the only one who has entered a zombie-like state. It looks like a huge portion, if not all, of National City’s population is being mind-controlled by Non and his evil Kryptonian cohorts.

“Myriad” has been activated.

Krypto-Bits:
  • "Last night, I helped a family assemble their IKEA table!" Kara is a true hero.
  • "How many Earths are there, other than this one?" Infinite Earths, Kara! Infinite! There was a crisis once!
  • Okay, I know I have a history of hating on Winn but his excited hugging of Kara while Barry tried to explain the multiverse was really cute.
  • "[An Earth] where all of us are evil!" "Been there. It sucks."
  • Did Barry steal those ice creams?
  • "So, you're a superhero too?" "Mhmm." "That's cool, I guess." Haha, I thought I was going to hate jealous!James because jealousy is a really terrible plot device, but he's so dopey about the jealousy that I actually enjoyed it.
  • "I have traveled through time before, by accident." "That's cool!" Winn is such a Barry fanboy throughout this whole episode, and it's beautiful.
  • "You like donuts?" "Who doesn't like donuts?" Kara's giddy joy at having a superfriend is also beautiful.
  • "Jealousy! Thy name is Olsen." For real though, thank you writers for this crush-free Winn. I wish this had been the character we'd gotten the entire time, because then I wouldn't have said so many mean things about him.
  • "National City may have lost faith in Supergirl, but I haven't." Aw!
  • "Wait, you have a sisterrrr?" Cutest line read of the episode. Series? Both series? Ever?
  • Another thing I'm really grateful about in this episode: James and Lucy having a mature talk about their relationship and how both of them really messed up the whole thing. She shouldn't have followed him to National City after their breakup, he shouldn't have gotten into a relationship with her when he had feelings for someone else.
  • "I see bad guys love their abandoned warehouses on your Earth too, huh?"
  • I'm imagining a hilarious makeover montage involving Livewire convincing Siobhan that no, no, the zombie look is totally cool. I'll steal you some silver colored contacts and grey hair dye, it'll be awesome.
  • "What do you say we step away from the nice lady, settle this like women?" ... "What? There are more of you guys here than me." I love Barry Allen so much. He’s the hero we want, deserve, and need.
  • Hey, Supergirl writers: LET CAT GRANT KNOW ABOUT KARA BEING SUPERGIRL.
  • For a second there, I thought that the show was going to pull the "Kryptonian amnesia-kiss" and got really scared. But nah, just an evil mind control plot! Whew.

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