DC TV Recap Round-Up, Week 21: Supergirl is Back!

7 May

Welcome back! We’re down to really the last time we’ll get to recap more than two DC TV superhero shows this season (hence the really awkward schedule coming up for the remainder of this season’s run of recaps), with The Flash, the return of Supergirl, and the season finale of Black Lightning! With that, let’s get to the recaps!

“Shadow of Death: The Book of War”

The whole Pierce clan and Gamby are in hiding in a cabin, while Jefferson recovers from his near permanent death experience. After a rather emotional pep talk from his dad in a dream, Jefferson revives, but somehow is out of electrical powers! This is one piece of bad news, the other being Proctor sending a strike force in to recover some or all the Pierce clan to be experimented on. Jennifer saves the day again by using her energy powers to recharge her dad, and the family manages to take down Proctor’s team.

Proctor has his own problems beside Black Lightning and family, as in Tobias making moves to lay siege to Proctor’s base of operations. Proctor flees to the frozen metahumans he has to move and eventually restart his operation, only to run into Black Lightning and a fatal bullet to the chest from Gamby. With that all taken care of, the Pierce family can finally go home and be an actual family again! Well, there’s still Tobias, who has some secret briefcase from Proctor that has something to do with those frozen metahumans, so we’ll see how that plays into next season.

This family deserves the rest a summer break brings.

–Who didn’t get a little teary eyed at that dream reunion with Jefferson and his dad? I mean, that almost broke me.

–Lala became a suicide bomb (hard to find a bomb inside someone’s body), but I don’t think we’ve seen the last of him.

–So the metahuman kids are now exposed and maybe will get the treatment they deserve…until Tobias screws that up next season.

–That flashback to how Jefferson’s powers finally kicked in after his father’s death was a nice way to get the episode started.

–“We’re literally walking down memory lane, and this isn’t helping us!”

–“‘The laws of convention and morality do not apply to me’. That’s Napoleon, and he was a weak ass Frenchman.”

–“We always paranoid until the truth comes out.”

“Schott Through The Heart”

We get a Winn-centric episode (remember when he had something to do on this show besides being the tech guy?) as he learns at maybe the worst time and place (a karaoke show) that his father, the murderous Toyman, has died in prison. This brings on an awkward reunion with his estranged mom, Mary, and a surprise at the Toyman’s funeral when it seems he may not have played his last game yet. But if the Toyman is really dead, then who is behind the attacks on the remainder of the Schott family? Our baddie is revealed to be a prison guard who become one of the Toyman’s disciples, and is using her teacher’s “toys” to attack Winn and Mary.

Eventually our Super crew defeats this Toyman groupie, with mother and son Schott patching things up with each other. In other stories, we learn J’Onn’s dad is behaving oddly, which we discover is because he’s suffering from the equivalent of Martian dementia. And as for Jimmy Olsen (you remember him, because sometimes I don’t think the show does), he’s been missing spending time with Lena Luthor. Well, there’s a good reason for that only we know about: she’s holding Sam/Reign in some high tech hospital room! The things you have to do for your executive employees when they happen to also be Worldkillers!

Life size Supergirl with extra cuteness sold separately.

“Super cuteness” sold separately.

–Never a minus when you have Oscar nominee Laurie Metcalf appear as Winn’s mom, but another fun guest star is Brooke Smith as Toyman’s disciple, who you might recognize from The Silence of the Lambs, Grey’s Anatomy, and a favorite genre film of mine, Series 9.

–That was an interesting if brief discussion about how our Martian buddies are pretending to be black men on Earth. It’s maybe a bit too on-the-nose, but it’s a talk worth having.

–We learn more on the Legion’s mission to stop the Blight in their era: they intentionally came to Kara’s time (albeit with that unintended pit stop into further back into time) to destroy the cause of the Blight, being the unseen Worldkiller called Pestilence.

–We all could live on Alex’s drunken rendition of “I Drove All Night”, couldn’t we?”

–I don’t know what “cape tricks” are, but I’m not sure I want to know.

–“Karaoke is not for the weak. It requires either great courage or a complete lack of shame. But I like it.”

–“When was your last tetanus shot?” “Mom, recently! I’m very cautious.”

–“THIS is your job? THIS?!”

“Lose Yourself”

Before we get to the big fireworks of this episode, let’s discuss Harry and his addiction to that thinking cap of his. He swears to stop using it, but ends up loading it up with dark matter and after an overload, well he seems okay (that we can tell now). Now finally, the Team tracks down the final bus metahuman, a hippie type who can breach into other pocket dimensions, like say the one where The Thinker’s lab is. With that guy being found and Harry putting together a sonic tuning fork to disable the overpowered DeVoe, Ralph thinks it’s time to end DeVoe permanently by killing this bad guy!

As you can guess, this only plays into DeVoe’s plans, because while the meta people on Team Flash head to the Thinker’s lair, DeVoe and his wife pay a visit to STAR Labs to power drain the other bus metas in custody. Our heroes arrive only to lose all the bus metas they have, including Ralph (!), who becomes the new host body for DeVoe! Add to that and the aforementioned Harry thinking cap feedback, Caitlin’s confrontation with DeVoe leaves her unable to bring out Killer Frost again! So yeah, Team Flash had an EPIC fail this episode.

RIP Ralph Dibny. In some cases, you weren’t annoying.

–The unexpected side effect of all that training Barry gave Ralph throughout the season pays out in a perverse way when DeVoe uses that face changing ability of Ralph to turn himself into the actual Clifford DeVoe! Curse him!

–Killer Frost leaves post-it notes for Caitlin. At least she’s having a cordial chat with her other self before all the bad stuff happens.

–Speaking of Caitlin, her and Iris get stabbed pretty hard in this episode and still live! I mean, that’s stamina right there!

–Also, Joe versus a samurai robot…and Joe wins. As if you thought he couldn’t do that.

–Ralph’s response to that giant T-Rex from this season popping up again: “I really hate sequels.”

–“‘Caitlin, I got blood on my suit. Don’t worry, it’s not ours.'”

–“My Big Belly punch card. I’m only five away from a free kids meal.”

NEXT TIME: We get two weeks worth of recaps, with The Flash as Barry recruits help in protecting metahuman Fallout and DeVoe may face betrayal on the eve of his grand scheme being implemented; and Supergirl deals with J’Onn needing to help stop his dementia riddled father’s psychic attacks and Kara facing off against the Worldkiller known as Pestilence!