DC Recap Round-Up 2, Week 2: Supergirl Flies Back In!

20 Oct

Welcome back! This season of DC TV shows is revving up now, because Supergirl is back now, along with The Flash and Black Lightning. Legends of Tomorrow will be back next time around, so we got four shows to cover weekly until the holidays (which will be a little more work than expected, but hey, them’s the breaks). With that being said, let’s get to the Recap Round-Up at hand…

“American Alien”

So we return to National City as our core group of heroes are adjusting to the mess of last season. Kara is being super heroic, Alex is in charge of the DEO, J’onn is helping out his fellow alien immigrants, James might be facing charges against him for his time as The Guardian, and Brainy is learning to adjust to the past as he basically is upgraded Winn now. Meantime, there is a string of brutal attacks against aliens by some former associates of Cadmus, the brother/sister duo of Mercy and Otis Graves, and Kara is trying to figure out what is behind them. Short answer: the duo is planning an attack on President Marsdin!

While Kara and company stop the attack and take in Otis, it’s revealed the operation had an ulterior motive in exposing the President as an alien herself! And Mercy seems to be following some kind of creepy alien-hating guy in a metal face mask (we’ll call him Creepy Face Mask Guy for now). Meantime, Lena uses her prison time meetings with her mother to get secrets that Lena uses to get James off the hook with the D.A. (and James of course is unaware of this backdoor deal his girlfriend just did for him). Oh, and you remember that weird Kara clone we saw at the end of last season? She seems to be doing some work punching through rock underground with some Russian military people, so that’s…something, I guess?

Uh-oh, she’s about to read the negative comments about the back half of last season, so brace yourselves…

–They mention Superman is off world at Argo City, but that won’t last long, I think. At least until the big Arrowverse crossover this December…

–Kara becomes a mentor to a new reporter at CatCo, Nia, who seems like Kara was when she started. I recommend reading up on who was cast as Nia (mostly because I can’t do the story justice in the time I got here), because it is an amazing story.

–Also, we learn Sam and Ruby (you remember those two from last season, right?) are off in the northeast still working for Lena, but whatever.

–Brainy dressing up like Winn to make his point with Alex subconsciously wanting him to be like her currently future bound friend and colleague was a nice point.

–J’onn seems to be sticking to the sidelines as moral support right now, but is that going to change when he finds out his alien friend who ran those alien group therapy sessions got killed by Creepy Face Mask Guy?

–So based on that promise by the D.A. to arrest Guardian if he ever suits up again, does that mean we’re done with that James storyline? I hope so.

–“OK. STILL vengeful.”

–“Don’t give me that look like you want to officiate at my wedding!”

“Blocked”

Barry is back to being a CSI for Central City, and his first big case back is an odd one: a metahuman known as Block who has turned a arms dealer into a rather compact cube of meat, bones, and flesh. Nora is wanting to help out, but it becomes clear after her and Barry’s first encounter with Block fails, Nora has a lot to learn about being an effective hero. She gets her chance when Block is seeking to unload the illegal weapons she stole from her compacted competition, and realizes the way to stop Block before Barry becomes a crushed in Flash cube. So they beat the bad guy…and then a lightning bolt blade kills Block! Our mystery villain from the end of last episode has shown up.

You see, what Team Flash doesn’t know that Iris is investigating throughout the episode is that Gridlock from last episode had his powers drained and was beaten to death by our baddie. And when Cisco and Ralph stop in to help, our bad guy uses his blade to temporarily suck away their powers, leaving them open for quite a beating. It’s only Nora calling out for her dad that stops our bad guy, before he flees. We then learn what Nora has realized: our bad guy is mentioned in the Flash Museum as a villain called Cicada (based on the insect noise he gives off). And based on Nora’s reaction, this is bad news.

Good news is they can easily carry the body around after making a trip to the Container Store.

–Joe gets to hand out advice this episode: to Iris, who is still weirded out her future kid doesn’t want to talk to her over Barry; and then there’s Camille, whose psychic connection to her child is vanishing. And yeah, one of those advice giving sessions brings in the feels.

–Cisco faces up to his breakup with Gypsy with Ralph’s 27 steps to getting over the love of your life. Here’s the best screenshot I could get of that list:

Not sure how “Shark cage diving” ended up in the first slot, but I’m curious about the others not mentioned (not sure how watching Beaches and painting your toe nails helps), like “goat yoga”.

–Also, Caitlin finally caves in to wanting to find her presumed dead father, and thanks to Cisco vibing, learns it has something to do with her mother.

–Cicada has a job at some industrial plant or something. Some people need to take two jobs these days.

–“Ralphy is kind. Ralphy is great. Ralphy is a brilliant detective.”

–“Cut the hair and I’ll cut you.”

–“I don’t even think we have some of those words yet.”

“The Book of Consequences, Chapter Two: Black Jesus Blues”

We got some problems with the pod people this episode, as several of them prematurely wake up, one dying immediately from the release of their energy powers, and the other escaping in a psychotic haze using wind power. Jefferson and Anissa have to track down the unstable pod person, but also find themselves dealing with their own issues. Anissa falls for a singer who ends up giving her a little too big of an ego boost; while Jefferson hears he has been demoted to a teacher in Garfield High under his replacement, a white man. Jennifer is trying to figure out how to deal with her powers when Khalil shows up, who is facing some heat for failing to be there when Tobias lost Cyonide and got attacked by Kara. She can’t really talk to him right now to mend any bridges burned, and that puts that story on the back burner.

Tobias is also keeping busy by eliminating people connected to the murder of Jefferson’s dad, and planning to get into the business of making metahumans into a lucrative business. Lynn has to parent one metahuman, whose powers of making others reveal inner truths goes as well as can be expected when he’s brought to the Pierce home for a family dinner (in other words, really awkwardly). Jefferson finds our unstable metahuman and brings her back into the pods to recover, but Anissa blowing off that search causes a bit of tension between father and daughter heroes. Lots of plots moving slowly this time, but we do learn something fascinating: those superpowers the Pierce sisters have is subduing any cramps. Say what you will, that must be nice.

“Time to juice you up! Okay, I’m just testing out catch phrases, so just let me know if that works.”

–Yeah that final scene was corny, but it worked. Also, the second I heard the new principal was named Mike Lowry, I thought, “You mean the one from Bad Boys?”, only to hear he’s white and those weird dreams of a Black Lightning/Bad Boys crossover sink away.

–Love how Jefferson grills Anissa about whether her recent ego trip is going to get her into making a Thunder Instagram or Twitter account.

–No sign of Kara this episode, but that’s probably because she’s still recovering from that harpoon to the gut. And also that fall out of Tobias’ penthouse.

–Bill Duke’s government stooge is clearly testing Lynn, and probably setting her up for colossal failure.

–Anissa’s GF from the middle of last season returns, and it’s clear she’s an ex-GF now after she sees Anissa get frisky with that singer.

–“What are you lookin’ at, body bag boy?”

–“Those who dare…win.”

–“Thank you for teaching…me.”

NEXT TIME: The Legends of Tomorrow return with a trip to Woodstock, Supergirl deals with the reveal of the President being an alien, The Flash face off against Cicada, and Black Lightning has Jefferson contending with being under the thumb of a new principal!