DC Recap Round-Up 2, Week 14: Fins VS. Paws!

10 Mar

Welcome back! We’re coming back to a somewhat regular schedule again on this recap round-up, and this time around we got two episodes of Supergirl, and new episodes of The Flash and Black Lightning (all of which got renewed for another season recently, by the way). So, let’s jump right in…

“Menagerie”

Both Kara and Alex find themselves on two different investigations: for Alex, it’s finding a recent alien arrival that is ripping out human hearts; for Kara, it’s helping J’onn on one of his investigations to find a missing alien advocate. Both of them find their cases collide when the alien advocate is murdered by our heart-ripping alien, who is a parasite attached to a jewel thief called Menagerie. While all of this is going on, Ben Lockwood’s kid is instigating the Children of Liberty to hunt down Menagerie, which is some bad parenting. Also, Nia is finally starting to learn how to be a hero, which involves getting a super suit to help Kara and company stop Menagerie.

In other news, Lena is contacted by the government to license her superhuman program to them, and that causes James to leave her again when she decides to accept. The President manages to find a loophole to deal with Ben Lockwood, which is to…release him from prison? Also, while Menagerie is in prison, she gets a welcome letter from…Manchester Black? I have a very bad feeling about this…

I hate snakes. Especially those coming out of people’s necks.

–That the final fight with Menagerie takes place at a Heart Association banquet is an irony not lost on anyone.

–Alex looks like she might restart her life after that meet up at that Valentine’s Day party, which she can be forgiven for putting on hold with all the mess of this season so far.

–I still don’t know how that mind wipe really affected Alex in the long term, but her need to overprotect Kara showed a bit.

–Hey, did CatCo get a new paint job or something? Just noticing something different about the place.

–“Apparently every song is her jam.”

“What’s So Funny About Truth, Justice, and the American Way?”

Unlike that whole “faux Kara in Russia” plotline (yeah, that’s still going on, apparently), it doesn’t take long for the previous episode tease of Manchester Black coming back to come to fruition. He escapes from prison with the help of a metahuman buddy with a bowler hat and one of those assassin aliens from earlier this season, and takes Menagerie with him to form a group to destroy anti-alien stuff, like the Children of Liberty (more on them later). This group, “The Elite”, is not cool with Kara and the gang, and things only get worse when The Elite plan to attack a secret military project to install a satellite to shoot down aliens that want to arrive on Earth. Despite the quandary at hand (saving aliens from being murdered by the military versus stopping The Elite, who are murdering to protect aliens), Kara realizes that either way, she’ll need help fighting Manchester Black’s new group.

To that end, she recruits the help of J’Onn, Brainy, and Nia to stop the Elite’s plan, which is revealed not to so much destroy the satellite, but to use the satellite to destroy the White House! Good thing Alex stops by to give Kara that super suit from earlier this season, otherwise the White House would be incinerated. Unfortunately President Baker doesn’t see this as a positive, since she also destroyed the satellite doing it, and decides to make recently released Ben Lockwood/Citizen Liberty head of Alien Affairs for the country! With the Elite still on the loose and Ben making clear he’s still in charge of the Children of Liberty, we are looking at a big pot boiling over soon.

“I got my own band of super-friends! I even got a song about them!” Everyone: “WE KNOW!”

–The Elite is actually something I’ve been waiting to see here, as it’s the main thrust of one of the great Superman comic book stories of recent memory (where the episode’s title gets its name from). Not sure it will end like that book.

–Something is fishy with the President, especially when you discover Colonel Haley didn’t know about the satellite and Lena is staying super hush about the details of the superpower experiments. Well that and appointing Ben to that government position, and I have a feeling that Baker may not be President for much longer.

–Regarding Ben, being challenged for control of the Children of Liberty after appearing to a few regional leaders for selling out to the President seemed inevitable. Probably less obvious was Ben beating one of them to death with his Citizen Liberty mask. Challenge answered!

–Manchester turns out to troll Kara royally this episode, mocking her dramatic superhero pose and giving her grief about not using doors to enter places.

–Brainy has some beef with Kelex, the robot helper at the Fortress of Solitude. Robots can have cattiness too.

–“Outmatched by a friggin’ hat!”

–“Like or subscribe!”

–“Brainy told me. (Pause) We have brunch.”

“King Shark vs. Gorilla Grodd”

Needing a willing test subject for the metahuman cure, they come to the imprisoned King Shark to ask if he wants to be cured (thanks to a special mind enhancing helmet made by his wife in this reality, because if you don’t remember, King Shark is from Earth-2). But somehow, he escapes and Barry injects him with the cure anyway. The cure works, turning Shark back to normal, but the rest of the Team is uncertain about their boss doing that injection against what they all agreed.They don’t have time to argue it out though because they discover the reason King Shark freaked out was because his mind was being tampered with by…an escaped Gorilla Grodd! Grodd wants that mind enhanced to boost his mind control powers exponentially!

While Barry and Iris try to fight Grodd, Shay (the human before King Shark) decides he needs to return to being King Shark to fight Grodd, as he can resist Grodd’s mind control. They fight, and Grodd is defeated, but it’s at a cost: King Shark may never be able to return to normal as a result of reactivating the dark matter inside of him. Meanwhile, this experience has made Barry rethink what he did to King Shark earlier and suggest an bold idea: offer the cure to Cicada instead. I’m gonna guess the answer is going to be: NO.

It’s a rumble in the urban jungle!

–Meanwhile, Joe is back! And he turns out to be helpful in helping Iris deal with her anxieties about being attacked by Cicada. Good to see you back, Papa West.

–So, I guess if the next few episodes are just set on standing sets (or why the last few ones were effects light), we know why now. It wasn’t a long throwdown between Grodd and Shark, but it was a good one. Plus, props to whoever figured out hanging King Shark upside down would knock him unconscious. Biology research at work!

–Can’t help but feel sympathy for King Shark as he ends the episode locked in that tank. On the other hand, his wife from another reality is there for him, which is kind of sweet.

–So just keep Grodd in a coma, huh? Killing him is not an option at ARGUS, I guess, huh?

–“No stranger than waking up to find out your son was actually your daughter.” Sick burn, Lyla.

–Of course there’s always a “but” in these meetings.

“The Book of Secrets, Chapter Four: Original Sin”

You remember Lala, the criminal who turned into a resurrected super killer in season one, right? Well, Jefferson has a crappy time after school when Lala comes calling on Jefferson, wanting to fill in the blanks on the death of a friend of his who was murdered in Garfield High. This long conversation via gun pointed at Jefferson leads Lala to remember he allowed his friend to die at the behest of Tobias when the friend wanted out of The One Hundred. Lala leaves, planning to seek revenge against the man who helped him become the monster he is now.

Meantime, Anissa is still looking for Grace, only to find someone else who doesn’t want Grace to be found, but also is Grace (she can shape shift, apparently). Jennifer gets to test out new supersuits with Gambi and learns practicality is more important than style. Lynn runs into some issues with her shady government handler when he suggests turning the remaining pod kids who got awakened into weapons for the government. She’ll and the rest of her family will probably blow a gasket when they discover that handler is also secretly surveying the Pierce family home!

Guaranteed Gambi has a picture of Jefferson in that with an afro.

–Choice song cut this episode: War’s “Slipping Into Darkness” as Lala reappears at Garfield.

–Fun to see Jefferson watch Lala’s reaction to those people he killed that Jefferson clearly can’t see. Also, props to him pulling that bullet out and cauterizing that bullet wound.

–So Grace can shape shift and also is…eating horses? Damn.

–I wonder why our shady government friend (the wonderful Bill Duke, by the way) killed his Pierce family surveillance team? Something shadier going on with him, no doubt.

–Not so much Tobias this week, but we’re probably going to see more of him in the last two episodes of the season coming up.

–“He wore that in public?”

NEXT TIME: Things start boiling over with The Elite and the Children of Liberty on Supergirl, a plan to stop Cicada hits a ethical roadblock on The Flash, we get a new hero suiting up on Black Lightning, and I’ll have my thoughts on the first few episodes of DC Universe’s Doom Patrol!