Supergirl S02 E19 – Excessive Force

Previously: Mind-control technology.
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Alex

Marines: Maggie and a bunch of cops are dealing with a hostage situations. Maggie is talking to the bad guys via phone, coaxing them to let the hostages go. Suddenly, Supergirl busts into the building, and a second later, she’s pulling the bad guys out, yelling at them about how fun it will be for them to tell the story of being apprehended by Supergirl once they are in jail.

Maggie walks over to Supergirl, seeming pretty bummed out that the bad guys were stopped. Supergirl does not pick up on any of this just is like “bye! See you at dinner!”

Samantha: It’s interesting to see cops having an identity crisis about being inept. Idk if Supergirl really qualifies for Traumaland, but these are definitely lolPD adjacent cops.

Mari: I mean, they showed up, which is better than 100% of Traumaland cops.

Dinner. Alex apparently burned something, so they ordered pizza. Everyone tries to make her feel better about her cooking failure. Mayo Mon El starts bragging about what a good job Supergirl did. Why do they even need cops in this city, am I right? Alex tries to smooth that over, seeing as how there’s a cop right there. Maggie doesn’t drop it, though. She sarcastically agrees that cops are totally useless and what good is 17 hours of hostage negotiation if Supergirl is just gonna swoop in and get the bad guys. Kara insists that all that matters is that the bad guys are captured, but Maggie disagrees. Recently, defense attorneys have been using the “Supergirl defense,” arguing things like excessive force, contaminated evidence and vigilante justice. Alex again tries to be the voice of reason: what Kara does is amazing when they are dealing with aliens. Maggie adds that real police work requires a more delicate touch. Today, Kara broke a guy’s arm and gave another a concussion, plus left a giant hole in the roof of a National City landmark. Kara won’t listen, even when Maggie says that she at least should’ve asked because she never looks before she leaps. “Because I can fly,” Kara snaps. Mayo adds his two cents of nonsense, but Kara is over it. She leaves.

Catherine: It’s a pretty common comic book stand-by to have a story where the cops are all “Superman is putting us out of business” and Superman’s like “I mean, what do you want me to do, stop stopping criminals?” But this has a slightly interesting twist of pointing out that the Supes do A LOT of needless property damage that they absolutely do not help fix. Did that building not have a door, Kara? 

Mari: And truly, she saw the cops right there. Asking, “want me to get this?” is easy.

Alex is upset because she just wants Maggie and Kara to get along. Maggie says they do get along– Supergirl is the problem. Alex is like “okay, that makes no sense, just try please.” Maggie says she will. Alex leaves to chase after Kara and tell her to try, too. We watch her get into an elevator with a sketchy looking man.

L-Corp. Teri Hatcher walks in wearing a suit, ’cause she’s a business lady in disguise now. She’s offered Lena a proposal about some technology I didn’t pay attention to that could solve climate change. Lena says it’s cool, but all theoretical. Teri Hatcher is confident they can make it reality in partnership. They plan to go to lunch together to keep discussing.

CatCo. Maggie visits Kara. It’s a little awkward, but she’s here looking for Alex, who never came back home and she didn’t report to the DEO this morning. Kara says that she never saw Alex after she left last night. Just then, her cell phone rings and it’s Alex. She pick up, but it’s not Alex. It’s a man, voice distorted, who says that everyone thinks Kara is a mild-mannered reporter, but he knows the truth. He has Alex, and he wants Kara to break Peter Thompson out of prison or else Alex will die. Whatdoyaknow, a hostage situation that might require a lighter touch than Kara is used to. Convenient.

Samantha: Well, I sure hope this ends up bringing them all closer together. Except for Mayo Mon-El. May it actually drive him farther away.

Mari: Alex comes to in a cell. She notices the camera in the corner and says that she knew she recognized the man in the elevator. She promises that the people she works for will find her and when she gets out of here, she will end him.

Kara is at the DEO, filling them in on the ransom call. Mon-El asks why they just don’t break the guy out of jail and get Alex back. Hank J’onn says the DEO doesn’t negotiate with terrorists. And if they do it this one time, then every bad guy will know that they can control Supergirl. Maggie adds that there is no guarantee that the bad guy would even give Alex back, anyway.

Winn is having no luck tracking Alex with her DEO tracker or tracing the ransom call. Hank J’onn says that the bad guy knows that Kara is Supergirl, so that’s a place to start. Who knows her secret? Jeremiah, Eliza, Clark, the DEO, and Lillian Luther. (C: EVERYONE in the room full of DEO extras that are literally standing around listening to this conversation?) (M: Yeah, them.) Maggie asks if Peter Thompson has any links to Cadmus. Winn has already looked and the answer is no. Maggie says they are looking at this the wrong way, then. The bad guy is a ghost, so they should be asking who Peter Thompson is, and what he means the the bad guy.

Boss Lady Lunch. They chat about their educations, and Teri Hatcher says Lena’s mother must be very proud. Lena makes a few jokes about how bad her relationship with her mother is. Teri Hatcher appreciates her sense of humor about it, because she tries to have one about her own family, but fails. See, her son met this horrible girl recently and everything changed. And then her husband died, though she doesn’t say the “I murdered him” part. She apologizes for oversharing, but then shares a USB with Lena that has more specifics about her climate change solving work. Lena says she can’t wait and promises not to steal it. Regardless of what happens with business, Lena thinks they are going to be friends. Teri says “thank the gods I found you,” and something about it seems to give Lena pause. Either that or she’s fond of long, pensive looks before taking a sip of her drink.

Samantha: That is how I drink all my drinks in quarantine, Lena is just practicing.

Mari: Prison. Hank J’onn, Maggie and Kara visit Peter Thompson and he’s like wtf. Why are you guys here? Between Hank J’onn and Maggie, they explain in vague and professional terms, that they got a call demanding his release. They want to know if anyone has reached out to him recently. Peter just snarks his way through non-answers, which pisses Kara off. She slams her hand on the table, creating a super-powered dent, and she also reveals all the information about her sister being kidnapped and held for ransom. She’s really bad at this. Maggie and Hank J’onn try to calm her down, but she won’t. Thompson says he doesn’t know who has Alex. Kara doesn’t believe him, but Hank J’onn does, so they let Thompson leave.

Samantha: I know we haven’t watched this in awhile, but is Kara known at all for using excessive force or being too violent? Idk, this premise leans heavily on the “superheroes leave destruction in their wake” but idk if it’s earned here.

Catherine: It’s hard to really say whether she is or not. Usually her whole thing is to spread love and talk people down. I mean, she’s hardly The Punisher. So this is coming a bit out of nowhere, yes. Also, LETS NOT PRETEND LIKE COPS AREN’T ALSO KIND OF KNOWN FOR USING EXCESSIVE FORCE, MAGGIE??? 

Mari: Too real.

After, Kara is like why did you believe him????? Hank J’onn has to be like “my dude, I read MINDS.” Maggie gives her another lesson on staying calm, but it’s interrupted when Winn calls with news. Thompson has had a reoccurring visitor in jail. They signed in under a fake name, but through many steps of detecting, Winn figured out that this is Thompson’s son. His name is Rick Malverne. Kara thinks that sounds familiar. Winn says Rick grew up in Midvale, her home town.

Supergirl visits Rick, knocking his door down in the process. She finds a room with some surveillance cameras showing Alex’s cell. Kara is yelling for Alex, even though it’s clear she can’t hear her. She’s really bad at this. Rick steps into the room, and Kara lifts him in the air, demanding he release her sister. He asks if she’s broken his father out of prison yet, but Supergirl says she can’t do that. She flings Rick up against the wall, but he says this is not how that works. She has to play nice because she was always the nice one. I hate this. I hate that they are convoluting hero politics with nicety politics for our female superhero. I know it’s coming from the villain so it should make us hate them, but right now I’m rooting for Kara to laser vision him slowly until he tells her where Alex is, which I don’t think is the point of this episode. If he tells her to smile, launch him into the sun.

Samantha: It makes me feel gross and is compounded by how I don’t really trust the show with nuance.

Catherine: YUP.

Mari: Rick let’s Kara talk to Alex for a second. Alex says she’s okay and Rick is the villain and they should use her tracker, but after that, Rick cuts the sound off. He reiterates the whole spring my dad, you get your sister thing. Kara gets mad enough her eyes glow, but Rick isn’t pressed. If she hurts him, they will never find Alex and she will die, slowly.

After a break, Rick is under arrest at the DEO. Hank J’onn can’t read his mind for some reason. (C: His power only works once a season for roughly 5 minutes.) Maggie wants to question him, and also for some reason, they think it’s a good idea to also let Kara in the room.  Rick recognizes Maggie. He’s spent a year planning this kidnapping and stalking Alex, so he knows a lot. (S: Yikes! Creepy! What!) Kara butts in to ask how he knew she was Supergirl. He pins it on a day back in Midvale when they were all at the beach and Kara saved a mom and baby from a car wreck, just like out in the open. Everyone said it was adrenaline, but Rick didn’t believe that and it stuck with him. He knew Kara was living in National City and when Supergirl showed up in National City, he put two and two together. (S: OH REALLY AND DID THEM LOOKING IDENTICAL HELP?) (C: What are you talking about, Kara wears glasses??)

Kara asks what happened to him. He was nice in high school. Rick says he was 14, and he didn’t live in the nice house with the perfect family. Kara says she and Alex had it hard, too, but Rick doesn’t want to hear it because he wasn’t hiding superpowers. His mother was abusive. He finally made it out of that abusive home when his father found him and took him away, worked hard to put Rick through college, until the state took him away. Maggie is like …..he murdered two people. Rick says they had it coming. Anyway, he’s done talking about himself on account of that whole Alex is gonna die in 24 hours thing. He yells at Kara to free his dad, and wow oh my god, what a plot twist, she loses her shit. She flips a table and pins Rick to a wall again. Maggie tells her to stop, so she drops him. As they leave, Rick says it will be fun to see who loves Alex more between the two of them.

Out in the hall, Kara says she’s going to give it a minute before going back in, but Maggie says no. They have some information: Thompson is the key to finding Alex. That doesn’t feel like information we didn’t previously have, but okay Maggie. You the expert. (S: I’m making a skeptical face.)

Lena is in her office, looking through Teri Hatcher’s plans. Teri joins her and asks if she likes what she sees. Lena gives a fake “yes, totally,” and asks her to scan her thumbprint so she can get an access card made for her. Teri does, and the scanner lights up red. Lena tells Teri that there is a small problem with her plans: it requires an element that doesn’t exist on Earth. I was excited that Lena would figure out that Teri was an alien, but this is so easy, I’m guessing Teri laid out the breadcrumbs. Lena says she isn’t going to help an alien build anything and escorts Teri out.

Catherine: If I’m remembering correctly, that scanner was something that Lena invented in a previous ep that can detect alien DNA or something. I think she tried to use it on Kara once. Not that that wasn’t obvious but I thought I should point it out while we’re trying to make sense of anything that happens on this show. 

Mari: DEO. Maggie lets Thompson into the room to talk to Rick. It’s definitely Hank J’onn. Rick figures it out about two lines of dialogue in. He knew about Martian Manhunter thanks to his year of planning. J’onn drops the Thompson disguise and he and Maggie just glare.

Alex has pulled the camera down from her cell. She breaks a credit card in half and uses the sharp edges to cut her tracker out of her arm. (S: I always wonder if I would have the wherewithal to do things like this.) (C: I wonder if a broken credit card is even sharp enough to do self-surgery.) (M: Plastic can get pretty sharp and jagged.) She uses some of the wiring from the camera to plug her tracker in and that gets it back online. At the DEO, the security IT agents get a ping, and Winn realizes what Alex did. They track the IP address and locate Alex. Winn tells Kara and Kara runs into the interrogation room and announces to Maggie in front of Rick that they found Alex. I truly, honestly forgot how much of recapping this show is me snorting and going, “that is so stupid.” SHE IS SO BAD AT THIS.

And sure enough, Rick isn’t bothered. He says he wouldn’t do this, if he were Kara. She’s like WHATEVER, BYE. Maggie gives her the 3rd? 4th? lecture of the episode about not being able to punch your way through every problem, but Kara is like WHATEVER, BYE. (S: Sigh.)

Of course, she busts her way into a building only to find a laptop with footage of Alex in her cell, now filling with water. There’s also a note on the wall: now you have four. A countdown clock starts counting down four hours.

Catherine: Okay, so when we first saw Alex in the cell my initial thought was “Oh, that kinda looks like the movie, The Cell, from the year 2000 where Jennifer Lopez is a cop who has to find a woman who has been trapped in a clear cell that is slowly filling with water.” And then this. I’m kind of wondering if the writers of this show watched that movie and were like, no one will remember this 20 year old movie, let’s just use that script. But I remember, writers. I REMEMBER. 

Mari: After a break, SOMEONE DECIDED THEY SHOULD LET KARA KEEP DOING THINGS and she’s confronting Rick with the laptop featuring the camera feed of Alex. “Where is she?” she asks. Wow, I’m sure he’ll tell you now. He doesn’t. Kara wants to talk to Alex and for whatever reason, Rick allows it. Kara tries to get clues to where Alex is, but she doesn’t know. Alex tells her not to get the dad out of prison, though, because Supergirl can’t do that and Supergirl is bigger than she is. Maggie walks in, and Alex walks to talk to her alone. Maggie takes the laptop outside, and Alex is trying to say goodbye, but Maggie won’t let her. They just started this relationship and Maggie wants to have a lot more firsts with her. The feed cuts out just as Alex is about to promise to hang on.

Kara joins her and asks what happened. Maggie is over it and points out that Kara made everything worse. Kara thinks she trumps Maggie because they are sisters, but Maggie has a lot to lose too. And she should’ve been listened to.

Teri Hatcher teleports in to Lena’s office. She apologizes for lying about being human, but she says everything else she said was the truth, about families who are the worst and betray you and stuff. The transporter she wants to build would help the Earth, and also help her get back home. Lena says she’ll think about building it.

Lena calls Kara to ask her advice about someone, but Kara says now isn’t a good time. She’ll call her back. Kara tries to listen for Alex, but doesn’t hear anything. Hank J’onn joins her to give her a pep talk. Kara says Maggie was right, she can’t punch her way out of this. Hank J’onn gives her a lot of slack and says she did what she thought was right. They hug as they both admit they are scared.

Maggie goes back into Rick’s interrogation room. He tells her it’s less than 2 hours. Maggie knows, and if the clock ticks down, they both  lose, and she doesn’t think Rick wants to lose. Rick says Kara is too much of a Girl Scout to do what needs to get done, but maybe he discounted Maggie. He knows Maggie cares for Alex, on account of all that stalking he did. Rick says love makes us do things we don’t normally do.

Alex tries to shut off the water valve and punch through the glass in her cell, but can’t. She takes off her pants and makes a flotation device.

Winn still hasn’t found anything. Kara says she’s going to talk to Maggie and see if she has anything else, but when they look at the camera, they see that Rick is in the interrogation room alone. Maggie is gone.

Cut to Maggie at the prison. She uses DEO tech to break Peter out. Wow, I hate this development, too. Why couldn’t Maggie just be right and good at her job? I get it, feelings, she loves Alex, but meeeeeh. Supergirl gets to the prison to talk Maggie off the ledge and say that punching doesn’t always work, because she’s learned her lesson see? She also talks to Thompson. She tells him that he did one good thing in his life: raise his son. If Rick kills Alex, he’ll never be able to escape that and Thompson would have failed at the one good thing he did with his life.

Alex runs out of air.

Catherine: She does manage to afford herself a few precious seconds by breathing into her pants, though. Breathe into your pants, everyone! 

Mari: The timer on Maggie’s phone goes off, so Kara makes one final appeal to Thompson. He says there is one place Rick would’ve taken Alex.

Samantha: Ah, so Kara was the one who got the be good at Maggie’s job. Got it. Totally makes sense.

Catherine: I’ve genuinely lost track of what the moral is supposed to be here. 

Mari: Maggie and Kara both run into whatever this place is and find Alex, floating in her cell. Kara punches her way through the cell, and the water rushes out, releasing Alex who coughs and breathes.

Alex comes to in one of the DEO hospital beds, Maggie waiting in her room. The have a touching moment where Alex finishes saying what she didn’t before: She wants to never stop having firsts with Maggie. She loves her. They kiss.

Alex and Maggie head out to the DEO pit just as they are bringing Rick out of his interrogation cell. Alex asks what they are going to do with him, and Hank J’onn says he’ll mind wipe him to protect the identity of Supergirl and the DEO. Before he does, though, Alex punches him in the face. Everyone enjoys that very much.

Samantha: Okay, but wait, this man stalked a woman for a year and then kidnapped her. Idk. Doesn’t feel like enough justice, though the punch was nice.

Mari: Maggie pulls Kara aside to thank her for not letting her break a man out of prison. Kara reminds her it was her good advice she just repeated back. They hug.

Lena calls Kara again to check in on her, since she sounded upset. Kara says it worked out. They make brunch plans. Kara asks about that thing she needed advice with, and Lena says she figured it out. She hangs up and turns to Teri Hatcher who is waiting in her office. Lena asks if Teri is ready to change the world, and Teri says she has no idea.

I wasn’t so mad at Kara at the end of the episode as I was throughout the episode, but this one was not my fave.

 

Next time on Supergirl: An alien attacks National City and it’s Lena and Teri Hatcher’s fault in S02 E20 – City of Lost Children.