Supergirl S01 E08 – Just rocks.

Previously: Kara lost her powers but gained a valuable lesson. Probably.
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Hostile Takeover

Catherine: So after last week’s surprise family reunion, Astra has two of her lackeys holding Kara on a rooftop somewhere.

Astra asks Kara if she really thought their fight was over and Kara answers that by putting the smackdown on her two silent captors. She almost manages to fly away before one of the lackeys grabs her and Astra hauls her up to her feet. (S: The way they just grab her and yank her back down looks so lame on all accounts lol.)

Astra pulls out the Kryptonite knife that she got as a new piercing a few episodes ago and uses it to weaken Kara. Kara asks why the Kryptonite isn’t hurting her. Astra’s like ‘you call it Kryptonite? That’s adorable’. I’ve never thought about it before but I guess on Krypton they’d just call it, like…rocks. (M: I’m going to start calling rocks Earthnite.)

Astra points out the glowy broach she has on her all black Kryptonian brand leotard and says that it’s a shield for Kryptonite.

Okay, first nerd rage of the episode:

Typically in order to be protected from Kryptonite a Kryptonian has to either encase themselves or the rock completely in lead. Lead protects Superman but it also dampens his powers. It makes sense in a comic-booky way. One little glowy broach does not a lead suit make. Even if her leotard was make of lead (which, lol) her head and face would still be unprotected. This doesn’t make sense within the bounds of the Superman universe, is what I’m saying. It gets even dumber later, but we’ll get to that.

Samantha: Okay, good. This sounded SO STUPID to me. But I’m never sure if it’s actually stupid or just me struggling with this universe, stupid. 

Marines: All signs point to actually stupid. 

Catherine: Confirmed. Actually stupid.

Kara points out that the glowy broach makes this an unfair fight and Astra tells her that she doesn’t actually want to fight. She gets all mushy and tells Kara that she’s been blaming her for things that weren’t her fault for a long time but when she tries to touch Kara the latter pulls away.

  Astra tells her that her mother always said she had the heart of a hero (M: WE’VE HEARD.) and they need to be a family again. Kara gets mad and insists that they aren’t family before throwing herself off the roof and hitting the parking lot below. (S: My mom has never told me that I have the heart of a hero. I feel cheated.) (M: Move to Krypt… Oh, wait.) (C: Too soon!)

She did this to get away from the Kryptonite because she knew once she hit the ground she’d be far enough away that she’d survive it. A few episodes ago I think they said it took days for her to recover from Kryptonite poisoning but okay. This falls more in line with what I’m used to so fine.

At the DEO Kara tells Alex and Fakeshaw that Astra is back. She also tells Hank that Astra still has the Kryptonite knife. Hank’s all like, ‘you didn’t get that back by any chance? I really liked that knife’ as a comedy moment and I like how they’ve suddenly made Hank the comic relief. That happened, like, last episode or something and only because it turned out that he was a good guy. (S: He was SO BORING before that I am okay with this change.) (M: I’d be more okay with it if he were actually funny.)

These characters have changed so much since the first episode that if you only watched that one and this one you’d wouldn’t even know who to trust. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.

Alex asks how the Kryptonite wasn’t bothering Astra and it’s only the second scene and I’m really tired of typing Kryptonite already.

Kara tells them about the glowy broach. Hank asks why Astra was after her again after waiting so long and Kara tells him that it’s because Astra wants to recruit her to teraform Earth or whatever. She mentions that the mom hologram in the creepy basement told her that Astra’s idea of helping people on Krypton was blowing up government buildings. Hank worries that this could be the beginning of a city wide attack and I’m thinking he’s worrying too small. She just said Astra wants to attack the Earth. The whole thing. We live there.

Kara wants to go after Astra but Alex says she needs to rest. Hank agrees and Kara tells them to stop handling her because it’s her job to stop Astra. Alex is like, ‘no it’s not. It’ Hank’s’. Kara looks taken back by this.

Samantha: This was so weird. Uh. Astra came from Supergirl’s planet and is her aunt and also all the episodes until now she’s worked on taking down the baddies. It felt so off that suddenly they were like “nvr mind, you’re more of a consultant and we are NOT consulting you.” 

Catherine: Them treating her like a consultant is always really weird. Especially since they’ve been seemingly getting better about that for weeks and now all the sudden it’s back like bad tacos.

Hank leaves and Kara tells Alex that she and Hank seems pretty chummy all of the sudden. Remember, Kara still thinks that Hank was the one that killed Dean Cain. Apparently Alex didn’t bother to tell her that he wasn’t. She tells her that now but without divulging Hanks big secret (that he’s Martian Manhunter) and asks Kara to just trust her.

She also calls Dean Cain ‘My dad’ again and I can hear Samantha cringing from across the country. (S: Sorry, I’ll try to tone it down. I’m an Olympic cringer.) (M: 🏆)

Kara does trust her, because she’s a giving soul and as they walk down the hallway comments that she hopes that CatCo has a slow day tomorrow.

Samantha: No, but, what? Dean Cain did raise Kara too, even though they always go to SUCH LENGTHS to let us know he ain’t her real papa but she was like “kay, cool” way too easily. 

Catherine: Same. She gives up WAY too easily for all the fake tension they gave us about it. I see how it is, show.

Cut to CatCo, which is having a very fast… day.

Apparently Cat Grant has been hacked. It’s all over the news. Um, the other news.

Cat’s lawyers are there and one suited man tells her that so far whoever hacked her hasn’t made any demands which means that they probably just wanted to embarrass her.

Cat points out that they did do that and while she does she’s scooping what appear to be M&M’s into a scotch glass with an ice scooper. Coming from a place of loving Cat these past few weeks, this may be my favorite thing she’s ever done. She has a bucket of M&M’s just… there… in her office. For whenever. That’s power. (S: I SQUEED SO HARD. This is the moment I texted Katy all “CAT IS THE BEST OMG.”)

Cat tells them that in the last hour alone the Daily Planet has already published a ton of embarrassing things about her including her real age, the fact that she has 3 personal shoppers, and the fact that she asked out Idris Elba on a date and he said no.

How is any of that embarrassing and not just amazing? I don’t know. I want to be her even more now. Although in my fantasy Idris Elba says yes. A lot. (M: Everyday, in fact, and twice on Sunday.)

ANYWAY, Cat asks if they can just sue everyone that’s publishing this shit.

One of the lawyers tells her that they can try but it’s a process.

“Imagine if someone dumped all of Lois Lane’s personal emails into your lap. Wouldn’t you publish them?”

“Only if I wanted people to die of boredom”.

I know I shouldn’t feel this way but Lois and Cat’s eternal rivalry has always made me laugh. Whenever they reference it on this show it just makes me so excited that they’re referencing Lois that I can’t get mad.

Anyway, the lawyer guy tells her that she’s the public face of the company and she needs to make sure not to make this situation worse. Thought she was the one giving them orders but okay, whatever.

They leave and Kara assures Cat that this is all gonna blow over.

  Cat tells her that stories like this one don’t blow over they blow up.

Kara tells her that if that’s the case than she has to fight this. Cat says she’s going to but she has to figure out what she’s fighting first. She tells Kara to go through all of her emails and flag anything that can be used against her.

Rightfully daunted, Kara says that she’s gonna need some help to go through that many emails. Cat tells her that’s fine and she can use Jimmy (the photo editor who never does any photo editing) and ‘That handsome little Hobbit who has more cardigans than you do”.

IDK if I’d call him handsome, but I love the Winn hate. And this job is actually in his purview as I.T. guy so that makes sense.

Over in the batcave, which is the disused office that the super dorks use as their base of operations, Kara brings in a cart with boxes full of Cat’s emails printed out.

Okay…I just. Why? This is the direct opposite intention of how emails were supposed to work. Why did they need to print out all these instead of just reading them on the computer? (S: And no sense was to be found.) (M: And Mother Nature cried.)

I mean, I know the real answer is that old guy tv show writers never know how computers work even though they do all their writing on one but I’m gonna pretend the answer is that Kara is delightfully clueless and overly helpful and that, much like Jenn Barber,  that ass ache Winn doesn’t actually know what I.T. stands for.

Oh yeah, by the way, Winn is here now.

After last episode I dread his scenes even more than usual. Which means I’d rather get a pap smear from Jack Frost than watch them.

The three fuckskteers start going through Cat’s metaphorical closet and Jimmy is gobsmacked by how much Cat spends every month on a haircut. Winn points out that it’s more than he pays in rent. But her hair looks great so…? What’s your question?

Also I’d bet money that Winn lives in a shithole because he is a shithole. (S: Hahahahaha I love you.) (C: I live to please.)

Kara asks Winn to trace the hack because no one knows the computer systems better than him. I guess you can spend a lot of time on computers when you’re not touching any boobs.

OHHHHHH! TORCHED. SOMEONE HIGH FIVE ME! (S: High ten!) (M: Y’all are a mess.)

Winn says that he will but also asks if they shouldn’t be focusing on the fact that Kara’s psycho aunt is back in town.

Jimmy apparently didn’t know this. He asks Kara if it’s true. Winn get’s his one shiny moment of knowing something that Jimmy doesn’t besides how to fuck an anime body pillow without waking up your parents and he makes sure to stage mumble about it.

Wow Winn, congrats? She still doesn’t want to fuck you.

Kara tells them that the DEO is handling that and they need to do their CatCo jobs and help Ms. Grant.

Winn goes to leave and then very rudely tells Jimmy that he’s in his way.

    If nothing else, does Winn not SEE with his EYES how much bigger Jimmy is than him? I can’t believe I’m saying this about Jimmy Olsen but he could literally kick this dude’s ass up and down the street. Don’t be mean to guys that are 6 inches taller than you, cardigan boy.

Mari: Is Winn officially turning into a villain here? I mean, I know we never liked him, but I just feel like not saying ‘excuse me’ is officially putting him down a dark and dangerous path. 

Catherine: He wouldn’t even be a good villain. All fear The Nice Guy!

He passively aggressively resents you for not falling in love with him!  After he leaves Jimmy says that he’s been acting weird ever since he saw them hug.

Because apparently this is the 5th grade, so Winn has every right to go into a snit fit over seeing two friends hug. Forget the fact that he isn’t dating Kara and thus, if he walked in on them fucking on Jimmy’s little Instragram table he still wouldn’t be allowed to get mad but he literally saw them HUG. IT WAS A HUG, YOU HUMAN DOGTURD. GET A DECK OF CARDS AND FUCKING DEAL WITH IT. YOU’RE AN ADULT. (S: A+, I’m laughing so hard. Thank you for replacing my rage with laughs.)

Kara awkwards a bit about how it was just a friendly hug and nothing more since Jimmy is with Lucy and he’s like, ‘yup, Lucy, she exists’. But then he gives her a doe-eyed look. I’m starting to ship them just to spite Winn. I really want to see them get together just so he can have a full on screaming melt down and pee his pants.

*fingers crossed*

Mari: I don’t get why he’s giving her doe eyes when he could’ve just been with her…? And not Lucy…? Whatever. Plot.

Catherine: Back over in Astra’s creepy dark room, she’s looking sadly at a little silver…thing. It’s a communicator, let’s just get that out of the way so you can use your accumulated sci-fi knowledge to picture it and I don’t have to explain it.

A fellow leotard wearing Kryptonian tells Astra that she sucks for failing to convert Kara. He tells her she’s weak and she doesn’t owe her sister anything. Astra tells him that Kara is different than her mother and she can be made to see reason.

“I sometimes wonder if any of the women in your family can”.

Oh snap.

Astra reminds him that she’s his general and I’m like really? ‘Cause you’re not acting like it. Astra needs lessons from Cat on bringing the hammer down, it seems.

The Kryptonian tells her that he’s sworn allegiance to her and if she can’t bring herself together than he’s not gonna judge. But hey, maybe he should just go kill her? Astra tells him not to question her resolve and that she will die before she allows another world to go kablooey like Krypton did. The Kryptonian tells her that if she dies he’s gonna kill Kara. Then he calls her ‘wife’.

Mari: This was the Kryptonian version of pillow talk, maybe.

Catherine: Makes sense. 

Over at the DEO, Alex and Kara are sparring in the Kryptonite room.

They are doing some elaborate choreography but I want to take a sec here to point out something that I just realized that bothers me about this. From the first episode when they ragged on Kara for not knowing how to fight and started this training it bothered me and I couldn’t quite put my finger on why but I finally figured it out this week.

Superman and Supergirl don’t fight. They aren’t fighters. They aren’t Batman with his Tibetan mountain martial arts training or whatever and they aren’t the Green Arrow who has to have some fight training just to stay alive. They have super strength and invulnerability. Their usual villains are aliens with gemstones in their heads. Their typical style of fighting is what I would call ‘throwing things into bigger things’. There’s no training involved. Superman NEVER went through any training because you don’t need to train to defend yourself if you’re invulnerable. Why is Kara being forced to train (by a human, no less) if her whole move is supposed to be a punch that knocks you back several city blocks? Are they trying to turn her into Black Widow? Is that what’s happening here? (S: All female superheroes can be melded into one and then they don’t have to worry about too many girls hanging around.)

Anyway, like I said, there’s a lot of elaborate fighting and then Alex finally knocks Kara back. Alex asks her why she hesitated and gave her that opportunity. Kara points out that it’s because they’re training and oh, yeah, because you’re my normal human sister and I could kill you if I sneeze in the right direction and I don’t really want to do that?

Alex tells her that she thinks she should let the DEO handle this because Astra is her family and like it or not she still cares about her. Alex says that this. is. Sparta…..uh, I mean, war. She asks if Kara is prepared to kill Astra. Kara scoffs and RIGHTFULLY points out that Superman doesn’t kill people. That’s like his whole thing? That’s how he rolls. Alex just says that if that’s her answer she shouldn’t fight her.

This is dumb. Does the DEO think that Kara is just gonna go around wholesale slaughtering people and cleaning up their messes for them? Supergirl isn’t supposed to kill people unless their is no other option. In this situation she would normally just put Astra and all of her dudes back into the Phantom Zone.

Kara says it won’t come to killing and Alex says that Astra has shown that she’s ready to kill Kara. Yeah, because SHE’S THE BAD GUY, Alex. Alex asks Kara what she’s holding onto about Astra and we’re taken via flashback to Krypton.

Baby!Kara is sitting on her bed with her little communicator when Astra shows up. Apparently they have these little communicators to use as a signal when they want to talk to one another. Cute. Astra calls it her ‘spy beacon’ so I assume it’s something they got out of a Kryptonian cereal box. (M: Good to know that cereal box toys are universal.)

Kara asks her where she’s been and asks if she’s in trouble. Astra confesses that they’re all in trouble ’cause Krypton’s gonna go kablooey. We finally get a full description of why Krypton exploded for the casual fans. Basically, the core was unstable because they plunged it for fuel and power sources until it caved in. This is one of a few different canonical reasons for Krypton’s destruction.

Astra tells her that she’s trying to prevent their global warming explosion by getting people to realize what they’re doing and that in doing so she’s had to do some difficult things. So, basically she’s an activist/terrorist. I think. Astra tells Kara that she has to leave again but she wanted to say goodbye first. She hugs Kara (UH-OH! WINN BETTER NOT SEE THIS OR HE’LL THINK YOU’RE FUCKING YOUR AUNT) and tells her that she couldn’t have loved her more if she were her own child. Which she basically is, since Astra and Kara’s mom are twins. (S: I’m a sucker for family stuff so this Astra storyline gave me some feels.) (M: Also I love (a lot of…) my aunts and this makes me want to hug them all.) (C: I am an aunt and this made my cold heart feel NOTHING!)

Speaking of Alura, she comes in and tells Kara to GTFO so she can talk to Astra. They stare each other down and the flashback ends.

Back in the batcave, grown up Kara asks Winn if he’s traced the hack yet and of course he hasn’t ’cause he’s not actually good at his job.

Mari: She took a sparring break in the middle of going through Cat’s emails? What the hell? I would be PISSED if I were Jimmy and Winn. SPARRING IS NOT IMPORTANT RIGHT NOW.

Catherine: She then asks Jimmy if he found anything in the emails. He says all he’s found are weird things. For instance, the fact that Cat invested in ‘Jekyll and Hyde: The Musical’, she wanted to be on ‘Undercover Boss’ and apparently there are 317 emails referring to Lois Lane as a… they don’t say.

I’m still waiting for them to come up with something embarrassing here. So is Cat. She tells Kara that if that’s the worst she can come up with then she’ll be fine.

I wanna be with her here but considering she’s a woman they’ll probably rip her to shreds. Now a dude would have to have hooker body parts in his fridge to lose his empire like this but Cat is gonna go down. (S: And even then it could go the way of “She was a hooker, she had to know this was a possibility, she is partially responsible.”) (M: “She had a short skirt on, she was practically begging me to chop her legs off.”)

As predicted, over in the board meeting her suits are pissed. Cat reminds them that you can’t build an empire like this without having an opinion and a strong point of view. One of the suits speaks up to say that he agrees with Cat and that they should follow her lead on this. His name is Dirk and she thanks him and sorrynotsorrys about one leaked email where she apparently referred to him as ‘The walking personification of white male privilege”.

Cat’s like, ‘yeah, that…sors. But we’re cool now”.

Someone suggest she take a sabbatical and Dirk says that actually that won’t be necessary. And actually, Cat would obviously be the first one to walk away if the press finds a smoking gun, bro.

Cat pensively agrees.

As the board leaves Cat tells Kara that Dirk is two-faced and he’s gonna pounce all over anything that the press comes up with and Kara happens to overhear Dirk and the rest of the suits in the elevator basically admitting to hacking Cat. Kara freaks, but she obviously can’t tell Cat what she heard so she rushes to tell the Hardy Boys instead.

Winn, proving once again that he doesn’t know what those glowing boxes he works on are called or how they work, tells her that if the hack was ordered by someone inside CatCo it’s gonna be a lot harder to trace.

No, it isn’t? Why would it be harder to trace if it was done one a computer within the network you constantly service? Especially if it was done by a guy who probably wouldn’t know that much about computers himself and therefore wouldn’t have bothered deleting anything.

Hypothesis confirmed: these writers shouldn’t be writing about computers.

Jimmy recommends going to the other suits to tell him but Kara says they might be working with Dirk so they can’t. But hey, they can always ask Lucy. She’s a lawyer. (S: SHE IS?!?!?!?!?) (C: IKR??!?!)

Over at National City’s One Restaurant, they ask Lucy because she’s a lawyer. They tell her it’s a hypothetical question and of course they’re not going after the Chairman of the Board of their own company.  That would be stupid.

Lucy tells them they are gonna need a paper trail where Dirk directly references conspiring against Cat. If they do that they could not only get him fired but full on arrested.

They are interrupted by a news report saying that an unknown woman is hovering over CatCo plaza. Kara gets up to leave and Winn makes everything worse (like always) by faking about how she needs to ‘go and do…uh….that thing you were talking about….’. Talk about super awkward. Winn maybe can’t do anything right? Like…anything? Like….how does he dress himself? Or does he actually just own that one cardigan and never washes it?

Alex calls Kara and tells her that she doesn’t have to go and Kara insists that she does.

Over at above CatCo, Kara’s hovering is perfectly steady while Astra’s is all over the place like the actress was strung up on a lazy susan or something. It’s obviously not intentional and distracting. She looks like a snake trying to stand.

Astra asks Kara if she’ll talk to her now and says that she can’t say it’s not fair.

Kara’s all, “we’re done with fair” and heat vision blasts her out of the sky.

After a commercial break Kara flies after Astra and punches her through the air a few more times. This is all witnessed by random people looking out their office windows who are oddly calm considering the how often superheros punch people through buildings. Which, by the way, Supergirl does next. But it’s a different building so I guess we’re supposed to hope that it’s empty? She does manage to catch a chunk of falling debris before it hits bystanders.

I can only imagine how desensitized you must get to apocalyptic super fights if they fuck up your commute every single day.

Mari: I would definitely be the person who wouldn’t even stop to watch. Maybe if it was 90s Dean Cain fighting, and that would be mostly to ogle.

Catherine: Same. Get your binoculars for prime booty viewing. 

Astra punches Kara to the ground and then stands over her and tells her she’s just like her mother.

Kara hero banters about how Alura was a better woman than Astra will ever be. Astra says that Alura was a murderer. Kara calls her a liar. There’s some more smack talk and then Kara pulls on Astra’s legs to trip her.

This gives Kara the advantage and she holds up her fist for the killing blow. But Astra makes puppy eyes at her and she can’t do it. Superman would be proud if he would return her calls. (S: She should have Snap Chatted this moment to him.) (M: Supes is TOTALLY on Snap Chat. So much.)

Instead of killing Astra, she drags her (literally) to the DEO.

It’s so boss. (M: Yep. This episode’s One Good Moment.) No one even looks alarmed. Hank calls for containment without breaking stride and Alex tells Kara that they’ll call her when Astra wakes up.

Kara’s like, ‘Nah’ and leaves.

Back at CatCo, Winn tells Kara that he’s happy that she didn’t get murdered. Because he wants to do it when she won’t fuck him later. Oh, that was dark. Sorry.

He leads her over to Jimmy who gets interrupted from finally doing some actual photo editing on his Instagram table to show them all a little doohickey that, when attached to Dirk’s computer, will let them hack it.

Winn says that one of them is gonna have to get into Dirk’s office to attach it and since Kara’s gonna have to be on lookout and he’s gonna be busy masturbating to pictures of her on the Internet while crying into his cardigan, Jimmy’s gonna have to be the one that breaks in. Jimmy sarcastically points out that he’s gonna be the one arrested if this doesn’t work out and Kara tells him that he doesn’t have to. He brushes it off ’cause he’s brave.

Ocean’s Eleven time. Winn calls Dirk’s secretary and tells her that Dirk’s fancy car is on fire. They didn’t actually light it on fire but that would’ve distracted him way better and hurt no one so I’m not sure why.

Dirk runs downstairs to save his car.

Apparently Jimmy only has 90 seconds to get in and out before he comes back. Hoooooowwwww could they possibly know that? Did they time how long it takes this dude to ride in an elevator? Or is Winn just pulling this out of his ass like he does his neckties?

In Dirk’s office, Jimmy tries to attach the doohicky but there’s a problem. It’s a plastic computer and the thing is magnetic. (S: Aren’t most office computers plastic? What?)

Obviously he doesn’t really know what he’s doing but that’s forgivable because he’s a photo editor. Which is why Winn should really be the one doing this and also then maybe Winn would get arrested?

Jimmy tells Winn the problem over the earpieces they inexplicably have and Winn condescends about how he’s supposed to open the computer and attach it on the inside. I would say why wouldn’t Winn have told him that in the first place before he went over there but we all know it’s because Winn wanted Jimmy to look like an idiot. I guess he thinks tech nerd stuff gets Kara hot? It clearly doesn’t.

  Jimmy gets a thousand points for patience in this episode and a gold star.

He finally installs the doohicky and Winn downloads the files. But uh-oh! Dirk is on his way back up.

Kara comes up with a few ideas to get Jimmy out but he assures her that he’s got this.

When he comes back Jimmy is sitting casually and manages to convince Dirk that he’s on his side and if Cat goes down he has his support for becoming the new CEO.

He leaves while breathing a sigh of relief.

Kara gets a call from Alex saying that Astra is awake. Kara reminds her that she doesn’t care but relents when Alex says that Astra will only talk to her. (S: IDK how Kara didn’t see this coming.)

DEO. Astra is sitting in her Kryptonite cell contemplating her little communicator when Kara, as Supergirl shows up. She shows her the little communicator to tug at her heart strings and tells her it’s time she knew everything. Astra tells Kara that she was the reason she did all the stuff she did trying to protect Krypton and Kara reminds her that she and her husband killed a bunch of people.

Kara hypothesizes that Astra went crazy in Fort Rozz starts to leave but Astra stops her by telling her that she is how Alura caught her.

Flashback time. We’re back on Krypton where Astra and Alura are having their stare down. I just realized that the reason Astra has that Rogue white streak in her hair is probably so we can tell them apart when they’re in a scene together. Since it’s the same actress playing both parts. Even though they’re wearing different outfits.

Alura asks how Astra could betray them and Astra talks more about global warming and saving the environment and Al Gore stuff. Apparently she killed a guard but no actually she tells her that it was Non, her husband and the Kryptonian from earlier that killed him.

I can’t remember if they’ve mentioned Non’s name in this before but I’m gonna go ahead and give a quick rundown of who he is. Obviously, since Astra has never come up in the comics or movies before he wasn’t her husband. In the 1978 Superman movie with Christopher Reeve, Non was one of the two Kryptonians that came to earth with General Zod to kill all humans.

In that movie he was a bit different and not so…um, smart. He was basically the muscle and the comic relief, to an extent. He comes back with the whole gang in Superman II to once again kill all humans. Only to be stopped by Superman again (40 year old spoiler alert). (M: And Superman stopping the bad guy in the end is never a spoiler.)

But interestingly, he wasn’t brought into the comics until 2006 where he was shown to be a friend to Jor-el before he was lobotomized and turned into the mindless brute in the movies.

He’s usually basically portrayed as Zod’s muscle and this is the first time he’s ever been shown to have any intelligence let alone a position of power in the government (lieutenant).

So, the more you know, I guess.

Anyway, back to the show. Alura begs Astra to turn herself in and tells her that Non will probably go to prison but she may not. Astra wonders why the fuck she’s supposed to care about prison when their whole planets about to explode. She tells Alura they used to be on the same side and they can be again. Alura, of course, refuses and gaurds come in to take Astra away. They point guns at her which I think means that they were gonna just straight up blast her into the PZ. I can’t remember ever seeing that in an adaptation before but I sort of like it.

Back in present time, Kara tells Astra that she doesn’t remember her mother betraying her and duh Kara. You weren’t there.

Astra tells her it’s true and her mother used her to get Astra there with her communicator so that she could put her in jail thereby destroying the planet. I’m still not sure how Astra planned on single handedly stopping the planet from blowing up. The core was already dying and this Occupy Wall Street shit wasn’t gonna stop anything. She should really just let this go.

Astra gets upset, telling Kara about how our whales here on Earth are dying and shit too and she needs to blow shit up again to warn people about global warming or whatever. WE KNOW ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING, ASTRA. STOP BLOWING THINGS UP. YOU HAVE A PROBLEM.

Samantha: Am I an idiot? I do not understand Astra’s goal. Our world is dying. Okay. She wants to blow stuff up to get out attention. Okay. What is the next step?! How is she going to save the planet?????? Is it a “get rid of us and start over” a la Ultron? IDK. 

Mari: You know how when things aren’t working, our tendency is the smack them or shake them? I think Astra is trying to do that to the planet…?

Catherine: Kara refuses and leaves but not before Astra sobs that she loves her. If she wanted to pull this fake warm-hearted aunt thing she probably should’ve done it before they beat the crap out of each other earlier? Like, maybe she should’ve led with that. All I’m saying.

Samantha: Sorry, I know I’m talking a lot, I randomly got invested in this episode. Family feels, I guess. But I’m not sure Astra is completely faking. She probably really does still love Kara and would much rather get her on her side. I think it’d be great if Astra can never bring herself to fully give up on/kill Kara. 

Catherine: That would be great. I doubt it will happen. But I love you for still believing that these writers can be subtle.Kara storms down to the creepy basement and asks Holo-Mom if she used her to get Astra arrested.

Holo-Mom emotionlessly confirms that she did. Kara get’s emotional and asks if Astra could’ve saved them. I already said no, but okay. Holo-Mom robots about not being programmed to give her that information. Kara demands to know how she could do this and why’d she’d let everyone that she loved die and it’s a lot of yelling and emotions.

    She finally blasts Holo-Mom with her heat vision but obviously it just goes right through her ’cause she’s a computer program.

Mari: Girl, I thought you learned a valuable lesson about getting so angry you ejaculate lasers.

Catherine: Alex turns the program off and hugs Kara telling her that she doesn’t really know what happened on Krypton.

“I know that Astra and I were both given life-sentences by my mother. We didn’t have a choice.”

Whatever. That planet was totally gonna explode anyway.

Samantha: I love when they let this actress/character explore these super legit emotions. She does a surprisingly great job. 

Catherine: Definitely. Benoist is good at the emotional stuff but her cutesy stuff is a little cringy. Maybe it’s just cringy in general and no one could pull it off, idk.

Back at the Batcave Kara walks in looking sullen and tells the Hardy boys that she doesn’t wanna talk about it.

Winn tells her that Dirk’s email accounts are hard to crack and he’s still working on it. I thought the point of that bug was to give them access to his entire computer? Why is he hacking Dirk’s email? He could do that without even having to break into the guys office.

Jimmy shows Kara one email of Cat’s that he found that might be embarrassing. A query from her bank about approving a wire transfer to an account belonging to an Adam Foster.

Winn Googled this guy and apparently he’s 24, lives in Opal City and Cat makes monthly payments to him for some reason. Both of the boys assume that he’s a prostitute that she’s keeping on the side.

Over in Cat’s office, Kara tells her about this development and Cat tells her that if she wanted to sleep with a Beach Boy she’d still be screwing John Stamos. Queen. Cat asks Kara if she honestly believes that she’s hooking up with a rent boy and Kara is all, ‘…no?’ but she does remember Cat sending out a Christmas card to an A. Foster in Opal City.

Always make sure to send your gigolos a Christmas card, guys. They have feelings, too.

Cat comes clean and tells Kara that Adam Foster is her oldest son. She had him young and the boys father told her that she didn’t care about them and she only cared about building CatCo. So she sued him for custody and lost. Kara points out that at least she tried and Cat corrects herself and says that she didn’t actually lose more like she gave up. She really was working at CatCo constantly and she just assumed that she’d still get to see her son.

Cat tells Kara that she has no idea what it’s like to admit to yourself that your child would be better off without you. Kara says that she does know what it feels like to wonder about a mother’s choices.

Cat says that not being there for Adam is her biggest regret and now for all they know someone is about to release it to the world. Kara suggest talking to him about it and trying to make him understand and Cat says that that would be wrong since she’d basically be coming into his life after not wanting to be his mom for 20 years and then telling him that now the media is gonna be on his doorstep. (S: I fucking love her.)

She tells Kara that she’s not gonna let that happen and she has decided to negotiate a ‘graceful, lucrative’ exit from CatCo. Kara looks stricken.

After another commercial break Cat is getting ready for her press conference where she’s gonna announce that she’s stepping down.

Kara asks her if she has to do this.

“Well, like taxes, aging and Martha Stewart’s annual secret Santa, this is something I have to do.”

Cat get’s the best lines.

She tells Kara that no matter what she will always have a job with her if she wants it. Which is sweet but since she’s about to lose her company I’m not sure what she means by that.

Mari: She means you can’t keep Cat Grant down. She’ll have another company up and running tomorrow.

Catherine: Ooohhh. I’m too lazy for that to be my first thought. 

Just as they’re about to leave Supergirl’s pals, Jimmy, Lucy and Fucking Winn run in. They hand Cat a printed out email. She asks them where they got it and they tell her it’s better if they don’t tell her. She points out that she only recognizes 3 out of the 4 of them. I guess she’s including Kara in that assessment.

Jimmy introduces Lucy and Cat glares.

“Lois Lane’s kid sister? Well congratulations, you got the looks”.

Lucy and Jimmy look confused. Three Lois reference in one episode, I’m in heaven.

Cat asks Kara why she started investigating Dirk and Kara slips up and tells her that she overheard Dirk saying that he had ordered the hack after the board meeting. She tries to backpedal about it being inspired by what Cat said about Dirk smelling blood in the water and being two-faced.

Cat doesn’t seem to fully accept this explanation but she moves on.

In Cat’s office, she’s behind her desk as Dirk comes in and she tells him that she knows he’s behind the hack. She shows him the email which reveals his whole plan. Apparently, he even had bullet points.

He tells her he’s gonna sue her since she hacked him. She blasts him by saying that he can’t sue her because he sent the email on a CatCo computer and legally they belong to her. She also tells him that the cops are seizing his electronics as they speak and behind him two cops show up to haul him away.

Outside the office, Kara, Jimmy and Fucking Winn gloat about how they did a thing.

Kara leaves and Jimmy has a man-to-child talk with Winn where he apologized to innocently hugging the girl that Winn apparently called dibs and no-taksies-backsies on. He tells Winn that he didn’t realize how much he likes Kara. Winn tries to awkwardly deny it, which is just stupid as fuck at this point. I can’t honestly believe he thought he was being subtle up ’till now.

Jimmy tells Winn that he should tell Kara how he feels (like she doesn’t already know?). Winn says he can’t because she’s a superhero and he’s just regular old Jimmy Ols—Uh…I mean, regular old Winn whatever-the-fuck. Jimmy says that Kara is worth fighting for–and not just because of the cape.

Back at the DEO, Alex is watching camera footage that they have for some reason of Kara taking Astra down. She wonders to Hank why Astra stood over Kara with her legs spread like she did since that’s an easily tripped stance and Astra, being a warrior, would know that. Hank agrees that somethings off.

    They figure out that Astra wanted to lose and go to her cell. She’s laying like a cat in the sun while Hank and Alex posit that she wanted to distract them while her troops carried out their real plan. Which is why none of them have come after her yet.

Astra tells them that it’s too late to stop what’s happening and we cut to Lord Technology.

The Kryptonian lackeys (including Non) fly into the building, busting through the glass and the bystanders scream and run away.

Back at CatCo, she is drinking out on her balcony when Kara comes out. Cat tells her that she’s grateful for her help and calls her her secret weapon and her guardian angel.

Kara tries to brush the praise away and go back inside but Cat stops her.

She tells her that she’s been wondering how she could’ve overheard Dirk since there’s no way that he was in her earshot. Then she was thinking about the earthquake and how Kara got sick for the first time in ever and Supergirl also mysteriously disappeared only to reappear when Kara got better. Then she was thinking about Liverwire and how Kara fled right before Supergirl showed up. (S: I started excited screaming here.) (C: *loud yelling*)

Kara tells her that this is all a coincidence.

  Cat demands that Kara take off her glasses (S: ARE WE SERIOUS OH MY GOD WHY IS THIS NECESSARY) (M: SHH. Enjoy the moment!) and when Kara does Cat is obviously seeing the resemblance between Kara and Supergirl. She looks touched and thanks Kara/ Supergirl for all the help that she’s given her. (S: WEEEEEE BEST!)

Mari: There is this given amount of stupidity that you have to accept of Kara being Supergirl and NO ONE noticing. It’s part of the universe. That said, I’m going to be pretty happy if this joining of the dots sticks and Cat knows Kara is Supergirl. 

Catherine: Kara is fumbling for something to say when she gets a phone call and Cat lets her answer it because obvs it’s important since she’s Supergirl. It’s Alex, she tells Kara about Lord Technologies being under attack and Kara runs to save the day.

Back at Lord Tech. the Kryptonians are marching into the building when Carlisle Maxwell comes out with two of his peons and holds up a big space agey gun. Not even gonna comment on the fact that the building is being attacked and the CEO comes out to defend it. Would Donald Trump do that? Probably not. Think about that when you’re voting in November. (S: 1430.)

One of the Kryptonian’s starts to heat vision Carlisle Maxwell but CM shoots the gun at him and what I’m assuming is a lead mask covers the guys face. He falls to the floor. Obviously, this is some new tech that he’s been developing to fight the Kryptonians.

Non asks if Carlisle Maxwell is a champion of this world and CM says that he has his moments. That moment ends pretty quickly as Non super speeds over and knocks out his two guards while putting CM in a stranglehold.

The DEO rushes in and starts shooting Kryptonite guns. But, of course, they’re not bothering these guys because of their special glowy broaches.

Two of the bad guys who are with the Kryptonians are not in black leotards and are dressed in regular clothes. One of them fights by cloning himself and sneaking up on people and the other is really good at kicky punchy stuff and also she barfs green gas on people. I’m assuming this is gonna come into play more in the next episode.

One of the Kryptonians is fighting Hank and tells him that he doesn’t fight like a human.

  Hanks rips off the guys glowy broach and then shoots him with the Kryptonite gun again and this time the guy goes down. Not sure why Kara couldn’t also do that? But okay.

A bunch of DEO agents surround Non and he throws them all off of him. He sees Alex and heads over to her but Kara flies in and knocks him back just in time. They both fly up to hover over the lobby and Non says he can’t believe that Kara is the last daughter of the once great House of El. Kara smack talks about how he’s gonna wish she’d died with the rest of them and they kamikaze at each other as the episode ends.

 

Next time on Supergirl: Hank Fake-shaw is kidnapped in S01 E09 – Blood Bonds.