Supergirl: Livewire Recap

Synopsis: Thanksgiving brews trouble for the Danvers family, and an angry DJ developing superpowers doesn’t help matters much. Kara learns a devastating secret about her foster family.

Rating: ★★★★★

It’s getting ridiculous, frankly, how closely and often Supergirl is interacting with characters who know Kara Danvers, and getting away with it. How is is possible that after this episode, Cat Grant hasn’t figured it out? Initially, Cat’s ignorance was predicated on her distain for her employees, and how little attention she paid to them.

But this week, not only did Cat and Kara bond quite a bit (life or death experiences will do that to you), but Cat spent like, multiple scenes face-to-face with Supergirl, having conversations. As a reporter and a writer, noticing this crap is literally her whole schtick. I’m having trouble swallowing it.

Aside from that though, this episode was on point. CatCo-produced shock-jockey Leslie Willis has been railing on Supergirl for being ugly and boring and cliche and “lesbian” and  a bunch of other sexist things that are purely controversial and have zero bearing on what Supergirl actually does. Cat calls her in to tell her to knock it off, because it’s super uncool for women to talk about other women like that. Leslie doesn’t want to hear it though, and after a pretty hardcore argument, Cat demotes Leslie to reporting traffic. Leslie is, to put it very mildly, less than pleased.

While she’s reporting from the traffic helicopter that night, at storm hits. The helicopter would have been knocked out of the sky, but Supergirl shows up just in time. She gets the pilot to safety and goes back for Leslie, but she’s struck by lightning just as she grabs Leslie’s arm, and the lightning hits Leslie too, turning her hair white and leaving her in a coma.

Kara feels immensely guilty for the situation, but she gets swept up in her foster mother’s visit. Alex has been in a panic over it, because she’s sure her mother will find some way to be mad at her for letting Kara become Supergirl. It seems their mother has a track record of being much harder on Alex than on Kara. When she shows up, she’s thrilled to see Kara. She tells her how proud she is and how great she’s doing. Kara chides Alex for worrying so much, but Alex insists the other shoe is about to drop.

And sure enough, when Kara goes to deal with an urgent text from Cat and leaves them alone, Eliza rips Alex a new one for “letting” Kara expose herself like she did. Alex is equally furious, insisting that it’s not actually her job to look out for Kara at all times, and even if it was, Kara is an adult who is going to make her own decisions. They get into a massive fight, and Alex confesses to her job at the DEO. Rather than being proud of Alex for saving mankind, being a badass and literally making a living watching out for Kara, this makes Eliza more angry than ever. Completely lost and devastated, Alex storms out.

Back at CatCo, Cat and Kara are dealing with an electricity problem – which turns out to be Livewire, awoken from her coma and about to start some sh*t.

Cat, in an unexpected show of bravery and compassion, tells Kara to run for help while she keeps Livewire busy. Kara takes the opportunity to run and switch out her threads, and Cat and Livewire then have a round of hilarious banter in which Calista Flockhart plays it marvelously subtle as  brave and biting, but still afraid. Supergirl shows up to save the day (with a little help from Cat) and the two have a talk about the business of saving the city, before Supergirl flies off – just a few minutes before a breathless Kara comes back in. (Seriously Cat, you must be playing dumb on purpose.)

Cat and Kara have a beautiful bonding moment in which Cat is very intrigued to learn that Kara has a foster mother, and that her parents died in a fire when she was a teenager. It occurs to her that she doesn’t know very much about Kara at all (like how to say her name, for instance) and she claim to want to change that. Which is awesome, but doesn’t bode especially well for Kara’s secret identity.

Kara gets home to find her sulking mother and angry sister still at odds. She tries to cheer them up but Eliza cuts her off. We see in flashbacks that when they were children, the DEO – Hank Henshaw himself – came to Eliza and her husband Jeremiah to try and take Kara away to experiment on and keep as a prisoner. They refused, and instead, Jeremiah agreed to give up his career and work for the DEO, basically as a slave, in order to keep Kara at home.

To me, this didn’t seem like the crushing blow it was set up to be, but it’s definitely interesting to know that Hank – of the mysterious glowing red eyes – has known about Kara since she was a child, and he was the one to recruit Alex, without ever telling either of them about their father.

Something fishy is definitely going on.