Supergirl - 'How Does She Do It?'

Super-Strength is a networking skill; it really opens doors.

Kara's lives collide when Supergirl is called on to answer a bomb threat while James's relationship with Lucy is on the rocks and Kara is babysitting Cat's son Carter while she is in Metropolis to collect an award for being an awesome female role model in media.

To take these plots individually:

The A Plot for the episode is Supergirl being tested, first by an agile drone which pursues her in flight, then a building bombing and finally an attempt to blow up first Max Lord's labs, and then a high-speed train being launched by Lord and at the same time an airport. All of these prove to have been set up by Lord to assess Supergirl's abilities and motivations, with the fact that she chose to save the train and leave the more crowded airport to the cops/DEO tipping him off that someone on the train mattered to her personally. Max Lord is, it turns out, a bit of a douchebag, with a hate-on for the government since they covered up the causes of his parents' death.

Also, Henshaw gets to show off his alienness by going all glowy eyed and putting his hand through solid matter or something.

One of these creepy stalkers gets a pass for being... however
old Carter is supposed to be. The other, not so much.

The B Plot is a slightly tacked on bit of feminist flag waving; not that I'm agin feminism or flag waving per se, but subtlety has its place. It's a little odd seeing crabby uberbitch Cat Grant suddenly campaigning for mother of the year with her son whom no-one has previously mentioned, but they manage it fairly naturally for that. She opts not to go to Metropolis until Kara offers to look after Carter and seems to be a reasonable mum overall. The main point of this one, however, is that Carter has a crush on Supergirl and runs off to the train station in the hopes of seeing her. In a nice scene, she gives him a chance to be a hero by helping to clear the carriages, and he does so without idiotically leaping into greater danger. Bonus points for his mother drilling into him that there is more to Supergirl than perfect hair.

Finally, the inevitable love polygon is furthered as Kara inadvertently helps to manoeuvre Lucy and James back together by being too much of a mensch. Alex tells her she has spent more time in the Friend Zone than in the Phantom Zone, which is a snappy line but does bring up the much reviled friend zone concept. On the other hand, it conforms to my personal theory that the friend zone does exist, but we can only put ourselves in it, so that's a thing.

By opting to directly tackle the issue of work-life balance for the successful woman, 'How Does She Do It?' runs a little close to the knuckle. Honestly, it's a risk any issue-led episode of any show faces, but as the leading networked female-led superhero show, it reflects hard on Supergirl when a feminist issue is handled poorly and risks a backlash of the 'this is why female superheroes don't sell' variety. In this case, the handling is mostly okay, but a little awkward in places.

Generally, the show continues to make good use of the idea of Supergirl as a new hero in a world that already has Superman, trying to find her own path. As usual, I can take or leave the soap plots, but it seems to be what the people want.