Supergirl - 'Survivor'

"The first rule of fight club..."

New friendships this week, as Kara and J'onn struggle to cope with being only mostly the last of their kind, and Wynn and Kara try to get to grips with new buddies.

J'onn fumbles his dealings with M'gann M'orzz when he asks her to take the bond with him. This is a pretty standard Martian thing, sharing thoughts such that a community has no secrets, but after three centuries alone it clearly spooks her.

Meanwhile, Alex is well into an odd-couple, buddy cop relationship with Maggie Sawyer. They look into a murdered alien, and find their suspect only for him to be kidnapped by men in a van. Maggie's contacts point them to a high end gathering, where the 1% of National City meet up to drink expensive booze, wear laughable tinted goggles and watch aliens fight in an electrified cage. Run by slinky, snake-tattooed villainess Roulette, this no-holds-barred fight club is big, big business, and even when Alex calls in Supergirl for backup, she gets walloped by a big dude called Draga and Roulette shrugs off any suggestion that she might be arrested. Apparently the President's new act has not yet made these aliens citizens, so she can do what she likes to them.

Oh, and M'gann is one of the fighters.

Smackdown.

Mon-El persuades Wynn to take him out of the DEO and paints the town red, in part because Kara won't engage with Mon-El, instead leaving Wynn to deal with him because she doesn't want to get involved with a Daximite in any way. J'onn gets some info by shaming M'gann, and when he goes back to apologise for being a bit of an ass about it he gets jumped by Roulette and dragged in for a green on green death match, during which he realises that she fights in the cage because she does not think that she, as the sole survivor of her race, deserves no peace.

Kara goes to Lena Luthor, who was at boarding school with Roulette and is on her elite invite list. She breaks up the Martian fight and takes down Draga, thanks to a tip from Mon-El; who saw him fight on Warworld one time(1). Roulette is arrested, but instantly sprung thanks to her connections. Kara takes on custody of Mon-El as her odd couple roomie. Alex takes a swing and asks Maggie out for drinks, only to be interrupted by Maggie's unexpected girlfriend. Chyler Leigh plays the quiet hurt of taking a chance on something entirely new for Alex only to realise she completely misread Maggie's casual flirt-banter beautifully.

And M'gann shifts into White Martian form, so there's that.

'Survivor' is a very busy episode. The central plot owes a lot to the Meta-Brawl episodes from the Justice League cartoon, but M'gann's inner life is a little too cryptic for the reveal of her guilt motive to have the necessary kick, in part because we only really get it when we see that she is a White Martian; presumably the White Martian from her life story who refused a kill order. Kara gets a rousing speech to persuade the aliens that life in the shadows as Roulette's gladiators isn't a life worth living, but that's a bit out of nowhere as well. It felt almost as if the need to keep Kara interacting with Snapper Carr (Kara has a story, Snapper is rude, Kara gets confirmation, Snapper is grudgingly respectful) got in the way of a more Warworldy story in which Kara and J'onn would have spent the episode bottled with the other fighters.

(1) From Warworld to a warehouse in National City. Man, that's a fall.