Supergirl - 'Crossfire'

Hahahahahahahahahaaahhhaahhaa! Yes.

It's time to nerd up, as Kara introduces Mon-el to the world as 'Mike of the Interns', a blatant Clark Kent knock-off with a crappy job at CatCo and a pair of her spare glasses. This goes about as well as you might expect introducing an unrepentant, reckless hedonist into a routine work environment would go, and before long he's handing off his work to Kara's replacement, Eve Teschmacher(1), having noisy sex with Eve Teschmacher in the supply closet and getting himself invited to Lena Luthor's gala by being Kara's friend. It's clear that he's a terrible intern and hates working at CatCo, which makes Kara sad.

Man... these alien guns do not benefit from a still close up.

Meanwhile, there's trouble brewing, as bank robbers start showing up with alien weapons, zapping Supergirl and generally being dicks. Almost immediately, Cadmus pops up and is like 'see; what did we tell you? Aliens, yeah.' They are also acting like dicks. Unsurprisingly, they are the ones who supplied the robbers, but cut ties when the gang want to rob Lena's gala, for which Lena has asked Kara to put her in touch with some super security (cue 'Operation Doubtfire', which goes off with a refreshing lack of hilarity.) Winn hides under a table and discovers that Lena is using a gizmo to disable the alien guns. Winn and Lena get the thing working, Supergirl punches faces and all ends happily.

'Crossfire' is not a strong episode, but it has some great moments. Overall the plot is thin, and serves more as a frame to hang some character work on. The Doctor is a genuine idealist, if a bloody-handed one, but it's her final reveal as Lex and Lena's mother(2) that lifts the character somewhat above the generic. No such save for the gang, who are entirely forgettable; to the point that it's hard to care much when Cadmus remote kills them at the end.

Aww.

In terms of our heroes there are two great character bits and one that doesn't go so well. Kara and 'Mike' is beautifully handled, with Kara never seeming like a tightass bully for trying to get Mon-el to conform to her ideals, and Mon-el managing to come across as genuinely unclear why anything he's doing is wrong rather than being a deliberate dick. Some hints aside, I really hope they aren't pushing a Kara/Mon-el relationship, but much more successful - if a little quick - is the progression of Alex and Maggie's relationship, with Maggie being dumped between episode so that Alex can recognise and acknowledge that the reason she has never found the right man is that for her, there is no right man. It's deftly handled, which alas is more than can be said for James's subplot.

After trying to help out in an early heist and seeing his dad's camera run over by the villains, James Olsen decides he's going to use his black belt to fight crime in a suit that he asks Winn to make for him and which, after some franly token reluctance, Winn agrees to make, It's not a bad idea to give James something new to do, but damn this is coming out of nowhere. Perhaps it's because he's stuck behind a desk instead of out taking pictures, but apparently his early-onset midlife crisis is going to be vigilantism. I did not see that coming, largely because prior to this episode it really wasn't; he hasn't had enough screen time this season for it to develop, which is a shame because it really could have been done organically.

(1) Who, yes, was Lex Luthor's sidekick in the Donner Superman.
(2) Point of note - although Lena is established as adopted and apparently at odds with her mother on the subject of aliens, the good Doctor makes no visible distinction between Lex and Lena in terms of her desire to protect them.