Supergirl - 'Medusa'

"Are you all shipping me with Mon-el?"

Alien diseases and soap opera abound in this week's installment of Supergirl, 'Medusa'.

Alex tries to come out to her mother and friends at Thanksgiving, and to keep James and Winn from stealing her thunder by coming out as Guardian and his man in the van, although in the end it all gets interrupted and Eliza's big take away from the dinner is that Mon-el and Kara make a cute couple, and I guess it's time that our female lead began defining herself by her romantic life again and James and Winn got to be pissy, jealous man-children. Okay, granted I'm envisioning a worst case scenario here; work with me, it's my buffer against disappointment.

Mon-el is exposed to a virus called Medusa that Hank Henshaw stole from the Fortress of Solitude and released in the alien bar. Kara discovers that the virus is Kryptonian, and learns - once she gets past her hacked robot butler - that her father created it to be used in defending Krypton. The virus is lethal to all non-Kryptonians (except for humans; presumably Cadmus altered it for that one,) and Cadmus plan to aerosolise it worldwide. Eliza is tasked with finding a cure while Kara fights off an attempt by Cyborg Superman to steal a reagent from L-Corp. She saves Lena's life, but Lena rebuffs her when she tries to convince her that her mother is evil, and opts to side with Lillian and hand over the reagent.

During the middle of the episode, Mon-el kisses Kara, perhaps thinking that he's dying, and despite earlier implying that shah; he can do better. It's all a bit rushed and meh, which is not something I would say about Alex's eventual coming out, which Chyler Leigh and Helen Slater nail. Alex's fear that her mother will be disappointed that she doesn't have a 'normal life' is such a believable fear, as is a scene where she admits to Maggie that she started to wonder if it was all about Maggie, before realising that this is all about her; that this is her normal.

Kara and Hank confront Lena and Lillian. Kara chases a missile and J'onn embraces his transfused White Martian DNA to give Cyborg Superman the kicking of a lifetime. David Harewood is chewing the scenery somewhat as J'onn flips out, but makes up for it with his 'well, fuck me then' expression as Hank sees the alien 'monster' actually become one. Kara fails to stop the missile, but does deliver an epic KO teamup hit on Hank. Luckily, it also turns out that Lena doped the reagent and called the cops, because she's dramatically quixotic that way. The day is saved, Lillian is arrested, but Hank escapes.

"Wanna do a crossover?"

A couple of times through the episode, a wobbly hole in space appears, and in the stinger Barry Allen and Cisco Ramone emerge in Kara's loft. Barry tells her that they need her help.

'Medusa' frankly fails to deliver on the 'four-episode crossover' front, and has far more Kara/Mon-el than I like, which is to say any. I'll say again that I don't believe that Kara needs a love interest. It doesn't help that moving to super-powered white bread Mon-el from black everyman James Olsen has unfortunate implication both in terms of racism and exceptionalism(1), but more than that, Mon-el is a jerk and nothing we've seen so far suggests that Kara woudl go for the bad boy type. I can see the two making really good friends, but it feels that a romance would require one of them to make character-breaking compromises, and it would be bad if that were Mon-el and just awful if it were Kara.

(1) It smacks of the mentality that insists on pairing Superman and Wonder Woman in alternate continuities because they're a match in power(2). I far prefer that arm's length Wondie/Bats relationship in the old Justice League cartoon.
(2) Unless you're Frank Miller and think that Wondie should be a snarling man-hater unless tamed by Supes' godlike force, and I really hope for your sake that you're not.