Supergirl - 'The Martian Chronicles'

"Yes, it is a big one, Jamie."

Do you ever get that feeling where you want to scream at the continuity announcer? I do. Seriously, ever since Mon-el showed up, they've been leading into each episode of Supergirl as if it were a will-they-won't-they sitcom.

Kara talks to Mon-el after his admission that he likes her, and awkwardly claims that she isn't in the dating place and if she was wouldn't date someone like him. Basically, she's a player hater and she's owning it, and that's grand. Mon-el was proposed as the masculine form of slut earlier in the series, after all. I would applaud the series for recognising that some people can be wrong for each other despite a strong surface attraction... if that were what it was doing, because Alex almost immediately suggests that Kara might be hiding from her true feelings andbythewayisskippingherbirthdaytogotoaconcertwithMaggie.

Things get a bit soap opera, but fortunately then M'gann catches J'onn stalking her to keep a look out for White Martians, and one shows up and fights them both until Supergirl manages to run him(1) off. Later he visits M'gann and it turns out that he is her husband, here to honour-kill her for being a wuss who won't murder children and rejected the White Martian policy of total genocide(2). He gives her a day to wind up her affairs, or all of her friends will be killed, and while I get that White Martians believe that they are very much all that and a bag of chips, this threat is much less effective when 'all of your friends' are badass, heavily-armed professional alien hunters, and/or Kryptonians.

Headbutt of love!

M'gann comes to the DEO and agrees to work with them rather than trying to deal with this alone, and then M'gann comes to the DEO and agrees to work with them rather than trying to deal with this alone, because oh snap, the first 'M'gann' is actually hubby(3). The lights go out and then no-one knows who might have been grabbed by the White Martian and replaced. There's a lot of gun pointing until J'onn proposes the Thing test; fire forces a Martian to revert. This allows for a nicely understated moment where M'gann has to help J'onn overcome his fear of fire, before revealing that Winn is the White Martian, which has telepathically stolen all of his technical know-how and DEO HQ clearance in order to set off a reactor overload.

During the hunt for the Martian - and Winn, who must be being kept alive to provide a template, yay! - Kara and Alex have a heart to heart about Kara's fear of being replaced by Maggie, and her need to lean on her relationship with Alex because the possibility of a romantic attachment to Mon-el is disconcerting to her.

And then it turns out that this Alex is a second White Martian hitter.

Kara fights Alex-Martian, while J'onn and M'gann take on Mr Martian and the released Winn struggles to cancel the reactor overload. M'gann administers a sort of combined trepanning and decree absolute, and Kara knocks down her opponent long enough for Alex to shoot her(4) when she does the whole 'suddenly jump back up thing'.

M'gann decides to go back to Mars on hubby's ship and try to start a pro-not being racist arseholes movement among her people, and bids an emotional farewell to J'onn. This is a bit disappointing; I was hoping that this episode would be the start of an arc, and it looks like it's the end. Alex remembers the conversation about relationships thanks to the telepathic link the Martian was using to act like her, and encourages Kara to take a punt with Mon-el, who turns out to have rebounded onto James's PA, Eve Tessmacher. I suspect that they are going to argue that he did this because he was hurt by her rejection, but seriously Kara, even if that's true the fact that he is dumping his pain out on a woman who has shown herself to be solid gone on him is pretty shabby. You're well off out of it grrl.

Not a woman who needs a shallow hottie to make her life complete. Screw
you, Sky continuity announcer.

Or as the Sky continuity announcer puts it: "What was she thinking, turning down such a hottie."

So, yeah; Supergirl continues to fumble with the difficult concept that its lead doesn't need to be dating anyone, especially not Mon-el. Up until now he was a bit manipulative and shiftless, but this rebound onto his sure thing is out and out shitty behaviour. I suspect I would mind less if Eve was made out to be just in it for the sex, but she's played as very much into him. I strongly suspect that she is going to go the woman scorned route (or, given the character's role in other media, turn out to have been a Cadmus plant all along, which would in some small way rescue Mon-el from total douchebag territory; maybe pull it back to just 'significant douchebaggery.')

That aside, I'm sad to see the back of M'gann, because more Martians is always good in my books. She's planning a suicide mission to try to change minds, but I'd certainly like to see her turn up again; maybe even ask for help on the Red Planet in an episode where Kara's powers would be limited by the greater distance to the sun, although that could be expensive to film. The episode itself was pretty good, with J'onn and M'gann's relationship frankly more convincing than Supergirl's, and plenty of action and soul-searching. The logistics of the double-switcheroo were a tad iffy, but I'm willing to let that go for the fire scene and Jeremy Jordan's utter glee at getting to be a supervillain for a scene.

(1) The Martian in question is male, although given the degree to which both races can shapeshift, I do wonder why the gender binary seems to still apply.
(2) I can not think it is a coincidence that both hero Martians have an African-American Earth form, in contrast to the mostly Caucasian faces shown by the White Martians.
(3) Mr Martian?
(4) Just going by first assumed form for pronouns here.