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Recap: SUPERGIRL Season 1, Episode 10 “Childish Things”

Warning this review contains full spoilers.

After Kara having to deal with her Aunt Astra, it was time another member of “Team Supergirl” dealt with family drama. It was pretty clear from the beginning that this would be a filler-type episode, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t entertaining. This week our main antagonist was the mad scientist, Toyman. Toyman is a classic Superman villain from the comics and turns out that he is the father of our friend Winn. Normaly Winn has been used as the comic relief in the series, but in this episode he was the emotional catalyst. The relationship between Winn and his father was a great storyline, but it still had its problems. Winslow Schott Sr. (Toyman), was a man who was lost everything because his boss stole one of his toy designs; this lead to him planting a bomb in a teddy bear so he can kill his boss. This was the turning point with him becoming the Toyman. This scared Winn, seeing his father become a murderer at the young age of eleven must have been torcher. The main focus of the episode was how his father just wanted to reestablish a relationship with his son; even if it meant killing hundreds of people. That’s pretty heavy for a show with Supergirl’s light tone.

We see that Kara wants to help Winn find his dad before the FBI does. The FBI is willing to kill Toyman if necessary. Winn is struggling to see that his father is worth saving because of all of the horrible things he’s done. Winn thinks that he could snap just like his father and become a killer. Kara helps Winn overcome this fear of becoming a monster, and he then decides not bottle up his emotions; because that’s what lead to his father becoming Toyman. Of course this leads to him kissing Kara and telling her that he loves her. One of the problems with this series is that every week we have to watch this annoying love triangle between Kara, James and Winn. It’s constantly pushed in our faces week-after-week, and it just keeps going in circles. James knows that Winn loves Kara, but Kara likes James; and James likes Kara, but Lucy likes James. This whole thing needs to end now! I can’t watch another second of this pointless love triangle (love Square?)! We have this elephant in the room that just keeps getting bigger and bigger, and now it might get even worse because Kara doesn’t know how to handle the situation between her and Winn. This has always been a problem with DC TV shows, its like they don’t know how to handle human relationships. Hopefully they can right the ship before the end of the season.

While we’re on the topic of relationships let’s talk about James and Lucy. This is by far my least favorite part of the episode. The episode starts out with Lucy in Cat’s office; Cat gives Lucy an “interview” and suddenly she’s hired. It is definetly one of the strangest interviews I’ve seen, but it’s Cat so there’s that. It’s been well documented that James and Lucy don’t have a healthy relationship so it’s no surprise that this leads to some drama between the two of them. Thankfully they didn’t overuse this plot line in the episode; it only took up around six minutes of screen time. However the thing I’m sure everybody wanted to see more of was Alex and J’onn trying to get more info on Maxwell Lord. As always fans loved every second Martian Manhunter was on screen, from him teaching Kara how to fly (the right way) to him shape-shifting into Maxwell lord; He simply steals the show in every scene he’s in.
The dinner scene between Maxwell and Alex felt a bit forced to me, but she was stalling so J’onn would be able to see what’s behind Max’s secret door. [It seems to be a Bizarro clone of Kara, and I can’t wait to see how that plays out!] This leads to Jonn getting caught and having top wipe the security guard’s memory. Sadly with J’onn wiping the guards memory he literally wiped all of his memories; He doesn’t remember his name, his job or even his family. J’onn never wanted to use his powers and now it basically cost a man his life. While j’onn Jo’nzz has been a nice addition to the show sometimes it feels like they don’t know how they want to use him. The one thing that annoys me with the Martian Manhunter storyline is that the more he uses his powers the more martian he becomes, meaning that he will lose his shape-shifting abilities. How does that even work? Is this just a way to make sure that they don’t have to give us Martian Manhunter on a weekly basis or is it just bad writing? It just feels like another storyline that the show has to juggle, but if it means no more love triangles then I’m all for it.

Overall it was a decent episode, but we need to get back to the main plot. We need more development between Kara and her Aunt Astra. This show thrives the most when it focuses more on the conflict between Astra and Kara, with a little j’onn j’onzz in thrown in for good luck. Once the series decides to stick with that formula that’s when it can truly be in the same league as some of the other comic book series.

Supergirl airs Monday nights at 8/7c on CBS.

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