[Editor’s note: This review may contain spoilers.]
Director: Rebecca Johnson
Writers: Caitlin Parrish & Katie Rose Rogers
Summary
Livewire breaks out of prison while Miss Martian suffers from a psychic attack.
Positives
The subplot with Martian Manhunter and Miss Martian is the most interesting part of the episode. I like the idea that J’onn isn’t forgiving M’gann because his hatred of White Martians motivates him. He sees them as the enemy and as monsters; that’s easy. The idea that they could be complex with unique humane emotions challenges J’onn. It’s hard for him to accept that there is a good White Martian. The writers manage to make both him and M’gann sympathetic which is impressive.
Brit Morgan is fun as Livewire. I always like seeing her; she has a nice bit of attitude and flair that I enjoy watching on screen.
Negatives
I do not understand Kara in this episode at all. At first, she is acting completely erratic and nervous at the thought of Livewire being loose. Why is that? She has never acted like this before and Livewire is far from the most threatening villain Kara has faced.
What really makes Kara infuriating in this episode is how she reacts to James being Guardian. She immediately judges him and tells him he cannot be a hero because he doesn’t have powers. That makes zero sense. The big moral of last episode was that Kara would help save the day whether she had powers or not. She took insane risks and nearly killed herself to save others all without powers. This is what inspired Mon-El to become a hero. What is the difference? She’s clearly a hypocrite. And a month ago, she worked side by side with Team Arrow, Heatwave and White Canary none of whom have powers. If this is a problem for her, why didn’t she say anything then? They were fighting aliens; Oliver’s only contribution was to get thrown off a roof. The only difference between James and the aforementioned non-powered heroes is that Guardian is good at his job unlike the others.
James was completely ready to tell Kara about his secret identity back at Thanksgiving dinner. Why is he reluctant again?
Mon-El’s motivations for being a hero have been changed because screw consistent characterization. Now, he wants to be a hero because he wants to bang Kara. That is not what happened in last week’s episode. I thought we were moving Mon-El to a more mature place where he recognized the importance of Kara’s work. Nope; that would be too interesting. It clearly needs to be motivated by a cock-tease romance I’m already sick of.
Verdict
I did not enjoy this episode. You might say that I hated it. It feels like the writers didn’t watch the last several episodes because most of the characters are acting inconsistently. The Martian subplot was nice and I liked seeing J’onn grow past his prejudice. Morgan is fun as Livewire and there are solid special effects. But Kara’s characterization drags this down quite a bit and she’s the lead character. She’s so unfair to James that it’s hard to empathize with her and she’s directly contradicting herself from a week ago. This might be the worst episode of the show so far because this is the first time I have disliked Kara.
