Fly Like a Girl: ‘Supergirl’ – Episode 5 ‘How Does She Do It?’

Supergirl is DC’s television adaptation of the comic book of the same name. It airs Monday nights at 8/7 Central on CBS. Our writer, Nicole Drum recaps the series each week updating you on the latest episode here in Fly Like a Girl.

Image Credit: CBS

Welcome back Supergirl fans! This week we pick up with the episode that was supposed to air last week so here is to hoping that things don’t feel out of sync. As always spoilers beyond this point!

This week’s episode opens with our girl having a great flight just being happy. We know she’s happy because that’s what she’s monologuing about. She is definitely happy. As she is having her happy flight she sees a drone and goes after it. This drone, though, is pretty agile and adept at evading her even at her super speed but she does manage to prevail and blow it out of the sky. I hope it didn’t belong to Amazon.

With the drone destroyed Supergirl takes a piece to the DEO. She thinks Henshaw was using it to follow her, but he swears it wasn’t him. Alex rolls up and takes a look at the advanced tech of the thing and has no idea what it is. Henshaw takes the piece as he leaves while Alex tells Kara she can trust him. Yeah, this is definitely out of order from last week’s episode.

Order or not Kara goes off to work. Winn is all sorts of stressed because he had to handle her desk phone. It seems that Cat won some sort of prize, the Siegel Prize given to women in the media and oh, by the way, the ceremony is in Metropolis the next day. Cat can’t go. Why? Her mother won’t babysit her son. Cat has a kid? Yes. And Kara just offered to babysit little Carter so Cat can go. Cat stressed to Kara that Carter is special and needs special attention.

Meanwhile Lucy and James are at a restaurant talking about work. James isn’t buying why Lucy is in town, but she tells him that she just really missed him and is upset about how they ended things. James isn’t having it. He’s really not so he blows her off. Good, I don’t like Lucy. Kara goes to check on James. James tells Kara that Lucy left him in favor of her job, but before they can talk about this more a bomb goes off. A significant one: Kara has to save a skyscraper. She blows out the fire with her breath, but while she does a drone is watching her.

Back at the DEO Henshaw is about to hand the investigation of this to the good folks at the FBI. Before he can, though, Alex sorts out that the drone? Yeah, that’s a Maxwell Lord thing. As was the bomb. It doesn’t look good.

With the plot thickening, Alex and Kara have some sister time. Alex gives Kara the advice to not talk to James about his issues with Lucy. Kara then gets a call from Cat asking about her son and um…well. Kara isn’t with Carter so she zips off to his school and introduces herself to him. Carter is very, very, very shy.

Over at Lord Tech, Henshaw and Alex is talking to Maxwell Lord. Lord tells them that the lab that had been attacked was his, but it was part of a shell company. The agents ask him who might be in a potential suspect pool, but Lord doesn’t want to play ball. He claims to not trust the government. Henshaw leaves Alex with Lorde.

At the office Carter doesn’t seem to care about anything. He’s really rather bored by it all and not engaged. Not engaged, that is, until Supergirl is on the news. That gets his interested. Carter is infatuated with Supergirl, which amuses Kara. Winn tells Carter that he knows Supergirl personally, which Kara tries to deflect. Meanwhile James is in Cat’s office trying to run things. He is having a lot of trouble and doesn’t understand how Cat does it all. Lucy calls, which irritates James, but Kara keeps him from venting about it.

Back over at Lord Tech, Lord appears to be really impressed by Alex. He tells her that she is wasting her time and talent with the government. He also tells her that he’s not impressed by Supergirl which might not be the smartest thing to say but hey. He gets a call then and there is a bomb in another one of his labs. Lord is insistent on trying to defuse the bomb because the man has an ego the size of a house, but when he tries the timer speeds up. Alex calls Kara and when she does, Supergirl comes rushing in to fly that bomb away from the city. Unfortunately the bomb kocks her into the ocean and renders her unconscious. When Kara wakes up at the DEO she realizes that she’s been out for a long, long time. That means Carter is with Winn. So she goes to meet up with Lucy? That’s her plan at least.

Anyway. Henshaw finds out that the bomber is a guy named Ethan Knox and he was recently-fired from Lord’s staff. Alex tells Kara that she needs to focus and not spread herself so thin. Back at the office, Carter and Winn are playing video games so Kara goes ahead to have lunch with Lucy. Lucy is really sad. She asks Kara if James was seeing Supergirl and explains that she prioritized her work over James because James was more interested in Superman than her. Okay.

Alex asks Lord to cancel the launch of his fancy high speed train out of concern that Knox is going to target it. Lord still doesn’t trust the government because his parents died at work (they worked for the government.) Alex apologizes, but Lord has that ego and doesn’t care.

At Cat’s office Kara talks to James. She apologizes to him for not letting him vent and she tells him what Lucy told her (way to be a good faux friend, Kara.) She tells him that if she had love she would fight for it. James really isn’t feeling like he wants to trust Lucy, but Kara tells him that if he isn’t ready to move on it won’t be fair to his next girlfriend. Then she goes off to get Carter lunch and then to suit up to help the train situation.

Lucy comes in to say bye to James. They argue, then they make up, then they kiss and Lucy leaves. Supergirl is following the train, James sits in the office thinking bout Lucy. Winn realizes that Carter is missing and guesses that he probably went to the train thing.

Yep. Carter is there. Heading to the train.

The police find a bomb at the airport. Supergirl heads to that. James calls Lucy, suddenly panicking about her. Lord helps Carter get onto the train in an effort to find his parents. The bad guy, Knox is on the train with the bomb strapped to his chest and Winn (who, by the way, isn’t allowed on the train) sees him as the train leaves the station. Winn calls Kara because she can catch up with the train.

So Kara leaves the DEO in charge of the airport situation to go after the train. Carter is super impressed that Supergirl just showed up and Lord is having a fit, saying that Knox can’t possibly on board. Supergirl makes them go to the back of the train while she goes to the front and oh, there’s Knox.

At the airport James shows up at the same time the DEO does. When James discovers Supergirl isn’t coming he goes to find Lucy and tells her he came to save her. They hug. Oh, Alex says she can’t see inside the bomb to disarm it so Henshaw orders Alex to leave him alone.

Back at the train, Supergirl chases Knox who exposes his explosives and says its rigged to go off if he gets off the train. Kara tells him that he needs to think about his daughter.

Airport: Henshaw has his glow eyes and pries the bomb apart with his bare hands. He brings out the disarmed bomb and the crowd cheers. He also tells Alex the bomb was a dud meant to distract from the train.

Train: Supergirl is pleading with Knox to not hurt people. She knows his kid is sick and needs him. He says that this is her only hope and that no one was supposed to know it was him. Supergirl begs him not to hurt anyone and he says he won’t because she will save them. He then starts the bomb. She has thirty seconds to save everyone. So Supergirl uses her head vision to undo the train cars from the engine and thus Knox and the engine speed away while she and the rest of the train stops. Over the water, the bomb and the bad guy explode.

At the DEO lair, Kara pops open the bomb canister and finds a remote failsafe. This doesn’t make sense. She also doesn’t understand how the bombings help a sick kid. She remembers Carter and goes back to the office. At the office Carter is super excited about having met Supergirl. He says she’s so much prettier in person, but Cat wants to know what else her kid may have noticed about Supergirl. Carter also wants to know if Kara can babysit again, but Cat says probably not. Kara apologizes to Cat when Carter leaves and Cat is definitely upset, but she lectures Kara about trying to have it all. Kara leaves…and sees James and Lucy making out. She also sees Lord on the news where says he has failsaves for everything and a lightbulb goes off over her head. She asks Winn for some hospital records.

Then Supergirl goes to Lord’s apartment. She confronts him, telling him that she knows that Knox’s daughter’s care is being paid for by Lord and that she thinks Lord forced Knox into the bomb situation. She also knows that it was a ruse. Lord is smug and tells her that she can’t prove anything and that maybe the responsible party is curious about Supergirl and was testing her. He tells her that it was interesting that she saved the small number of people on the train instead of the larger number at the airport and that the trick to finding out who she is is to figure out why the train mattered to her. She tells him she’s watching him and leaves and he says that “the fun is just beginning.”

All in all not too disjointed. The Lucy-James thing bugs me, I’ve never liked Lord, and this was an only okay episode, but that’s okay. Henshaw’s eyes! I’m anxious to find out more. But that’s it for now! Until next week!