Fly Like a Girl: ‘Supergirl’ – Episode 6 ‘Red Faced’

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! I hope all our American readers had a really great Thanksgiving holiday and all our international readers had a super week last week. If not you’re definitely having a super week this week because the show has officially received a full-season order! Hooray! Last night’s episode signaled not only a return to the normal week but also the end of my holiday leftovers so it needed to be pretty great and it did not disappoint. You all know the rules by now: spoilers beyond this point (now would be a good time to go get a snack).

Okay, everyone who isn’t ready for awesome gone to get snacks? Good. So far this episode was my favorite of the series. We start with Supergirl flying around, something that appears to be her way of trying to relax. I totally understand this as the sky is my happy place. It’s interesting that we start out with Supergirl trying to relax a bit in the sky since this episode ultimately ends up being all about anger. We finally get to see Kara have some real emotions and it’s pretty amazing. It starts when she hears danger, specifically in the form of some road rage. Two guys are having it out on wheels as they blaze through a school zone and nearly take out a bunch of kids in a crosswalk. Supergirl swoops in and stops the cars (thus saving the kids), but one of the men is a blowhard and a bully. He gets out of the car and is having a fit that Supergirl is in his way and messed up his car. When Supergirl points out that he was about to kill children with his idiocy his response is to try to hit her. She stops it…and hurts him. That doesn’t go well in the media.

It also doesn’t go well at the DEO. Henshaw is pretty angry that Kara didn’t control her temper. He tells her that she needs to get control of herself. This is not the best of advice considering that Max Lord is on the news being Max Lord, talking about how they need better control of Supergirl. And following that? Kara goes to Noonan’s to get coffee and such where she is thanked by Lucy for “inviting” her to something. Kara is confused. James looks uncomfortable, but that might be because Lucy also just sprang on him that her dad is in town and she wants them to have dinner. James and General Lane don’t get along largely because James is besties with Superman. James explains this to Kara as well as that he invited Lucy to Kara’s game night.

At the office we discover that it’s not only Kara having a rough day. Cat’s mother has come to visit and she’s a horrible person. She spends every moment running Cat down and treating her badly. Cat’s mother works in literature and thinks journalism is lame, essentially. She also is critical of the Supergirl name and talks about how she trusts Superman more anyway simply because he’s a guy. You can feel the rage even through the poorly cgi’d anti-aging on her forehead. Kara shows up and is surprised by her sister being there. Alex wants Winn’s help in regards to finding about what happened to Mr. Danvers. At first Winn is reluctant because what Alex wants is for Winn to hack into the DEO mainframe, but he acquieses when he finds out it’s about her dad. About then both Kara and Alex get a call from Henshaw.

The sisters go to the special DEO base camp and the military shows up. General Lane is there and being generally the jerk that comics fans know he is and Lucy is there with him (and she somehow has no idea that Supergirl is Kara.) General Lane wants Supergirl to test a new weapon and Lucy has an executive order from the President basically forcing Supergirl to do it (though I do have to ask if Supergirl is an alien what jurisdiction do any of these people have over her?) Supergirl agrees to help. General Lane wants Supergirl to fight a robot. Specifically he wants her to fight a fancy android that Dr. T.O. Morrow calls Red Tornado. Kara sees this as an opportunity to prove that she (and by extension Superman) can be trusted.

Back at the office Cat has cleared her evening to go to dinner with her mother. Unfortunately her mother is ditching her to go hang out with Toni Morrison after very pointedly telling Cat she isn’t welcome to come. Kara brings her some layouts and an upset Cat takes it out on Kara, telling her that she needs to oversee the redesign and that she is being ridiculous about her crush on James. Kara manages to get it done and heads home for game night, but that isn’t a great experience either. Lucy and James are being ridiculously cute, Winn sucks at the game, and Lucy trash talks Supergirl. I’m angry for Kara.

Kara is definitely ready for a fight. Lane and Morrow get Red Tornado going and initially it looks like it has the advantage over Supergirl, but after getting knocked backwards with cyclones and blasted with missiles, she does something neat. Supergirl flies under the ground and knocks Red Tornado over. She is then able to get in its face and fight it physically, which starts to damage the robot. Morrow freaks and pulls the plug, but Supergirl is getting some anger out. She seriously damages it, only stopping when Henshaw calls her off. Unfortunately instead of being done Red Tornado flies away in steal mode. It seems it has a self-protect mode and now can’t be stopped. Of course, General Lane blames Kara for “unleashing an uncontrollable killing machine” on National City. They go back to the DEO lair and Lane tells everyone that he wants the robot found and destroyed, which doesn’t work for Morrow. When he objects Lane fires him and blames Morrow for the failure. General Lane is awful.

Back at CatCo, Cat is in her office calling for Kara (and pronouncing her name wrong per always.) When Kara finally makes it in Cat starts ranting and telling Kara how worthless she is and Kara flipping loses it. She yells at Cat generally but also tells her she’s mean. Cat is gobsmacked and Kara realizes she’s just yelled at her boss and tries to apologize, but Cat tells her to forward the phones. They’re going somewhere.

Alex goes to Max Lord for help with Red Tornado. She tells him he can show her he isn’t the bad guy. He turns her down. General Lane goes to dinner with James and Lucy and openly is hostile to James the second Lucy goes to the ladies room. General Lane tells James that he isn’t good enough for Lucy.

Cat has taken Kara to Noonan’s and they are drinking. While Cat drinks many, many martinis she imparts some wisdom to Kara: women can’t get mad at work. They can’t really show emotion in general. She explains how once her editor at the Daily Planet threw a chair out a window and it was fine, but if she had even tossed a napkin it would have ended her career. She expresses the double standards and tells Kara that she needs to find out what she is really angry it, the anger behind the anger, because it’s not at Cat.

Meanwhile James, Lucy and General Lane are leaving dinner (and Lucy is pretty pathetic and instead of holding her boyfriend’s hand she opts to hold her dad’s) when Red Tornado shows up. The General orders it to disengage (and by the way, Red Tornado has both arms now). Supergirl shows up to protect them and ends up fighting with it (Red Tornado knocks Lucy out with one of his blasts and James carries her away.) Red Tornado turns into an actual tornado and sends it one way while it goes anohter. Supergirl goes after the tornado to save the people in harm’s way instead of going after the robot.

This act really upsets the General. He tells her that she and the DEO will be held responsible if Red Tornado gets away, but Henshaw is not having that. He reveals that the real purpose of Red Tornado was to stop Kryptonians, not terrorists.

Max reveals to Alex that the robot? Yeah, it’s drone with someone functioning it. That someone being Morrow. As this is happening, Kara and James have set up punching bags to work out some anger. Kara’s is a car. They each go through some of their frustrations but Kara eventually fully opens up: she doesn’t feel normal, is worried she will never have someone who truly understands her and that she is angry because her parents ended her normal life when they sent her to earth. She has no normal life. This is painfully punctuated when Alex calls her regarding Morrow and she has to leave.

So this is the plan: they are going ot use General Lane to draw out Red Tornado while Alex tracks down Morrow since he will have to be nearby. They use a handy hologram of General Lane using Kryptonian crystals. The trap works. Red Tornado shows up and Alex finds Morrow, but there’s a catch: Morrow is using a telepathic relay to operate Red Tornado. The only way to stop him is to kill Morrow. What follows next is a set of great fight scenes. Supergirl fights Red Tornado as Alex fights Morrow. The fights mirror each other and in both fights it looks like the girls are going to lose, but then Alex shoots Morrow dead and it all ends.

Until Red Tornado gets up again because he’s become sentient. Supergirl hits it with her heat vision, but it doesn’t cut it so she digs in deep. Supergirl channels all her pain and anger into it until it finally explodes. This might be the best scene of the show, period.

With Red Tornado handled it’s time for Lane to go back to Metropolis, but Lucy tells her father she’s not going with him. She resigns, choosing James. Lane is not happy and tells her that he hopes it’s not too late for her when she realizes she’s making a big mistake.

At home Alex finds Kara and Winn with some computers. Turns out that Winn found a file on her dad. He had gone to South America with another agent to get a bad alien, but both agents went missing and were presumed dead. Except the other agent showed up sometime later with no memory of the event. That agent? Henshaw, who was also the one who had been deleting the files about Mr. Danvers’ death.

And so we’re back at the office. Cat’s mother is angry at Kara for not getting her a car fast enough. Cat, who is hungover, finally tells off her mother and tells the woman she can’t talk to Kara that way. Mama Cat storms off and both Kara and Cat feel better about their anger. Things are pretty good until Cat drops a glass and Kara cuts herself on the broken shards…and bleeds.

Uh-oh.

So next week we find out why Supergirl can bleed. This can’t be good. Until then!