Supergirl S2 Ep 18: Ace Reporter – A recap!

Supergirl has finally returned to us, and the episode they gave us provided just a taste of what might be coming in the next handful of weeks before the season 2 finale. This episode guest starred a CW Veteran, Rahul Kohli (Ravi, iZombie) and took a few plot-twist-y turns that I wasn’t expecting.

The day starts out with National City’s Golden Hero zooming through the skies, obviously enjoying her flight before landing at the DEO. She approaches the command center, eager to take down bad guys, and obviously bored to tears without a job. She tells J’onn, Alex, and Winn that she’s “ready to kick some ass, take some names, and do it with an endearing smile on her face.” (That’s right. Our favorite Sunshine Danvers said the word “ass.” What a scandal.) Unfortunately, it seems that all is quiet within the city, and when Alex makes a joke about a “Law-abiding serum” being injected into the water, to which Kara demands to know if that’s illegal and adamantly insists it’s something she could stop. But alas, The Girl Of Steel is left to her own devices, as it seems everyone else has work to do, while she…unfortunately, is resigned to waiting until a bad guy shows up.

Before I continue the story, I’m going to go ahead and recap a part of the show that doesn’t really connect with Kara and Lena’s adventures. Winn and James are still doing the whole…vigilante thing, and as Guardian finishes up with a criminal, he finds Lyra and Winn well…they were making the van rock with the not-quite PG things they were probably doing. He opens the door and sees the two, and when she calls Guardian by his real name, James gets upset that Winn told her his identity. She tells the vigilante that every human smells different, which is how she figured out his identity. After Winn and James talk, the Guardian agrees to let Lyra help him fight crime, but when they go on a liquor store robbery that turns out to be just a kid making a stupid decision, and Lyra gets WAY too aggressive with him, James decides to have Winn talk her out of being a superhero.

At the dive bar, she doesn’t take the news well. She gets extremely aggressive, yells at Winn, and storms off – Winn, upset by the interaction, stomps right past James and out of the bar. James comes to Winn while they’re out fighting crime, and tells him that he feels bad for forcing Winn to choose, and calls the tech his brother. Winn tells James that he cares about him, but that he cares about Lyra too, and in a moment of understanding, James decides to bring the Valerian back on board. As Winn and Lyra are making up, James tells her that she has to listen to every word he says, to which she agrees with a VERY goofy salute.

And now…back to the regularly scheduled antics of Supergirl. To distract herself from a dismal bout of unemployment, the Kryptonian decides to try her hand at baking, but after five failed pastries, it seems she’s ready to give up. A knock at the door pulls her from what seems to be an intense moment of pure, unadulterated grumpiness over her cooking skills, and as she lets Lena Luthor in, the CEO asks if she’s been grief baking. When Kara claims that she hadn’t, Lena teasingly calls her a liar. The two seat themselves at Kara’s island bar, where Lena admits that just before she moved to National City, she had broken up with her boyfriend, Jack Spheer, and ironically admits to kara that Jack is “her kryptonite”. Jack was in town to announce a break-through in the new technology for his company “Spheericals,” and has personally invited the Luthor woman to his press-release. To calm her nerves, she asks Kara to attend with her. As the duo head out, she asks what Kara’s kryptonite is, and the blonde responds with an intelligent “uhhhmmm…” (Plot Twist: It’s actually Potstickers and Ice Cream. Sometimes Bacon.)

At the conference, as Kara and Lena take their seats, Snapper Carr finds his own seat and to his great dismay, catches eyes with the blonde. He grumpily calls her ponytails, and essentially tells her to keep it quiet while the “real reporters work.” On stage, Jack appears and wows the audience with his announcement of his new nano-tech, that has the remarkable capabilities of healing virtually anything. He demonstrates by slicing his own hand open, and the CFO, Beth, walks on stage to release the small nanobots. The bots hover over his skin and repair the open wound. Of course, Kara can’t hold her reporter-side back, and when he opens the floor for questions, she manages to get his attention. She asks him if he’s following the rules and regulations for transferring what could essentially be drugs across city borders, to which he responds that he’d never go against FDA regulations. The rest of the reporters get their turn, but Kara is focused on how good that made her look in front of her old boss.

After the conference, Jack approaches Lena, and Kara decides to let the two catch up. As she leaves them, a man approaches her and tells her that he has information about the nanobots, and that she’s the only reporter he can trust. Meanwhile, Jack is pulled from his moment with Lena when the CFO tells him that he should speak with his shareholders. That night, Kara meets with the man who’d approached her, and he tells her that he used to work at Jack’s company. He explains that he worked in the archives, and when the nanobots were going through testing, he learned that there weren’t any actual human trials; as he’s telling her this, a swarm of nanobots go underneath the car and cause it to explode. Of course, being kryptonian, Kara is perfectly okay, but unfortunately her source doesn’t survive. Meanwhile, Jack had appeared at Lena’s office to ask her on a dinner date, and after some coaxing, manages to get her to say yes.

As she gets home, Kara explains what happened to Mon-El, who is sitting on the couch reading the first Harry Potter. (No. I’m totally not a fan. I totally couldn’t tell by the brief glimpses of the cover that that’s what he was reading. #SlytherinHouseForLife.) Mon-El tells her that Lena had called to try to get Kara to talk her out of the date, but considering she wasn’t home, it didn’t work. Kara takes Mon-El to the restaurant where Lena and Jack are having dinner. The two awkwardly greet the duo of CEOs, before taking up the other seats at the table. After Jack spills some romantic stuff about Lena, Kara and “Mike” decide to take their leave. Jack stands to see them off, and Mon-El gives him a hug, but it’s not because he enjoys the company of the man – the Daxamite reveals to Kara that he’d stolen Jack’s security badge, and so the duo head to Spheerical’s office building.

As they rather easily break into Jack’s office, they manage to get into his computer and learn that Kara’s source was right – there ARE no human trials to the nanobot tech. They do, however, find a video where Jack injected himself with a version of the nanobots that has an interesting side effect. The bots merge with him, making him the killer. That following day, Kara goes to James and tries to get his help to file paperwork with the government to get Spheericals looked into, but Snapper interrupts. Kara decides to take her leave, but before she exits the building, she uses her super-hearing to learn that Snapper has a lead on Spheericals, and it seems that the company may not be on the up-and-up. His source is one of the alleged members of the human trials, and he’s going to see him tonight.

As Snapper meets with his own source, Supergirl hovers outside of the apartment complex and listens in. While Snapper is learning exactly what Kara had already learned, the bots manage to target the source and her former boss. She, unfortunately, isn’t able to save the source, but with a close-encounter, and a lot of freeze breath, she does manage to rescue Snapper. Kara decides she needs to talk to Lena, and ends up showing her the video of Jack testing the bots on himself. She tells her friend about the two deaths, and forces the CEO to promise that she won’t approach her ex about this. Lena, of course, breaks her promise, and goes to see Jack about what he’d done. She yells at him about his actions, but he genuinely doesn’t understand what she’s talking about. Just as she realizes this, the CFO, Beth, approaches, and Jack seems to have…well shut down. Beth explains that, like a lot of technology, Jack is controlled by the device in her ear. She tells Lena that he’d wanted to scrap the entire thing when he realized the nanobots took away free will, but that wasn’t the “financially responsible” choice.

Like always, Supergirl arrives to save Lena, but Beth puts Jack on the hero’s tail. Lena tells her to keep him occupied, which Kara does flawlessly. The Luthor approaches Beth and is greeted with a kick to the stomach; Beth mentions how she’s a black belt, but Lena comes back and knocks her to the ground with a solid punch to the face, before telling her that she’s a Luthor. Kara gets trapped by the nanobots, who have her pinned down and are beginning to crush her. Lena smashes the earpiece, which brings Jack back to her, but it’s obvious he’s in a great deal of pain. He points Lena to the mainframe, where she tells them both that she can override the nanobots. Beth comes to and tells her that doing that will kill Jack, but he begs her to do it anyway…and so she does. The bots stop their attack on Supergirl, but Jack doesn’t make it.

At Catco, Kara had presented everything she had learned about the story to Snapper, and when he questioned her, she told him that if there’s anything he taught her, it’s that the truth is the most important thing. The story needed to get out and Catco had the resources to do it. She apologized for sending out the story on Cadmus, but in that same sense, the truth was more important than Snapper’s rules. The two parted ways, but the girl later returns with a danish for Snapper’s help in getting the story out. Snapper, in a brief and scary moment of kindness, praises Kara for diving into danger to get the story, despite her life being at risk. He tells her she’s re-hired, unless she is considering opening a food truck, but when he takes a bite of her home-made danish, he quickly demands that she NOT open that truck.

Kara visits with Lena, who seems to be empty of emotion after having to watch Jack die. She pulls the CEO into her arms and promises that she won’t go anywhere, while Lena confesses that she’s afraid of who she might become if she keeps losing people. After Kara leaves her, Lena is approached by Rhea, the Queen of Daxam, who apologizes for the loss of her friend. She reveals she has a proposition for the CEO, and if we know Rhea, it’s probably not a good thing.

 

Now….with that conclusion in mind, I have MANY thoughts about this episode. I understand it was mostly just filler, but still. First and foremost…why was Alex only in like 3 seconds of this episode? Where was Maggie? Will Cat Grant ever return home from the war? WHY DO THEY KEEP TRYING TO MAKE MY PRECIOUS LENA LUTHOR A BAD GUY??? And who allowed Rahul Kohli to die, he is a cinnamon roll and should be treated like such? Regardless of the questions that will probably never get answered, I did enjoy this episode, and can’t wait for the new one to come out. Tune in every Monday at 8/7c on The CW!