After three strong episodes opening the season, Supergirl seems to trip on its fourth. It seems that {insert shows quirk here} Fight Club is a trope we are going to have to learn to live with when it comes to sci-fi and fantasy shows, but usually they’re a bit more thought out than this.
The main storyline of the episode feels as if the writers have simply gone, “You know what would be good? Alien Fight Club.” And left it at that, not really giving it any more depth, and sacrificing reason and characterisation for a gimmick episode that centres around a woman (known as Roulette) who only seems to own one dress (a red cut-out number that is clearly been designed to show off the artistry of the make-up department who have created a fun dragon tattoo that wraps around her upper half). It’s a shame, really, it feels like they’ve wasted Dichen Lachman in a role that is poorly crafted, and doesn’t seem to have much in the way of reason for what she’s doing.
Then you come to the aliens themselves, we’re never shown why they would even fight each other. Why would M’Gann (Sharon Leal) face off against Hank (David Harewood)? They’ve not been given any sort of ultimatum, it seems. Simply they must entertain a group of people who are wearing equally-pointless sun-goggles. They aren’t even fighting with fire, what is the point?! And when the conclusion comes down to a rousing speech by Supergirl (Melissa Benoist) and the bad guys concede with a slap on the wrist it doesn’t seem like much of a threat at all.
Elsewhere and Winn (Jeremy Jordan) has teamed up with Mon-El (Chris Wood) in helping him to adjust to life on Earth. They go out drinking, Mon-El nearly gets into a fight, and leaves Winn with a terrible handover. Mon-El is proving endearing, learning these new traditions, and we’re seeing more of him, we want to know more about him and his home planet.
Kara is still struggling with Snapper Carr (Ian Gomez) but as journalists we’re kind of on his side. She’s handing him a story and she has no basis for him to believe in it. She tells him about the fight club but doesn’t back it up. She could simply tell him she has an anonymous source she is waiting on and will tell him more in due course. That’s all he was looking for. Later, of course, when she tells him that her source is Supergirl we’re struggling to understand why she didn’t simply mention that her source was Lena Luthor (Katie McGrath) when she gave her information on Roulette in the first place, and she probably would have given her more information if asked, Lena has a soft spot for our endearing reporter after all.
Our main area of interest, however, is the building relationship between Maggie Sawyer (Floriana Lima) and Alex (Chyler Leigh). They investigate together, and at the start of the episode when the first body appears its genuinely intriguing before the whole Alien Fight Club seems to ruin it. Still, we’re enjoying watching the budding friendship (and what we assume may become more) and watching the two ladies working together and being awesome.
We might have to come out and say that it could be Supergirl‘s weakest episode, in our eyes. Of course, Season One was one of the strongest opening series we’ve ever seen, and Season Two has so far failed to score below a four-star review. It had to dip slightly at some point. Maybe we just missed Jimmy, who definitely could have been around at CatCo taking Snapper down a couple of pegs like last time.
