Supergirl delivered another phenomenal episode in “Red Faced.†Supergirl faced her insecurities and had to learn to control her anger. Kara started the episode by stopping two idiotic road rage fueled drivers from running over a bunch of children. Of course, one of the men was only upset that Supergirl totaled his car. Unfortunately she showed him that he was being a jerk by breaking his arm. As a woman and an alien, this was not the greatest way to solve her problem. The media continued to spin everything out of control, which just made Hank Henshaw even more angry.
It was an hour full of family drama for Supergirl, and it wasn’t even her family this time. Lucy’s father, General Lane, is in town, and he wreaks havoc for both James Olsen and Supergirl. General Lane is worried that his daughter is settling for James and not living up to her true potential if she stays with him. But there’s another reason why General Lane is in town. He brought an android that the government wants to test in a fight against Supergirl.
General and Major Lane (yes Lucy is a Major!) meet with Supergirl and unveil their android, Red Tornado. They want Supergirl to fight Red Tornado to see how he performs. Kara doesn’t seem to have any problem taking down Red Tornado, but this puts the android in self preservation mode. He flies away. General Lane immediately fires the android’s creator, T.O. Morrow. Morrow takes matters into his own hands and turns Red Tornado against General Lane.
Red Tornado uses Supergirl’s humanity against her by letting loose an actual tornado on National City. (That seems like a good idea to have an android who can cause natural disasters) In order to save the city, Supergirl had to let Red Tornado get away. She saved General Lane and Lucy’s lives in the process, but only Lucy seemed gracious. The DEO found out that Red Tornado was designed specifically for taking down Kryptonians, which doesn’t sit well with them. But, there’s no time to dwell on that. It’s time to take down Morrow and the Red Tornado.
The scenes where they finally take down Red Tornado were very powerful and emotional. Alex goes after Morrow, while Kara deals with Red Tornado. They use a hologram of General Lane to draw out Red Tornado. Alex battles with Morrow, since Morrow is the one giving the commands to the android. A fight ensued, and Alex had to kill Morrow. She clearly seemed upset about it. I wonder if she’s ever had to kill anyone on the job. Of course, that doesn’t seem to shut down Red Tornado because the android became sentient. Kara used her anger and her heat vision to blow up the android. You could definitely feel the anger and determination radiating off of her. Melissa Benoist did a great job with those scenes.
Kara has a lot of anger to deal with in this episode. She’s upset when she sees Lucy and James together. Then she has the bad media attention. And then the government gets mad at her for fighting their android even if that’s exactly what they wanted. When Kara was at her breaking point, she blew up at Miss Grant. Cat was being exceptionally rude to Kara due to her frustrations with her demeaning mother in town. After Kara tells Cat not to talk to her that way, Cat does what any boss would do. She takes Kara out for a few drinks. It seems Cat may be coming around. Cat tells Kara, “you cannot get angry at work especially when you’re a girl.â€
Now Kara needs to find an outlet. She finds an empty space for both herself and James to let out some aggression. James has a punching bag, and Kara has a car. She starts saying what makes her angry while punching the car. She finally gets to the root of the cause as she punches through the hood of her car. Kara thought that using her powers would make her life make sense, but being herself doesn’t feel normal either.
Meanwhile, Alex and Kara ask Winn to look into Alex’s father’s death. Their plan is to have Winn break into the DEO’s database. Winn seems extremely uncomfortable with this until they mention that it’s for her father. Of course with Winn’s father in prison, he has no problem admitting that he has “daddy issues.†Winn finally finds information on Dr. Danvers. Winn finds that Dr. Danvers and Hank Henshaw went on a mission. They both disappeared for a few months, but eventually Hank reemerged unharmed. Henshaw was the last person to see Dr. Danvers alive. Can we see a confrontation yet? And when will we find out who Henshaw really is?
I love that Supergirl tackles even simple issues that can separate men from women. Kara says, “I can’t be angry in public because as a girl, we’re taught to smile and keep it inside.†James also mentions a big stereotype as well when he says that black men aren’t encouraged to be angry in public either. While they don’t dwell on these issues, they raise good points. They keep the show current without making it all about gender.
