Violet recaps Season 1 Episode 5 of Supergirl, titled How Does She Do It?, where Kara and the DEO deal with someone planting bombs around the city! Following the recap, both Violet and Josh share their thoughts about the episode.
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Episode Recap of Supergirl Season 1 Episode 5: How Does She Do It?
The episode begins with Kara flying around, then realizing she’s being targeted by a drone ship. She uses her laser vision to destroy it, and takes a piece of it back to the DEO, thinking that they’re spying on her. However, Henshaw denies that it’s theirs, and says he’ll find out who it belongs to.
At work, Cat Grant wins an award, but Cat says she won’t be attending the ceremony because she has no one to watch her son, Carter. Kara offers to watch him overnight. This impresses Cat, and she takes Kara up on the offer.
Lucy and James have lunch together, and he wonders what she’s doing here. She makes up excuses, then admits that she misses him. James responds by saying he has to go to work. She further says she didn’t come here for the case she’s working on, she came here for him. He says he’ll call her. She leaves. Kara overhears with her normal hearing, then talks to James and finds out that he moved here after Lucy dumped him. It seems she was too obsessed with her career and winning everything. Just then, there’s an explosion. It’s a bomb. Supergirl flies off and prevents the building from collapsing, then uses her cold breath to put out the fire.
At the DEO, Alex recovers debris from the bombing and figures out it’s from the same people that made the drone — Lord Technologies. Alex says the DEO will go question Maxwell Lord, but posing as the FBI. Kara tells Alex about Lucy Lane. Alex warns her not to talk to James about Lucy, because that will put her in the friend zone. Just then, Kara gets a phone call from Cat Grant with special instructions about Carter, and Kara flies over, having forgotten she was supposed to pick him up at school. She gets there just in time. Carter seems like a shy kid, and doesn’t say much.
Alex and Hank question Maxwell Lord, and Hank leaves Alex behind to keep an eye on Lord as he narrows down the list of potential employees.
Kara brings Carter to work with her, and it seems that Carter has a crush on Supergirl. Kara notices James in Cat’s office, frustrated. James gets a phone call from Lucy, but ignores it. He tries to talk to Kara about Lucy, but she redirects the conversation to work.
Alex continues to question Maxwell Lord, and it seems like he’s hitting on her. But then he gets a call that there’s a bomb. Alex and Lord work together to disarm the bomb. It seems they get it done pretty quickly, but then the timer comes back on and counts down even faster.
At work, Carter asks Kara if she thinks James could get Superman to introduce him to Supergirl. But just then, Kara gets a call from Alex about the bomb about to go off. Before she leaves, she asks Winn to watch Carter for her. Supergirl picks up the bomb from Maxwell Lord, who tells her she needs to get it far away from the city. The DEO tells her she needs to get higher, then realizes she doesn’t have enough time, and tells her to throw it. She isn’t able to throw it very far before it explodes, knocking her out as she falls to the ground.
Kara wakes up in the DEO, healing in a special bed. It seems that the DEO has identified a potential suspect, Ethan Knox.
Kara realizes she needs to get back to work so she can watch Carter. When she returns, Winn and Carter are playing video games in Cat’s office. Kara goes out to pick up some lunch for them. At the restaurant, she runs into Lucy, who asks her if Jimmy is seeing anyone. Kara says no. But Lucy thinks there’s something going on between Jimmy and Supergirl, which Kara scoffs at. Lucy confesses that the real reason they had relationship troubles was because Jimmy prioritized Superman, and now she’s worried that she won’t be able to compete with Supergirl.
Alex goes to Maxwell Lord about Ethan Knox, and tries to convince him to cancel that night’s Super Rail launch event. However, he refuses. He then tells her about how his parents died.
Kara returns to work, and apologizes about cutting him off about Lucy earlier. She tells him about her talk with Lucy, and encourages him to fight for love, saying it’s not fair to whoever comes next if he’s not ready to move on. Later, Lucy comes to talk to him, and she kisses him, then leaves.
Supergirl flies around and doesn’t see a sign of Knox.
Winn loses track of Carter. He realizes that Carter must have gone to the Super Rail event to meet Supergirl.
The DEO tells Supergirl there’s a bomb at the airport, so she heads there. Jimmy gets word of the bomb, and tries to call Lucy to warn her, but he just gets voicemail.
At the Super Rail event, Maxwell Lord sees Carter wandering around and talks to him, leading him onto the train. Meanwhile, Winn tries to get on the train, but they won’t let him through because he doesn’t have a ticket. We see that Ethan Knox is on the train wearing a bomb, and Winn sees this as well.
Winn calls Kara and tells her that the bomber is on the train, and so is Carter. The DEO hears this as well. She tells the DEO to take the airport, and she’ll take the train. Supergirl flies onto the train and tells Max that Ethan Knox is on it. She tells him to stop the train, but he says he can’t, it’s automated. Supergirl asks Carter to help Mr. Lord get all the passengers to the back of the train. Supergirl uses her X-ray vision to spot Knox.
At the airport, the DEO tries to evacuate the airport. Jimmy arrives and finds out Supergirl isn’t coming. He finds Lucy and she wonders why he would run towards a bomb. He says because she’s there. They embrace. Meanwhile, Alex is having trouble disarming the airport bomb. Hank sends her away.
Supergirl confronts Ethan Knox and tries to talk him down, mentioning his daughter.
Hank uses his super power to disarm the bomb, and later tells Alex it was just a dud, a decoy to draw them away from the real bomb.
Ethan says that no one was supposed to know it was him, and now that they do, he can never fix his little girl again. He is confident that Supergirl can save the passengers, and presses the detonation button. He tells her to hurry, that she only has 30 seconds. Supergirl disconnects Knox’s train car from the rest of the train, and pushes the other train cars back the other way. Knox’s train car explodes.
At the DEO, Alex isn’t buying Hank’s story that the bomb was a dud. Kara is confused about how the bombings help a sick girl. Then she realizes she is “so fired” because Carter ended up on a train with a bomb on it.
At work, Carter tells him mom all about Supergirl, and asks his mom for Kara to watch him again. After he leaves for school, Kara apologizes profusely to Cat, who gives her advice on how to juggle everything. Kara also sees Jimmy and Lucy kissing. Kara sees Maxwell Lord on TV, and gets suspicious. She asks Winn to access hospital records.
That night, Supergirl confronts Maxwell Lord about the little girl being treated with a lifetime grant from his company. She also confronts him about a fail safe that he could have remotely activated, and accuses him of having Knox plant those bombs around the city. Supergirl figures out Maxwell Lord was testing her. He finds it interesting that she chose to save hundreds on the train, rather than thousands at the airport, and figures that there must have been someone she cared about on the train. He thinks that figuring out who that person was will lead him to figuring out Supergirl’s identity. Supergirl flies off angrily, saying that he may have the city fooled, but she knows he was behind this.
Violet’s Thoughts on Season 1 Episode 5 of Supergirl: How Does She Do It?
Okay, so as mentioned before, this was actually supposed to be the fourth episode, while last week’s episode was supposed to be the fifth episode, but they switched due to the events Paris, considering that this episode dealt with bombings. We got a little bit of insight as to what happened between James and Lucy, but it seemed like they were both pretty happy by the end of the episode, so it still doesn’t make sense why James seemed a little sad at the beginning of the other episode when he’s about to go on the trip with Lucy, and that he’s sneaking off making phone calls to Kara. I guess by the end of that trip he may have realized that he was over Lucy and was now into Kara, but now that the episodes are out of order, if someone watches them without knowing about that, they could get confused. As it stands now, it seems like James and Lucy’s relationship is in great shape, whereas by the end of the previous episode, it seems like James isn’t all that interested in Lucy anymore. I’m guessing things may start to be set straight next episode. But other than this, I didn’t notice anything continuity-wise that was upset by the switching of the episodes.
However, it would have been good to have had the true nature of Maxwell Lord and the powers of Hank Henshaw revealed earlier, as they was originally supposed to be. Maxwell Lord seemed just a little suspicious, but not too much until this episode. With Hank Henshaw, we knew he had glowing red eyes, but we didn’t know what kind of power they held. But we are still only beginning to see the tip of the iceberg with those two.
Did anyone else get a little creeped out how Kara was encouraging Carter’s crush on her, or was that just me? He’s like this 12 year old kid, and she’s all like, “Do you think she’s preeeettty?” It was kind of weird. Also, I was confused about the continuity contained just within this episode. So Kara picks Carter up from school, then later she goes out to get him lunch? How early does his school let out?? She was also supposed to watch him overnight, so where did he sleep? Her place I guess, but we never see that. Carter seemed to speak very highly of Kara, but it didn’t seem like they spent much time together for him to have such praise for her.
Even though Maxwell Lord was right about Supergirl saving the train because it had someone she cared about on it, his logic wouldn’t necessarily be correct. Yes, the train had hundreds while the airport had thousands, but the airport could be evacuated, while the train couldn’t, because Lord himself said he couldn’t stop the train since it was automated. So to me it would make more sense for her to save the train, regardless of the fact that Carter was on it. But I guess this could get interesting to see him try to narrow it down and try to figure out Supergirl’s identity.
Overall, this is probably the most interesting episode of Supergirl thus far, but there’s still some flaws that keep popping up and taking me out of the show. Yet, I will continue to trudge on, as I can see that there is some potential.
Josh’s Thoughts: Supergirl, Season 1 Episode 5: How Does She Do It?
Can someone please stop the love-quadrangle please?! It’s like a love-pent-angle if you add in Cat’s kid! It is so pervasive in the entire show. Why?! Winn is left out in the cold, while Kara is left out in the cold by Jimmy, who is in a weird relationship with Lucy because neither can agree as to why their relationship ended (oh yeah, Lucy thinks Jimmy might be too obsessed with Superman, does this make it a love hex-angle?), meanwhile this new kid is pining after Supergirl, and Kara seems to be encouraging it! Ugh. Okay, rant over.
I had a feeling Max Lord was testing out Kara. I should say that I knew someone was testing her out, and I thought maybe Max, but I wasn’t positive. I really despised the building scene though. I really don’t think her re-welding a couple of steel beams would give that building enough support to stand. It was already collapsing when the beams were in good shape. Why would they suddenly be okay now? Oh well, I am not a structural engineer, so who knows.
I also thought that the episode borrowed directly from Superman and The Dark Knight storylines with simultaneous problems happening, and being unable to get to both, but I can’t criticize too much–it is a pretty often used trope to provide really powerful heroes a really difficult time when playing hero.
I will say that I liked the scene handling Knox at the end. Rather than trying to save him, (and being cheesy and it working), I liked how Supergirl had to let him go. It was a sad moment for the episode and Kara. She knew to ensure the safety of the people on the train, she had to let him go. I guess she was just lucky the train was in the middle of nowhere when the bomb went off.
What I didn’t really buy was Max Lord’s meeting with Supergirl (Max Lord is starting to feel a lot like Lex Luthor by the way). I don’t really think this experiment with the train really helped him identify anything with Kara. Sure thinks that she saved the train because someone Kara cared about was on it, and although that is true, that is not the only explanation as to why she went for that train. Maybe she was closer to that one? Maybe the police were close enough to the airport, so the more dangerous threat was the train? For a scientist, you would think he would check all of the variables, before immediately settling on one. I guess it could be explained in such a way that he threw that theory out to Supergirl to read her reaction, to determine his hypothesis’ validity, but the episode and Max didn’t really seem to give off that vibe in my opinion.
Scenes from Supergirl, Season 1 Episode 6: Red Faced
Here are scenes from the next Supergirl episode, titled Red Faced:
I have to catch up to ep 5 and the current… sigh 🙁 I had to skim this one!
Gah, I totally missed this episode because of my DVR. Anyways, I thought it was a pretty good one, but maybe not too important an episode. The train stuff was cool and Maxwell is interesting as the antagonist. The personal relationships seem a bit odd at times, though.