Supergirl season 3 episode 12 recap + review: For Good

Like Lena Luthor and Morgan Edge, Supergirl went in circles this week, churning out a pointless episode that infuriates on every level.

Supergirl returned from its winter hiatus with a pair of strong episodes. In addition to recovering the show’s sense of levity, “Legion of Superheroes” and “Fort Rozz” advanced the ongoing story in significant ways. The former saw Kara deciding to embrace her humanity again, and the latter led to Samantha realizing that her memory loss is a chronic problem.

By contrast, “For Good” is joyless and lifeless. Filler episodes aren’t inherently useless; they give shows an opportunity to relax, perhaps even experiment. In this case, however, it’s just a waste of time.

Honestly, I had a bad feeling from the outset. The episode starts with a dream: Reign hovering in a lava cavern, flanked by her fellow Worldkillers, Purity and Pestilence. It’s still unclear if Kara’s dreams have any deeper meaning. Is she somehow psychically linked to the Worldkillers? Or are the visions just narrative devices? Either way, the image, obviously computer-generated, looks shoddy to the point of distraction.

I try not to criticize Supergirl for its special effects. Given the difference in budget, it’s unfair to expect a show on The CW to resemble a blockbuster movie. And more often than not, the cheesy visuals add to the experience rather than detracting from it. Here, though, the cheapness extends to the storytelling. “For Good” just feels shoddy, from the muddled plotting to the climactic fight that makes last week’s space adventure seem down-to-earth in comparison.

Granted, any episode centered on Morgan Edge has an automatic disadvantage. You know the drill. Edge threatens Lena, or vice versa. They confront each other and exchange increasingly toothless insults. The threatened person retaliates against the other. On and on it goes, like trench warfare, no gains or losses on either side. To its credit, “For Good” tries to infuse the repetition with thematic resonance. J’onn gives a nice speech about how the world is caught in an unending cycle of action and reaction, violence met with violence, anger met with anger. But the whole affair remains as tedious as ever.

Okay, it doesn’t play out in exactly the same way. After a convoluted set-up involving poisoned coffee, a hitman, and a dissolving bullet, Lena discovers that her mother has returned to National City. She, it turns out, masterminded the attempt on Edge’s life. Cutting a car’s brakes seems awfully crude for an evil genius billionaire, but I’m no expert on murder techniques.

The real problem is that Lena’s relationship with Lillian is just as monotonous as her relationship with Edge. By now, Supergirl has established Lena as a fundamentally good person. (In fact, all of her plotlines seem devoted to the sole purpose of reinforcing her fundamental goodness.) You have to wonder why Lillian keeps trying. Surely, she has the cunning to recognize a lost cause and the callousness to abandon it. Maternal instinct was a suspect rationale to begin with, and the show never developed the Luthors enough for family loyalty to carry much weight. At a certain point, moral ambiguity just looks like indecision.

Even Lena’s interactions with her allies are weirdly noncommittal. I enjoy watching fictional women bond as much as anyone, and Rao knows we’re starved for it. But whatever Kara, Lena, Alex and Samantha have feels more like a rough sketch of friendship than the actual thing. They keep talking about how they support each other, but I couldn’t even say why they like each other, other than that they’re women. It’s as if the writers are so desperate to avoid the cliché of petty female rivalries that they wandered too far in the opposite direction. Relentless niceness is just as false and off-putting as relentless spite.

Not to mention, it’s lethal to drama. Trust me: it is entirely possible to create legitimate conflicts between women. For proof, just look at last week’s episode, in which Kara teamed up with Imra, Livewire and Psi. Their dynamic ran the gamut from outright animosity to distrust to begrudging allegiance to genuine respect, and it was a blast.

As J’onn says, there is power in being the calm at the center of the storm. So, why does Kara’s moral conviction always fail when the dilemma involves Lena? Despite supposedly being an ace reporter, she assumes Edge is responsible for the poisoned coffee and treats it as fact. Yes, she ends up being right (because of course), but she makes the initial assumption without any actual evidence. Even on a show about a cape-wearing alien, I don’t think it’s too much to ask for at least a pretense of professionalism. When Edge interrupts an editorial meeting to air his personal grievances, I would have laughed if I weren’t so annoyed. Don’t retort, Lena; just escort him off the premises. Cat Grant would not stand for such flagrant disregard for workplace etiquette.

Basically, I wish Supergirl would remember that Lena and James are Kara’s superiors and treat them as such.

In the B-plot, Alex conducts medical tests on Samantha to determine the cause of her lapses in memory. Actually, it isn’t a plot so much as an extra scene shoved into the Lena and Edge Show. Which is probably for the best, since it doesn’t lead anywhere. The test results all come back negative, so Samantha’s friends essentially gaslight her into thinking she has no reason to worry. Pro-tip: it’s not actually comforting to tell someone they’re okay when they know they aren’t.

Bullet points:

There’s a fumbling attempt to compare Lena’s internal conflict with Kara’s struggles to reconcile her alien and human sides. But it suggests goodness and intellect are somehow diametrically opposed, which is … not true.
James dons the Guardian mask to dangle Edge off the side of a parking garage. If I recall correctly, that betrays the whole purpose of Guardian, but the incident is treated as no big deal.
Seriously, why has Kara still not told Lena about her alter ego?
Lillian has a suit now because why not, I guess?
Mon-El’s out-of-nowhere appearance in the climactic fight and subsequent conversation with Kara hint at scenes left on the cutting room floor. Or just clumsy writing.
It took 12 episodes for Supergirl season 3 to feature its first female director, Tawnia McKiernan.
As much as “For Good” aggravated me, Melissa Benoist snapping, “Don’t grab women, sweetheart,” still gave me a cathartic thrill.

Supergirl airs Mondays at 8 p.m. EST on The CW.

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