Note: there will be spoilers below!
Recap
An alien prisoner in the D.E.O. breaks free when being transferred. Supergirl manages to subdue him despite her sister calling her in a panic. Their mom is coming. Alex is concerned with how her visit will be and how she’ll react over Kara coming out as Supergirl and will blame her. She comes and favors Kara immensely. Meanwhile, a radio DJ, Leslie Willis, has nothing but bad things to say about Supergirl as Cat, James, and other listen.
At Catco, Kara invites Winn over for Thanksgiving since he has no family or friends to be with. Leslie is in Cat’s office. Kara listens in as Cat gets on her about attacking Supergirl because she named her. Leslie isn’t happy with Cat dictating her content. Because she still has two years on her contract, Cat transfers her to a traffic reporter in a chopper.
Kara tries inviting James over for Thanksgiving but he has plans with Lucy to get away from their parents. Alex still thinks her mom is going to take it out on her about Kara’s decision to publicly be Supergirl. In the trapfic chopper, wind and lightning gives Leslie a short career as traffic reporter. When she grabs Kara’s hand to get out of the chopper, Kara’s struck by lightning which transfers into Leslie.
Alex is watching a news report on Supergirl saving Leslie. Her mom makes her shut it off and then lets her have it about Kara revealing herself. She says she should have stopped Kara.
Leslie leaves the hospital and is trying to figure out what’s going on with the electricity coming off her. When a guy gets a little pushy with her in an alley, she zaps him and enjoys the rush. She then turns herself into electricity and travels through the light.
Dinner is pretty tense and awkward. Just as Winn is about to talk about what he’s thankful for, James calls to see how she’s doing with her sister and mom. Alex finally tells her mom about her job with the D.E.O. Her mom is still not happy. Despite her helping people and watching over Kara, she condemns her for lying to her. Alex leaves, Winn does as well, and Kara gets a call about an emergency at the office.
Flashback to the Danvers after Kara arrived. Kara and Alex sneak out of their room so Kara can take them flying. The Danvers aren’t happy with them leaving since someone could have seen them. There’s a knock at the door and it’s Henshaw and some men.
Cat’s emergency is her computers and phone won’t work at the office. Leslie appears on the TV screens and calls herself “Livewire.” Cat sends Kara out to get help. As Livewire is about to attack Cat, Supergirl arrives. Livewire is able to absorb Supergirl’s heat vision and energies. Still, she manages to saves Cat.
Hank and the D.E.O. arrives, posing as Feds, trying to figure out how to protect Cat and how to stop her. Cat tries sending Kara home. It seems Cat actually feels bad for Kara when she talks about having a foster mother and her parents dying in a “fire” when she was young. Then Cat takes the blame for not pushing Leslie into being better. She turned her into Livewire.
Alex and her mom talk. She explains that she pushed Alex because she wanted her to be better than her. Her mom says there’s something she needs to tell both of them but then Alex gets called into work. Cat tells Supergirl they can work together to capture Livewire. Kara gets a containment device from the D.E.O. Cat goes on the air to draw out Leslie. The fight begins. Supergirl seems down after Leslie knocks away the device. Cat tries talking to Leslie and Supergirl uses the distraction to reach into the ground and grab a water pipe to short out Livewire.
Kara brings Winn Thanksgiving leftovers on Monday. He tells her what he was thankful for—being included in Kara’s family celebration. His dad’s in prison so they don’t do holidays. When Kara talks to Cat, she finds out she’s making some changes and is trying to put out a more positive message in their reporting. She also tells Kara she doesn’t know much about her and that should change.
Alex’s mom tells them they know about the D.E.O. Their dad didn’t die in a plane crash. Henshaw wanted to take Kara from them. Danvers offered himself and his expertise on Superman in return for Kara’s safety. He died working for Henshaw. Supergirl and Alex report to Henshaw and decide they need to figure out what happened to their dad.
Thoughts
Since there was another episode that was supposed to air before this one (apparently on next week), there were a couple moments you could feel we were missing something. Winn makes a reference to bombs, which is something that Supergirl will be dealing with in that episode. We also didn't see or hear what happened between James and Lucy after she arrived in National City. They were supposed to go out to dinner to talk about how they left things and now they're going away together for Thanksgiving. Obviously they worked things out and are back together.
The inclusion of Livewire seemed like a good idea. Supergirl isn't known for having an overly robust rogues gallery. Livewire is a fan-favorite villain from the animated Superman series and could be a good foe for Kara.
Unfortunately Livewire mostly came across as a mustache-twirling villain. She was mad at Cat for taking her off the air and then just wants to kill her after gaining her powers. We can assume she became a little unstable in the head but it just didn't seem like enough of a reason for revenge at that level. Her effects were pretty cool though.
It's not necessarily a bad thing but Supergirl kind of got pushed to the side in this episode. The focus was mainly on Alex and her mom as well as having Cat grow more as a person. The problem is, a lot of it felt a little overly dramatic and cheesy. Cat's always shown tiny signs of actually being human but we were really getting large doses of it. If that wasn't enough, we also have all the emotions between Alex and her mom. This is all good for character growth but again, it means Kara gets shoved aside.
The show has been known to have some cheesy lines at time but I couldn't help but really cringe at Supergirl saying, “Oh shut up you mean girl.”
I did find it interesting that Kara's apparently been to twelve planets.
Supergirl can't be fighting aliens all the time. We're introduced to the live action version of Livewire. Her motives and supervillain dialogue may be called into question but hopefully we'll see her return along with better reasons for her actions. We get to see some big character development with Cat, Alex, her mom, and even Winn. Sadly, this all meant that Supergirl didn't have as much time in the spotlight. There were a lot of good ideas here but the execution just didn't quite work. At least we're seeing the supporting cast get the chance to grow and get fleshed out some more.