Please, please don’t pair Alex and Maxwell Lord.
In Supergirl’s episode 6, Lucy Lane and her father, Sam Lane, step onto the screen in uniform. With them is T.O. Morrow, the genius behind the one and only Red Tornado. In testing their new robot against Supergirl, Red Tornado loses an arm and goes AWOL (he somehow regains his arm by the episode’s end and no character questions it?). With negative pressures coming in from General Lane, Cat Grant, and Lucy Lane, Kara must learn to control her anger and stop the Red Tornado from twisting National City into a whirlwind.
Like the comics, Red Tornado is created by the villain T.O. Morrow. Although Iddo Goldberg was a fantastic choice for Morrow, the team behind creating his costume for Red Tornado didn’t create a convincing character. Goldberg had to do nothing more than a robot dance and walk stiffly but even that couldn’t sell the costume. As soon as Morrow revealed Red Tornado to the wold, it was hard not to see the human in the suit. In fact, the panels that were meant to make Red Tornado’s skin just looked like hocky pads. And if Batman has taught us anything, it’s that heroes don’t wear hocky pads. Maybe that’s why he was the villain this episode?
However, the episode did leave Red Tornado blown to smithereens by Supergirl’s laser vision. In comic book universe, that means he could still be alive and perhaps come back as a hero without hocky pads?
With Red Tornado, this episode brought us General Sam Lane. This uptight general put his failures on Supergirl and straight out told James he wasn’t good enough for Lucy. Of course the dad won’t like his daughter’s partner, but the dialogue was very stiff, very ‘same old’. It wasn’t anything new that countless television shows haven’t thrown us. And to put all of his teams failures relating to Red Tornado onto Supergirl’s ‘unrestraint’ was poor writing.
On a positive note, Melissa Benoist again rocks her role as Supergirl/ Kara. Throughout the episode Kara learns she has a lot of built up anger and she even yells at Cat Grant. The audience can see the moment it all begins with James inviting Lucy to Kara’s games night. And the final release of all her anger in one massive laser vision shot at Red Tornado was amazing. There was no restraint on the actress to play it pretty or anything like that. It was pure rage as Benoist shot Red Tornado and screamed her lungs out.
With such high expectations for the live action version of the Justice League’s very own android, it is disappointing that the visual aesthetics for him were terrible. However, even with General Lane being on of television’s cookie cutter dad, Melissa Benoist still delivers an excellent performance. And to lead into next week, Kara accidently cuts her finger on broken glass. What has happened to the Girl of Steel?
Quote of the Episode: She can take her broom. (Cat Grant)
