You know I really do have to applaud them for this one. I genuinely never really understood the appeal of the Bizarro characters. Yes, seriously.
Were I pressed to explain why, it would probably be something along the lines of how very Silver Age they usually are. Things that were invented in the Silver Age are already difficult to take seriously, especially in the way they were originally presented. So a bunch of chalky clones that talk like “Cookie Monster”, as Kara puts it, are fairly difficult to take seriously. Even more so when their primary traits tend to involve doing everything ass-backwards and having reversed powers.
So I guess what I’m trying to say is that, overall, this one surprised me. Maxwell Lord’s end goal was to create an opposite Supergirl, and he succeeded. He even went to the trouble of using some sort of technology to replicate Supergirl’s facial features (at least, at first). Opposite powers and all. And due to the way he made her, she’s far more sympathetic a character (in my opinion, anyway). This isn’t just some clone fabricated by crazy superscience whole cloth. There is a psychological edge due to the horror of his having made a (technically) living person into this clone. Lord basically has no ethics, whatsoever. It all actually adds to the conflict in the episode. Not only that, he didn’t just take one brain dead girl for these experiments, he took seven. Awful. That being said, I really can’t believe Calista Flockhart managed to say the name “Bizarro” in a sentence that implied her character created the name with a straight face. I guess you can take the character out of the Silver Age, but you can’t take (all of) the Silver Age out of the character.
Anyway, Kara almost immediately screws things up with Adam. It sort of figures that Bizarro Supergirl is the reason on both attempted dates. That being said, she deliberately left their first date to salvage her reputation by fighting her clone. The second, at the least, was due to the fact that Lord pretty much told Bizarro who to go kill. Even then, she decides it’s best to break things off with Adam for whatever actual reason. And after Cat was so uncharacteristically nice to her and everything. Yeah, it was a freaky 180 to be sure. And after the breakup, Cat was twice as harsh to make up for time lost.
Alex actually goes and confronts Max Lord twice over his blatant bullshit. There’s never any doubt in her head that Lord was responsible, so it’s actually a good thing she was right. He stupidly plays one of his big cards against her the first time; the fact that he knows about Kara’s identity. Which was a big mistake, as it caused her to decide to illegally take him prisoner and drag his sorry ass to a DEO prison cell. J’onn isn’t happy about her doing this and lets her know it. Alex, however, counters this with a line about secrets, which probably would’ve had a bit more impact if this had happened before Kara knew he was a Martian, but whatever.
Regarding the three fights Kara has with her Bizarro duplicate, they actually did several subtle things that I liked. Bizarro fights with far less skill overall, favoring aggressive movements. She’s also more likely to take the lead when it comes to using her ice vision or flame breath. It thankfully becomes easier to tell the two apart by their second encounter thanks to the latter point. It’s also hard to tell in the moment, but they actually made her frost vision a light indigo color as opposed to Kara’s blue heat vision.
Due to the fact that she knows that Bizarro was made and brainwashed to fight her, Kara’s never really willing to go all out against her. Something which both Alex and J’onn know, and so they end the second encounter with Kryptonite. Which doesn’t work, by the way, but does keep Kara from pursuing her. It also damages her appearance, giving her the usual bone white Bizarro look which Lord doesn’t even bother to fix. By the third encounter, they’ve synthesized some blue Kryptonite which brings her down with no effect on Kara. Kara promises to hold her hand as they put her into an induced coma until they figure out a way to fix what Lord has done to her.
Final Thoughts:
- I sort of figured Jimmy would get flambéed when he tried to use his signal watch without Bizzaro noticing.
- Those heat/frost vision bits were like something out of Dragon Ball Z, in a way.
- I actually really liked this episode. Almost everything they did with Bizarro worked, crazy as it sounds.
- Also, the revelation that all of the DEO’s kryptonite is synthetic.
About Author
