Recap: Supergirl 2.18 "Ace Reporter"

This episode begins with it being a slow crime day, meaning the DEO gives Supergirl a gay off. I mean, a day off.  I mean, what I'm trying to say is that Kara's at home one day and Lena comes over for a visit.

Apparently, Lena's ex-boyfriend Jack is in town and he's invited her to his company's press conference. Lena doesn't want to go solo, so she asks Kara to accompany her. There's nothing like showing your ex that you've leveled up in the significant other department, I suppose.

Jack, it turns out is CEO of a fancy company called Spheerical that's just invented a medial nanobot thingy that helps people heal really quickly. Let me guess: there's a catch.

Yep. At the press conference, a whistleblower approaches Kara and says he has secret information about this technology. Kara later meets this person at an abandoned lot and learns that the nanobot clinical trials were faked, so the tech may be unsafe. On cue, a swarm of nanobots attack the car and kill the whistleblower.

Snapper makes a reappearance this episode and snarks at "Ponytail" about her blog whenever he sees her. Kara doesn't let it get to her. Instead, she uses her super hearing to find out he's meeting with a nanobot test subject and then, she uses her levitation and x-ray vision skills to eavesdrop on Snapper's interview. HA HA.

During the interview, a nanobot swarm comes to attack the test subject. Supergirl stops the swarm with her freezing breath:

Supergirl saves Snarky Snapper, but the swarm breaks free. Whatever Spheerical has unleashed upon the world doesn't look good. (This looks like a job for Alex and Eliza Danvers but they're not around I guess!)

Meanwhile, Jack is really persistent with Lena and they go to dinner together. Kara wants to interrogate Jack in light of recent events (and check on her girl), so she and Mon-El 100% non-creepily crash the dinner date.

*Interlude for a brief moment of appreciation for Lena Luthor's expressive eyebrows, which deserve their own panel at comic-con*

Jack and Lena then go back to Lena's place and kiss. Whyyyyyyy. But, Mon-El and Kara had snatched Jack's security badge, and later that night they break into his office. Kara sits down at the computer in his office and immediately guesses his password on the first try (LOL). Apparently, it was "Starling." I don't get it. What am I missing? Is it a reference to how Kara looks like computer-geek Felicity Smoak on Arrow, which is based in Starling City? (please say yes):

Felicity

It gets better because Kara then easily finds the folders for the clinical trial data because the folder was probably named Super Sekret Stuff and was sitting on the desktop. In the folder, she opens up a video of Jack transcribing his research notes. It turns out there were no human trials and he injected the nanobots into himself. So, Jack basically IS the nanobot swarm.

The next day, Kara shows Lena the video. Kara makes Lena promise she won't see Jack anymore, and Lena promises. Hmmmm. I have a bad feeling here. And true enough, Lena confronts Jack at his office. It turns out the real villain is Beth, Spheerical's CFO, and she's actually controlling Jack through the nanobots. In true DC Villain form, Beth then reveals her master plan of using the nanobots to take over the world. Now that she's revealed her plan, she's sure to die or land in prison, I'm sure. These narrative revelations serve the purpose of telling us how bad things would be if the villain were to get away with, replacing arcs where we're actually shown how bad things are at a later date.

Supergirl swoops in, because of course she does, but the nanobots attack her. While they're doing that, Lena gets into "the mainframe." I feel like whenever non-techy people write about computer stuff on TV shows, they always reference "the mainframe." It's basically become a synonym for "the thing that stops the villain." Thus, Lena uses "the mainframe" to shut down the nanobots, killing Jack in the process.

Kara also turns over her reporting notes to Snapper, I guess because she wants the story to go through a legit news source, rather than her blog. Snapper then writes a story and gives her a byline on it. She also gets her job back at CatCo.

Oh, the other notable event of this episode is that James, Winn, and Lyra seem to be in a poly relationship.


Deep Thought of the Week: The nanobot swarm in this episode reminds me of the swarm in Black Mirror episode "Hated In the Nation."  Hmm, a new TV series to recap, after Supergirl?

  [Note: In November 2017, CW/Supergirl Executive Producer Andrew Kreisberg was suspended after allegations of sexual harassment.]