TV Review: SUPERGIRL: Season 1, Episode 13: For The Girl Who Has Everything [CBS]

CBS’s Supergirl For The Girl Who Has Everything TV Show Review. Supergirl Season 1, Episode 13: For The Girl Who Has Everything was inspired by the classic Superman story ‘For The Man Who Has Everything’, using the story as a starting point for the show. Even though the story was used for the episode, Supergirl put it’s own spin on it and it works. The writers have done a great job adapting the material and using some of it’s plot points while also moving away from the source material to match with the series’ plot.

The episode starts where we left off last week, with the Black Mercy being latched onto Kara (Melissa Benoist), teleporting her to Krypton. In this hallucination, Kara sees her parents alive, Kelex operational, and a young Kal-El (Daniel DiMaggio). The episode’s setup works but it often feels forced to go deep into it. We later find out that Non (Chris Vance) is behind all of this while he starts his plans to invade Earth. The reveal could’ve been saved until the climax of the episode, making it even more dramatic. We also get to see much of Krypton in Kara’s dream state, which looks lavishly extravagant despite the weird CGI. Benoist manages to sell out her performance showing Kara struggling to remember her life on Earth and easily accepts that she’s home.

The original story with Superman translates well onto Supergirl, if only it was used in a future episode. The reason is because we’ve only known Kara for a short while, and we still have yet to see her struggle on Earth. If this were used in another season, the episode would totally work. The whole point is when we see her on Krypton, we root for Kara to wake up and return to her life on Earth.

It is towards the end of the episode that Alex (Chyler Leigh) decides to head into Kara’s mind using DEO’s latest technology to persuade Kara to wake up from the hallucination. What works for this story is showing Kara’s resistance to become a hero, her drive to protect her family and the citizens of National City. Having Alex do that for Kara doesn’t give her the chance to realize that for herself and making it a potentially powerful performance.

We also get to see Kara go back into full rage mode after getting out of the Black Mercy’s grip. She almost goes crazy when she goes after Non, even making her go to that breaking point where she could’ve ended his life. Of course the show wouldn’t let her do that, but she has pushed herself to the brink. The battle between Martian Manhunter (David Harewood) and Astra (Laura Benanti) wasn’t much fun to watch, but having the battle stick on the ground matched well with the flying emotions that was on the field.

It was fun seeing what was happening back on Earth while Kara was fighting for her life. We got to see Benoist channel in her inner J-onn as he disguised himself as Kara at CatCo. It was really funny to see J’onn try to pull off a good act as Kara in front of Cat Grant (Calista Flockhart) to avoid suspicion. Cat had some of the best lines in the episode and practically stole the show with her no-nonsense attitude towards Kara. The only problem was that we never got a resolution between Kara and Cat after what went down during last week’s episode.

The biggest development in the episode was when Alex kills Astra, and Hank covers it up by telling Kara that she died by his hand to preserve the sisters’ bond. This was a powerful moment to see on screen and surprising that the show went this route in its first season. This complicates things for Kara, Alex, and Hank going forward as Alex and Hank struggle to keep this secret from Kara. It will be interesting to see what happens once Kara finds out, perhaps causing a rift between Hank and Kara who both share similar fates as the last of their kind and adopting Earth as their new home. This also brings Hank and Alex closer, as we witness a kind of father/daughter relationship in the episode.

With Astra gone, this eliminates her as this season’s main villain. The only ones remaining that stand in Kara’s way is Non and Maxwell Lord (Peter Facinelli), but both of them have yet to make convincing villains. The final moment shared between Kara and Astra was great, as their family bond grew stronger. Their family scuffle came to a close as they both said their goodbyes, leaving Kara without any family left, with the exception of Superman.

‘For The Girl Who Has Everything’ didn’t pull in enough of the emotional pull from the classic story that the episode was inspired from, but it stood out on it’s own as a powerful installment. Even though the method used to translate the story onto the small screen wasn’t interesting, it did offer some life choices that Kara faced and made it compelling to watch. We also can’t forget the enjoyable performance Benoist pulled off playing J’onn pretending to be Kara and Cat’s great one-liners.

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