5 Thoughts about Supergirl: "The Martian Chronicles"

1.)  There was a surprising amount of romance in this episode, though I guess it makes sense as we close in on Valentine's Day, which is supposedly going to be devoted entirely to Maggie and Alex.  There was of course Maggie and Alex, but also Kara dealing with her feelings surrounding Mon-El, and the newest and simultaneously the least and most surprising--J'onn and M'gann.   That's actually a lot of love subplots to juggle for one episode, which makes it all the more impressive they fit an entire main plot about M'gann and the White Martians into this episode at the same time.

2.)  Speaking of the White Martians, as the title indicates, the show makes good on M'gann's fears from the previous episode as her former "mate" comes looking for her.   There's a neat bit of old-school Aliens like horror as the group winds up trapped inside the DEO building when the White Martian shapeshifts into one of them, and while we wind up going through some familiar tropes relate to shapeshifters, it still made for some tense showdowns.  There's even a cool twist that takes place in the last third of the episode that I won't spoil if you haven't seen it yet.

3.) Lucky Kara, she's one of the few people in the world with two birthdays--the actual day she was born on Krypton, and the day she arrived on Earth.   It's a day she usually spends with her family--but this year it seems like Alex is busy with Maggie and trying to go to a Bare Naked Ladies concert.  The show does a decent enough job of trying to explain why Alex wouldn't want to turn Maggie down but...man.  I'm not sure if Kara's Earth Birthday was brought up last season or not, but either way it's still a little cold for Alex to blow her off just to hang out with her girlfriend.

4.) Having said that, I am absolutely in love with how much time Kara and Alex get to spend together on this series.  We've gotten plenty of brothers and brotherly relationships/friendships from superheroes before, but this is one of the few series where we get to see two sisters--both legitimate "Action Girls"--spend so much time together, and it always puts a smile on my face.

5.) Okay, let's talk about Miss Martian for a sec.  Because I'm totally uncomfortable with how this episode played out.   Miss Martian's whole identity kinda creeps me out to begin with--because I'm used to the one from Geoff Johns' Teen Titans comic, which if you haven't seen is almost exactly like the one from the Young Justice cartoon.   J'onn kinda looks after her like a surrogate father, where this series seems to want to turn her into J'onn's new wife--it's weird.  I feel like she would have been better served as Kara's new best friend while Alex is off making kissy-faces with Maggie, but that's just me.

Second, having her whole subplot with J'onn finally wrapped up was really cool...but did it have to mean getting rid of her?  At the end of the episode she decides to return to Mars to see if there are any other White Martians who are like her, which sounds so much like certain death I want to say I'd be surprised if we ever saw her again.   But the real question is what even prompted this?   M'gann's "mate" makes it seem like Mars is just this perfect paradise of a planet after they wiped out the Green Martians--how would she even know how to navigate a planet that's hundreds of years removed from her being there, when it was all awful and ravaged by war?    Did they just get rid of her to get the cast down to a smaller size?

Anyway, this episode was fairly decent--though I'm a bit concerned that Mon-El has seemingly drifted a bit from wanting to be a superhero.  I'm still hoping we get to see some of Earth's Greatest Heroes from the future!