Airing in the UK on Sky 1, new episodes every Monday
Writers: Eric Carrasco and Cindy Lichtman

Director: Kevin Smith

Essential Plot Points:

• Out for revenge against Lena, Morgan Edge decides to hit big and accuse her of poisoning children with lead poisoning because of the bomb she made to beat the Daxamites, thus slandering her in the press and ruining her reputation.
• Alex and Maggie, unable to deal with their differing opinions on motherhood, have decided to call it quits. Boo.
• Kara and Sam team up to help clear Lena’s name, and discover that the chemical that’s poisoning the children is in fact manufactured by a company Edge used to own.
• Lena tries to take matters into her own hands and live up to the Luthor family name by trying to get rid of Edge, but he knocks her out and locks her on a plane that’s being controlled from a remote location.
• Edge is determined to crash the plane filled with the harmful chemicals into the sea, an act that would be the last nail in the coffin for Lena both literally and figuratively, but Kara steps in and manages to stop this from happening.
• When she decides to confront Edge he threatens Kara that he doesn’t want to make him an enemy.
• Later, Kara meets a distraught Alex at a bar and decides the two need to return home for a few days.

Review:

After last week’s Kara-centric episode, “Damage” presents a wider overall narrative that sees the return of Morgan Edge and puts Lena in the hot seat. With a strong emphasis on its supporting cast, Kara plays a secondary role as the others deal with some difficult issues: namely break-ups and defamation. With this in mind it is unfortunate then that the writers failed to hit the mark and make a likeable narrative.

Well, its official, Alex and Maggie are no more and we are absolutely gutted. Alex and Maggie were such a strong and culturally important couple to be on the little screen, so it’s frustrating that things ended in this way. Even if the writers have been pointing to this event for a while now, it doesn’t make it any easier to watch, especially given the poor script that the actors had to work with in this episode. Chyler Leigh and Floriana Lima have great chemistry with each other, and they were both able to make the best of a bad situation through their heartfelt performances. It’s just a shame that things had to end in this way.

Another disappointment this week was Morgan Edge, who hasn’t been able to step out of his ultimate-evil box yet. With no character development to speak of it’s difficult  to really understand why Edge is doing what he does, other than out of a desire for revenge —even if this was the case though, poisoning children seems to be going a bit far. Even with a great actor like Adrian Pasdar on board to embody the character, it’s been hard to really connect with Edge. The only hope is that the writers have some big plans for him that we haven’t seen yet, because otherwise he’s going to end up being a B-grade version of Season one’s Maxwell Lord.

The Lena/Kara/Sam trio is the only saving grace of “Damage” as they have a great dynamic together, and it was especially nice to see Sam and Kara working closely together before their future fight comes to a head. Katie McGrath was particularly interesting with her vulnerable portrayal of Lena, who has seemed so strong up to this point. Seeing her struggle to deal with the world as everything she’s worked so hard for starts to crash down around her makes her a more relatable character, and it’s nice to see this different side to Lena. All in all, this is not the strongest episode of Supergirl this season but powerful performances from the main cast stopped the episode from being a total disaster.

The Good:      

• The Lena/Kara/Sam friendship is strong here, and the actors all have great chemistry together.

• Chyler Leigh and Floriana Lima deliver some very emotional performances despite having little to work with in terms of script.

The Bad:

• Morgan Edge.
• The way that Alex and Maggie’s breakup was delivered was so frustrating, and we can’t help but feel that their relationship didn’t have to end this way.

And the Random:

• The chanting of “Lock her up” during Lena’s press conference is clearly a reference to the reaction of Trump supporters towards Hillary Clinton after the email scandal came to light.

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