Friday, April 10, 2020
Starman Plays Fallout 2 - Part 42
In which we solve the mystery of the missing townsfolk and clean up the mine in Broken Hills. We also recover a lost treasure, but I can't help but shake the feeling there was something else we forgot...
Wednesday, April 8, 2020
Starman Plays Fallout 2 - Part 41
In which we head for the hills - Broken Hills, that is! It is here that we begin looking for some missing townsfolk, help a ghoul with hygiene issues, help another ghoul with personal issues and enter into a battle of wits with a Radscorpion. Will we win? You'll have to watch and see!
Tuesday, April 7, 2020
The Flash Episode Guide: Season 6, Episode 15 - The Exorcism of Nash Wells
For a summary of the episode guide layout & categories, click here.
Plot
As The Flash contends with a dangerous new Black Hole assassin called Sunshine while trying to conserve the last of the Speed Force energy, Cisco and Cecile try to find a way to force Eobard Thawne's mind out of Nash Wells' body.
Influences
The Indiana Jones movies (Nash and his world's version of Allegra having a relationship like Indy and Short Round, Nash having a signature hat), Fight Club (Cisco compares Nash's seeing the other Harrison Wells to Tyler Durden in this movie) and The Exorcism of Emily Rose (title, exorcism theme).
Goofs
Granting that Cecile has often been a source of well-meaning comic-relief on the show, her bringing vampire-fighting gear to help with a scientific inquiry is just idiotic.
Iris evokes the name of the Ringmaster and Cicada in talking about how metahumans have limits. Strictly speaking, Cicada was a wielder of meta-tech rather than a true meta and the classic Ringmaster in the comics used technology, not metahuman powers. (Of course given that this is the fake Iris, this may be meant to be another hint that she isn't who she says she is.)
Performances
It is a credit to Tom Cavanagh's skill as an actor that he can wring so much drama out of a scene where he talks to himself and says nothing more than "It's not my fault" and "It's all your fault" over and over.
Artistry
The fight scene between Sunshine and the CCPD is well blocked and thrilling.
Flash Facts
Thawne, posing as Nash, talks about having once stopped a swarm of psychic starfish on Earth-26. This is a reference to the classic Justice League villain Starro The Conqueror.
Sunshine is an original villain to the Arrowverse, but her powers - teleportation, invisibility and melting things - are exhibited by the classic Dr. Light in the comics. Unlike Dr. Light, however, Sunlight is dependent on ambient sunlight and does not generate energy on her own.
Iris makes reference to a villain called the Ringmaster who is nothing without his rings.This is a nod to an obscure Pre-Crisis Flash villain called The Ringmaster, who was an author named Beau Baer that had been hypnotized by the Golden Glider and outfitted with special ring-based gadgetry and made to become a rival superhero to The Flash. The Glider also abducted Iris West-Allen and tried to make her love the Ringmaster, before killing her and framing Flash for the crime. Once Baer was freed from Glider's control, he retired The Ringmaster and he was never seen again.
Technobabble
Eva McCulloch created a device she calls the Prismatic Refractor, which is capable of converting ambient light into energy.
Cisco hacked every Quantum Kinematic database on Earth-Prime and nobody knows anything about building an artificial Speed Force apart from the fact that The Reverse-Flash managed to do it in the future.
Cisco designs a Speed Gauge which measures the intensity of the velocity Barry generates whenever he uses his powers. The Speed Gauge lights up one of several colored lights based on how much energy Barry is using. Black is neutral, green is a small amount of energy, going through yellow and orange to red for maximum output.
Caitlin says that Nash's brainwaves appear to be multiple brainwaves woven together intricately when viewed as a three-dimensional pattern.
It is never explained just why Thawne was able to appear to Nash despite not being a true Wells. The most likely explanation is that Thawne was dragged along for the ride along with everyone else in a body that scanned as a genetic match for Nash Wells, given that Thawne did
Thawne, posing as Nash, claims to have a neuro-splicer in his belongings. He says that he doesn't think it could be used to separate thousands of brainwaves but Cisco thinks it could if it were super-charged using the EMP in Nash' gauntlet at 1500 volts per meter.
Whatever the device in Nash's belongings actually is, it knocks Barry, Caitlin and Cisco out long enough for Thawne, in Nash's body, to get to the STARchives and Rip Hunter's Time Bubble. Cisco later identifies this effect as a recoil loop.
Caitlin says there's no way to know what effect Velocity-X would have on Barry now, given how his powers have evolved in the past few years.
Cisco says that Thawne is just a series of negative tachyons that have gotten into Nash's body. Hitting Nash with positive tachyons should drive Thawne out, which leads Cisco to build a PTD (Positive Tachyon Device) capable of doing the job.
Cisco uses Cecile's empathy powers as a Thawne-detector, sense all she can read from Nash is pure hatred when Thawne is controlling him.
Without a physical body of his own, Thawne has to inspire negative emotions in his host to draw upon the Negative Speed Force.
Thawne's negative tachyons proliferate at a rate far faster than the output capabilities of the PTD. This means that it will only be a matter of time before he takes over Nash's body, according to Cisco, unless they find a way to help Nash fight back and stop feeding Thawne negative emotions to feed off of.
Cisco can't find any trace of Thawne's negative tachyons inside any organic matter on Earth, but he and Barry think he's just been dissipated - not destroyed. Cisco compares him to a "red-eyed, pissed-off Voldemort.
Nash describes being possessed by Thawne as like being underwater - you can see and hear what's going on at a distance, but you aren't really in control of anything.
Dialogue Triumphs
(Barry runs into his lab at the CCPD, with Sunshine in hot pursuit. She easily cuts through the lock on the sliding metal security door and walks inside.)
Sunshine: Come out, come out wherever you are.
(Sunshine chuckles as the steel security shutters slam down over the windows. At the same time, Joe comes in behind her, closing the door as he draws his gun. Sunshine shrugs and raises her hands, getting ready to draw on her powers as the last of the shutters slide into place over the skylight, plunging the room into darkness. Our point of view shifts as everything goes green and several officers armed with laser-sighted rifles emerge from the corners of the room, with their sights set on Sunshine. They are wearing night-vision goggles, as is Barry, who grins as he emerges from behind a support column.)
Barry: Yep. You're helio-kinetic. So without access to sunlight, you're just an ordinary thief.
(Sunshine looks around, knowing she's beaten as four laser sights move around her chest as Barry holds up a pair of meta-dampener cuffs.)
Barry: Limits suck, don't they?
Dialogue Disasters
Caitlin: Nash needs help. Not maiming.
Iris: Metas are the ones with limits: not people.
Continuity
The opening scene reveals that Kamilla has been replaced with a mirror duplicate like Iris was.
Eva McCulloch is apparently capable of creating duplicates of items in the mirror universe, but to finish her R-CEM machine she believes she needs the original Prismatic Refractor. She tasks the mirror duplicates with retrieving the original and bringing it to her.
The R-CEM is central to Eva McCulloch's long term plans.
Caitlin sends Barry away since they can't trust him to maintain his cool around Thawne and that is draining his powers faster in his current condition.
Cecile brings holy water, garlic, a wooden stake, salt and a Ouija board when Cisco asks for help getting Thawne's mind out of Nash's body.
The alternate universe version of Allegra Garcia whom Nash Wells raised like a daughter was named Maya. Nash began teaching her everything he knew after finding her rooting through his tent looking for food and she found a secret hidden inside the Blood Bloom - an idol he had just stolen from the mouth of something called The Wollip..
The Blood Bloom contains a gem worth three-times more than the crystals on the surface.
Nash's first rule is that the prize is everything. Another one of Nash's rules is you don't give anyone anything for free. He gives Maya his hat as thanks for her finding the gem for him.
Thawne is somehow able to access Nash's memories and traps him inside his worst one, which involves being in a cave where he can see blinding daylight outside. This causes Nash to suffer, which Thawne can draw upon to tap the Negative Speed Force.
A new metahuman with light powers robs Mercury Labs while the Iris and Kamilla clones are trying to steal the Prismatic Refraactor.
Frost goes to fight the robber, who introduces herself as Sunshine.
The Velocity-X samples are kept inside a vault hidden inside a fake pinball machine in the main room of STAR Labs. It is unlocked by pressing your thumb against a hidden fingerprint scanner inside the change slot.
Sunshine has the power to teleport across short distances, can seemingly become invisible and has the ability to melt steel with her bare hands. She also reopens the wound Frost got from the Dr. Light in 610.
Barry's body rejects the Velocity-X outright.
Sunshine's real name is Millie Rawlins. She's a former US Army soldier, who was transferred to covert ops after she developed the metahuman ability to bend sunlight in her immediate vicinity following the STAR Labs particle accelerator explosion. Sunshine was her call-sign.
Joe recovered the Prismatic Refractor and refuses to let it out of his sight until ARGUS picks it up. The Iris clone tries to get it stored at STAR Labs but Barry says that he can't stop Sunlight so there's no point in trying to hide it at STAR Labs.
Joe tells the Iris clone twice that she should check on Barry as she keeps asking him about the Prismatic refractor.
The Iris clone tells Barry that maybe The Flash can't fight Sunshine, but maybe Barry Allen can out-think her.
Cecile says she can barely feel Nash through all the shame and guilt after Thawne traps him in his worst memory.
Thawne is able to connect to his Negative Speed Force and nearly escapes his bonds before Cisco puts a pair of meta-dampener cuffs on him and Cecile knocks him unconscious with her Ouija board.
Chief Singh shows up to oversee the transfer of the Prismatic Refractor to ARGUS personally, saying he now agrees with Joe's assessment that there is a mole in the CCPD.
Sunshine is revealed to have been in Joe's office the whole time he and Chief Singh were talking.
Barry sets a trap for Sunshine, luring her into his lab at the CCPD, which has steel shutters that can be locked over the windows and skylight. Once the windows are closed, she has no source of power.
Chief Singh suggests that Sunshine may have been spying on the CCPD all this time and altering the records for Carver instead of there being a mole.
Cecile's mother died in 1995.
Cecile describes the feeling she reads from Nash as being paternal, like how she feels about her daughters, but also being tinged with her feelings for her dead mother. This leads her to conclude that the alternate Allegra was Nash's daughter (or something close) and Thawne is feeding on Nash's feelings of loss regarding her death.
Barry suggests they use the MAD 2.0 to access Nash's mind and help him drive Thawne out, similar to how they used it in conjunction with Cecile's powers to access The Thinker's mind in 423.
Maya died trying to grab a memory cell from a sonic emitter from the highest peak of Corto Maltese on Earth-13. Rather than lose hold of the cell and pull herself up off a ledge, she lost her grip and fell off the mountain while Nash was helpless to do anything but watch.
When Nash admits that Maya's death was his fault, it cuts off the pain that Thawne was feeding on, causing his energy to erupt from Nash's body as a red lightning storm.
Cisco says there's nothing he can do to stop Nash from seeing and hearing the other Wells doppelgangers. He says that he'll be able to draw off their knowledge, however.
Cisco gives Harry back his picture of himself and Maya.
Harry goes off to explore and find some new adventure on Earth-Prime.
Cisco suggests that Nash should try and reach out to Allegra, noting that he never got along with any version of Harrison Wells at first but eventually he became good friends with every incarnation of them he worked with.
Harry Wells appears to Nash and tells him that what Cisco said was what he was trying to tell him.
Barry apologizes to Caitlin for not following her orders.
Barry says that the start for building their Speed Force is in Nora's journal, thinking that Thawne must have taught her how to make her own Speed Force.
The Iris and Kamilla doppelgangers stole the Prismatic Refractor while the CCPD was distracted fighting Sunshine and replaced it with the copy.
Eva McCulloch says her ultimate goal is liberation.
Location
Earth-719, 8 Years Ago.
Earth-13, 1 Year Ago.
Untelevised Adventures
The flashbacks reveal Nash Wells' history with an alternate universe version of Allegra Garcia, who is confirmed to have been his protege and basically his daughter and to have died because she couldn't let go of a prize.
Iris mentions a never-before seen villain called The Ringmaster.
The Bottom Line
A weak script that is salvaged only by the performances of the strongest actors in the show and the fact that most of the extraneous characters from this season aren't included in the story. It is somewhat saddening, however, that the return of the Reverse Flash is more of an annoyance than a major event but that's Season 6 of The Flash in a nutshell - everything is a distraction from the main plot and it's almost impossible to single out the main plot.
Plot
As The Flash contends with a dangerous new Black Hole assassin called Sunshine while trying to conserve the last of the Speed Force energy, Cisco and Cecile try to find a way to force Eobard Thawne's mind out of Nash Wells' body.
Influences
The Indiana Jones movies (Nash and his world's version of Allegra having a relationship like Indy and Short Round, Nash having a signature hat), Fight Club (Cisco compares Nash's seeing the other Harrison Wells to Tyler Durden in this movie) and The Exorcism of Emily Rose (title, exorcism theme).
Goofs
Granting that Cecile has often been a source of well-meaning comic-relief on the show, her bringing vampire-fighting gear to help with a scientific inquiry is just idiotic.
Iris evokes the name of the Ringmaster and Cicada in talking about how metahumans have limits. Strictly speaking, Cicada was a wielder of meta-tech rather than a true meta and the classic Ringmaster in the comics used technology, not metahuman powers. (Of course given that this is the fake Iris, this may be meant to be another hint that she isn't who she says she is.)
Performances
It is a credit to Tom Cavanagh's skill as an actor that he can wring so much drama out of a scene where he talks to himself and says nothing more than "It's not my fault" and "It's all your fault" over and over.
Artistry
The fight scene between Sunshine and the CCPD is well blocked and thrilling.
Flash Facts
Thawne, posing as Nash, talks about having once stopped a swarm of psychic starfish on Earth-26. This is a reference to the classic Justice League villain Starro The Conqueror.
Sunshine is an original villain to the Arrowverse, but her powers - teleportation, invisibility and melting things - are exhibited by the classic Dr. Light in the comics. Unlike Dr. Light, however, Sunlight is dependent on ambient sunlight and does not generate energy on her own.
Iris makes reference to a villain called the Ringmaster who is nothing without his rings.This is a nod to an obscure Pre-Crisis Flash villain called The Ringmaster, who was an author named Beau Baer that had been hypnotized by the Golden Glider and outfitted with special ring-based gadgetry and made to become a rival superhero to The Flash. The Glider also abducted Iris West-Allen and tried to make her love the Ringmaster, before killing her and framing Flash for the crime. Once Baer was freed from Glider's control, he retired The Ringmaster and he was never seen again.
Technobabble
Eva McCulloch created a device she calls the Prismatic Refractor, which is capable of converting ambient light into energy.
Cisco hacked every Quantum Kinematic database on Earth-Prime and nobody knows anything about building an artificial Speed Force apart from the fact that The Reverse-Flash managed to do it in the future.
Cisco designs a Speed Gauge which measures the intensity of the velocity Barry generates whenever he uses his powers. The Speed Gauge lights up one of several colored lights based on how much energy Barry is using. Black is neutral, green is a small amount of energy, going through yellow and orange to red for maximum output.
Caitlin says that Nash's brainwaves appear to be multiple brainwaves woven together intricately when viewed as a three-dimensional pattern.
It is never explained just why Thawne was able to appear to Nash despite not being a true Wells. The most likely explanation is that Thawne was dragged along for the ride along with everyone else in a body that scanned as a genetic match for Nash Wells, given that Thawne did
Thawne, posing as Nash, claims to have a neuro-splicer in his belongings. He says that he doesn't think it could be used to separate thousands of brainwaves but Cisco thinks it could if it were super-charged using the EMP in Nash' gauntlet at 1500 volts per meter.
Whatever the device in Nash's belongings actually is, it knocks Barry, Caitlin and Cisco out long enough for Thawne, in Nash's body, to get to the STARchives and Rip Hunter's Time Bubble. Cisco later identifies this effect as a recoil loop.
Caitlin says there's no way to know what effect Velocity-X would have on Barry now, given how his powers have evolved in the past few years.
Cisco says that Thawne is just a series of negative tachyons that have gotten into Nash's body. Hitting Nash with positive tachyons should drive Thawne out, which leads Cisco to build a PTD (Positive Tachyon Device) capable of doing the job.
Cisco uses Cecile's empathy powers as a Thawne-detector, sense all she can read from Nash is pure hatred when Thawne is controlling him.
Without a physical body of his own, Thawne has to inspire negative emotions in his host to draw upon the Negative Speed Force.
Thawne's negative tachyons proliferate at a rate far faster than the output capabilities of the PTD. This means that it will only be a matter of time before he takes over Nash's body, according to Cisco, unless they find a way to help Nash fight back and stop feeding Thawne negative emotions to feed off of.
Cisco can't find any trace of Thawne's negative tachyons inside any organic matter on Earth, but he and Barry think he's just been dissipated - not destroyed. Cisco compares him to a "red-eyed, pissed-off Voldemort.
Nash describes being possessed by Thawne as like being underwater - you can see and hear what's going on at a distance, but you aren't really in control of anything.
Dialogue Triumphs
(Barry runs into his lab at the CCPD, with Sunshine in hot pursuit. She easily cuts through the lock on the sliding metal security door and walks inside.)
Sunshine: Come out, come out wherever you are.
(Sunshine chuckles as the steel security shutters slam down over the windows. At the same time, Joe comes in behind her, closing the door as he draws his gun. Sunshine shrugs and raises her hands, getting ready to draw on her powers as the last of the shutters slide into place over the skylight, plunging the room into darkness. Our point of view shifts as everything goes green and several officers armed with laser-sighted rifles emerge from the corners of the room, with their sights set on Sunshine. They are wearing night-vision goggles, as is Barry, who grins as he emerges from behind a support column.)
Barry: Yep. You're helio-kinetic. So without access to sunlight, you're just an ordinary thief.
(Sunshine looks around, knowing she's beaten as four laser sights move around her chest as Barry holds up a pair of meta-dampener cuffs.)
Barry: Limits suck, don't they?
Dialogue Disasters
Caitlin: Nash needs help. Not maiming.
Iris: Metas are the ones with limits: not people.
Continuity
The opening scene reveals that Kamilla has been replaced with a mirror duplicate like Iris was.
Eva McCulloch is apparently capable of creating duplicates of items in the mirror universe, but to finish her R-CEM machine she believes she needs the original Prismatic Refractor. She tasks the mirror duplicates with retrieving the original and bringing it to her.
The R-CEM is central to Eva McCulloch's long term plans.
The original Prismatic Refractor was sold to Mercury Labs several months earlier.
Joe and Chief Singh meet at C.C. Jitters to discuss Joe's RICO investigation into Dr. Carver.
Joe and Chief Singh agree they have to investigate the possibility of a mole in the CCPD working for Carver independent of Internal Affairs.
Joe tells Chief Singh that The Flash is aware of the investigation as well and thinks there's a dirty copy at work in the CCPD as well.
Nash says that he's been seeing other versions of Harrison wells from the Pre-Crisis Earths and they've been talking to him. He mentions the Wizard Wells (Earth-13), the French Wells, the New York Wells (who he likes) and Harry Wells of Earth-2.
Thawne poses as Nash as part of a plan to escape. Barry catches him before he can steal Rip Hunters' time bubble.
Barry nearly looses his temper and vibrates his hand through Nash's chest as Thawne taunts him about how he failed to save his daughter the last time they fought in 522.
Cecile brings holy water, garlic, a wooden stake, salt and a Ouija board when Cisco asks for help getting Thawne's mind out of Nash's body.
The alternate universe version of Allegra Garcia whom Nash Wells raised like a daughter was named Maya. Nash began teaching her everything he knew after finding her rooting through his tent looking for food and she found a secret hidden inside the Blood Bloom - an idol he had just stolen from the mouth of something called The Wollip..
The Blood Bloom contains a gem worth three-times more than the crystals on the surface.
Nash's first rule is that the prize is everything. Another one of Nash's rules is you don't give anyone anything for free. He gives Maya his hat as thanks for her finding the gem for him.
Thawne is somehow able to access Nash's memories and traps him inside his worst one, which involves being in a cave where he can see blinding daylight outside. This causes Nash to suffer, which Thawne can draw upon to tap the Negative Speed Force.
A new metahuman with light powers robs Mercury Labs while the Iris and Kamilla clones are trying to steal the Prismatic Refraactor.
Frost goes to fight the robber, who introduces herself as Sunshine.
The Velocity-X samples are kept inside a vault hidden inside a fake pinball machine in the main room of STAR Labs. It is unlocked by pressing your thumb against a hidden fingerprint scanner inside the change slot.
Sunshine has the power to teleport across short distances, can seemingly become invisible and has the ability to melt steel with her bare hands. She also reopens the wound Frost got from the Dr. Light in 610.
Barry's body rejects the Velocity-X outright.
Sunshine's real name is Millie Rawlins. She's a former US Army soldier, who was transferred to covert ops after she developed the metahuman ability to bend sunlight in her immediate vicinity following the STAR Labs particle accelerator explosion. Sunshine was her call-sign.
Joe recovered the Prismatic Refractor and refuses to let it out of his sight until ARGUS picks it up. The Iris clone tries to get it stored at STAR Labs but Barry says that he can't stop Sunlight so there's no point in trying to hide it at STAR Labs.
Joe tells the Iris clone twice that she should check on Barry as she keeps asking him about the Prismatic refractor.
The Iris clone tells Barry that maybe The Flash can't fight Sunshine, but maybe Barry Allen can out-think her.
Cecile says she can barely feel Nash through all the shame and guilt after Thawne traps him in his worst memory.
Thawne is able to connect to his Negative Speed Force and nearly escapes his bonds before Cisco puts a pair of meta-dampener cuffs on him and Cecile knocks him unconscious with her Ouija board.
Chief Singh shows up to oversee the transfer of the Prismatic Refractor to ARGUS personally, saying he now agrees with Joe's assessment that there is a mole in the CCPD.
Sunshine is revealed to have been in Joe's office the whole time he and Chief Singh were talking.
Barry sets a trap for Sunshine, luring her into his lab at the CCPD, which has steel shutters that can be locked over the windows and skylight. Once the windows are closed, she has no source of power.
Chief Singh suggests that Sunshine may have been spying on the CCPD all this time and altering the records for Carver instead of there being a mole.
Cecile's mother died in 1995.
Cecile describes the feeling she reads from Nash as being paternal, like how she feels about her daughters, but also being tinged with her feelings for her dead mother. This leads her to conclude that the alternate Allegra was Nash's daughter (or something close) and Thawne is feeding on Nash's feelings of loss regarding her death.
Barry suggests they use the MAD 2.0 to access Nash's mind and help him drive Thawne out, similar to how they used it in conjunction with Cecile's powers to access The Thinker's mind in 423.
Maya died trying to grab a memory cell from a sonic emitter from the highest peak of Corto Maltese on Earth-13. Rather than lose hold of the cell and pull herself up off a ledge, she lost her grip and fell off the mountain while Nash was helpless to do anything but watch.
When Nash admits that Maya's death was his fault, it cuts off the pain that Thawne was feeding on, causing his energy to erupt from Nash's body as a red lightning storm.
Cisco says there's nothing he can do to stop Nash from seeing and hearing the other Wells doppelgangers. He says that he'll be able to draw off their knowledge, however.
Cisco gives Harry back his picture of himself and Maya.
Harry goes off to explore and find some new adventure on Earth-Prime.
Cisco suggests that Nash should try and reach out to Allegra, noting that he never got along with any version of Harrison Wells at first but eventually he became good friends with every incarnation of them he worked with.
Harry Wells appears to Nash and tells him that what Cisco said was what he was trying to tell him.
Barry apologizes to Caitlin for not following her orders.
Barry says that the start for building their Speed Force is in Nora's journal, thinking that Thawne must have taught her how to make her own Speed Force.
The Iris and Kamilla doppelgangers stole the Prismatic Refractor while the CCPD was distracted fighting Sunshine and replaced it with the copy.
Eva McCulloch says her ultimate goal is liberation.
Location
Earth-719, 8 Years Ago.
Earth-13, 1 Year Ago.
Untelevised Adventures
The flashbacks reveal Nash Wells' history with an alternate universe version of Allegra Garcia, who is confirmed to have been his protege and basically his daughter and to have died because she couldn't let go of a prize.
Iris mentions a never-before seen villain called The Ringmaster.
The Bottom Line
A weak script that is salvaged only by the performances of the strongest actors in the show and the fact that most of the extraneous characters from this season aren't included in the story. It is somewhat saddening, however, that the return of the Reverse Flash is more of an annoyance than a major event but that's Season 6 of The Flash in a nutshell - everything is a distraction from the main plot and it's almost impossible to single out the main plot.
Monday, April 6, 2020
Starman Plays Fallout 2 - Part 40
In which we finally find that damned voice modulator, return to Vault 13 a hero and then head back to New Reno and become the prize-fighting champion of the world! Or at least, what's left the world that cares about prize-fighting.
Sunday, April 5, 2020
Supergirl Episode Guide: Season 5, Episode 15 - Reality Bytes
For a summary of the episode guide layout & categories, click here.
Plot
A transphobic troll begins attacking trans women through a dating app (including Nia's roommate) and threatens to keep doing it unless Dreamer quits being a superhero. As Kara tries to stop Nia from going over the edge in dealing with the wannabe super-villain, J'onn, Alex and Kelly search for a missing man who may have been abducted and is being held hostage in a virtual world in Obsidian Platinum.
Influences
Various 1990s horror stories built around virtual reality. The title is taken from the 1994 drama Reality Bites.
Goofs
Despite fretting over whether to wear a blue or purple shirt on her date with William, Kara winds up wearing the purple shirt after Alex told her to wear the blue and that blue is her best color.
Yvette is written as the stupidest woman on the planet, not thinking anything is weird about some strange man knowing her virtual boyfriend's name when he approaches her in a bar or when he later approaches her in an alley.
In fact, the only person stupider than Yvette in this episode is the bigot himself, who doesn't really think through the logistical problems of calling out a superhero with actual powers and attacking people who claim to know her on-line. He seems honestly stunned with Dreamer finds him and is able to overpower him easily.
Ignoring the reasons outlined in the episode, it seems incredibly stupid for Obsidian Platinum to operate without rules or without some kind of virtual sysop inside the game to monitor for things like, say, a serial killer/rapist attempting to make his fantasies a reality and targeting other players.
It seems unlikely that there are only 200 anti-trans message boards and social media groups on the entire Internet or that the sum total of their postings could be fit onto a single portable flash drive. Even allowing that the DEO and Brainiac-5 may have some wonderfully huge portable drives.
Yvette's decision to delete all her social media seems to be a bad lesson for this fable. As written, it seems like the episode is saying that dating apps are evil; not bigots, trolls and stalkers who use dating apps as a means of locating potential victims.
The closing montage set to "Everybody Hurts" would be a bit more powerful had the episode ended with Alex and Kara learning of Jerimaih's death rather than most of the song being played over Margot wheeling away Richard Bates.
Performances
Nicole Maines gives a powerful performance in the early scenes and you really feel Nia's rage at the bigot trying to stop her from being a hero and her frustration with Kara's well-meaning but misplaced efforts at empathy and her trying to give a "there's nothing we can't overcome together" speech at the worst possible time to be a clueless but well-meaning ally.
At the same time, Melissa Benoist does a great job in the early scenes trying to convey earnest empathy while realizing that she's not in a place where she can offer moral judgement, as much as it kills her that there are some things she can't solve with a speech about hope and some villains who can't be redeemed.
Super Trivia
Reference is made to the nation of Quarac, which is ruled by a royal family on Earth-Prime. In the DC Comics universe, Quarac is a fictional nation in the Middle East.
J'onn travels to Opal City following the psychic trail attached to Trevor Crane. In the DC Comics universe, Opal City is the home town of the first superhero to use the name Starman, Ted Knight. It was the main setting of the 1994 Starman series.
Jennifer Bates is played by actress Anna Van Hooft, who appeared in a season 1 episode of Arrow as a woman named Jenn who was mistaken for Sara Lance in a photo Dinah Lance believed proved her daughter was alive. Jenn was said to be engaged to be married, suggesting that maybe Jenn is Jennifer eight years later.on Earth-Prime.
Technobabble
There is a fail-safe tied to the bio-metrics of the user of Obsidian Platinum's lenses, that is meant to manifest a button the user can push to end the simulation when they are feeling unduly stressed.
The Hand of the Soldier is apparently capable of generating an electrical shock strong enough for a Kryptonian on Earth to feel it, as Alex is apparently able to teasingly shock Kara with it.
The Martian DNA inside the Hand of the Soldier should code itself to Alex's bio-electric impulses, allowing her to morph it with a single thought once she allows it into her.
Obsidian Platinum connects to a person's biology rather than acting through a link to their brain. It causes everything they experience to feel real.
Advanced Obsidian Platinum users can customize the virtual world but it takes time for the additions to be cataloged by the games' manager. As such, there are some places (like The Escape Palace) where the people running the game have no clue what is going on.
Kelly says the Escape Palace draws upon a user's worst fears, making everyone perceive if differently. In Alex's case, she sees it as a series of tanks like the one she nearly drowned in.
One DEO agent reports to Brainiac-5 that she found over 200 anti-trans social media groups and message boards on the Internet and fit them onto a single portable drive.
Richard Bates is somehow able to customize his rooms in Obsidian Platinum to block remote monitoring.
According to Kelly, Alex should not have been able to blast Richard out of Obsidian Platinum.
Dialogue Triumphs
(Regarding the Martian Hand of the Soldier weapon J'onn gave Alex.)
Alex: This thing is supposed to know what I'm thinking, but it's being very stubborn.
Kara: (grinning) Well, like soldier, like hand.
(Alex raises her wrist at Kara and makes a buzzing noise. Kara jumps back as if shocked as Alex laughs.)
Nia: He wants me to stop being a superhero. He's going after my community to bully me into it.
Kara: Listen to me, Nia, listen. We will find this guy
Nia: Yeah, we will. And when we do, I'll bury him.
Kara: (shocked) Nia! Look, I... I... (sighs) I know this is a personal attack, but you have to trust that when we find this guy the cops are going to put him behind bars.
Nia: (exasperated) Kara, I love you, but do not tell me what I can and can't do right now. There is no catching this guy and redeeming him. There is no "hope speech" that can make this better!
Kara: Nia -
Nia: (firmly) No. Look, my community is vulnerable. This happens more than you could possibly know. And there are guys, just like this jerk out there, who want to hurt us. They want us to hide and to be afraid to be who we are. They want us to disappear and it happens. Every. Day.
Kara: I know. And what this guy did was horrible-
Nia: He's not the first and he won't be the last. We haven't exactly been a priority for the cops. So, just trust me when I say that I am the one protecting this community. And now this bastard is going after my community trying to erase me? No. No, this guy is over!
Kara: (shaken) Look, I know that you're hurting right now. And I know I'll never fully understand. But between us and the cops, we will make sure justice is served. Nia? Just give us a chance?
Nia: Fine. A few hours. Then I'm doing this my way.
Kara: I know sometimes being the good guy sucks. Especially when you know how easy it would be to get rid of someone so vile and full of hate. But, hey not doing that? That is what makes us different from them.
Dialogue Disasters
(Kara and William write a story together and we get the clunkiest message delivery ever.)
Kara: (reading) "Over 24 trans people have been murdered in this country in the past year."
William: The true number's likely much higher. Many of these attacks are misreported because victims are misgendered in police reports.
Dreamer: You make me sick.
Bigot: No, you make me sick you twisted freak! You show up on the scene one day tricking dudes into thinking you're this hot new superhero! The girl next door! But heroes are supposed to be virtuous and honest! And here you are - lying!
Continuity
Two months earlier, a man named Richard Bates testing a virtual ski vacation in Obsidian Platinum's beta became trapped inside the game when the End Simulation button failed to manifest.
Kelly Olsen was overseeing Bates' experience. She promised to report the error, before Bates was led away by Margot, the woman with Leviathan.
Supergirl and Dreamer fight a Dominator together, just before Kara's first date with William Dey.
Brainiac-5 is distant yet formal to Dreamer when the DEO shows up to secure the scene after the fight.
Kara hasn't had a date in two and a half years.
According to the news, Lex Luthor just had dinner with Crown Prince Raakaan el-Farah of Qurac and, per his advice, Obsidian Platinum will soon be available in that nation.
Alex is still having issues training with the Martian Hand of the Soldier weapon.
Nia's roommate Yvette has a profile on a dating app called Upswipz. This was the same dating app made by the tech company Ray Palmer briefly worked for in L301.
Yvette has been seeing a man she met on-line exclusively for three weeks. She's going to meet him in person for the first time at a club that night and she wants Nia to go with her.
Yvette does not know that Nia is Dreamer or that Nia's ex "Barney" is a DEO agent and an alien from the future.
Yvette describes herself on her Upswipz's profile as Dreamer's best friend.
Kara and William go to a pool hall on their date. Kara claims she's only played 8-Ball one time in her life, but manages a near perfect shot.
Nia has a flash at the bar of blood being on her hands.
Yvette is approached by a man who somehow knows about Angus and doesn't take the hint when she asks about her being spoken for just before she gets a message from Angus telling her to meet her outside. She still seems to have no idea what is going on when the same man approaches her and talks about Angus standing her up.
Nia has another vision in the bathroom of Yvette being attacked.
The bigot leaves a note with Yvette that is addressed to Dreamer, saying the world doesn't want a trans superhero and that unless she quits he'll keep attacking trans women.
The police put together a sketch of what the bigot looks like.
Nia agrees to wait a few hours to give Kara and the police a chance to find the bigot before she goes off on her own.
Al, who runs Al's Dive Bar, comes to J'onn and asks for his help in finding his brother, Trevor, who has been missing for a week.
Trevor lives in Al's basement and spends a lot of time on-line.
Trevor's given name is Trevor Crane.
Al called the police but the only lead they found was an invitation on Trevor's computer to go to a weekend escape experience in the Virtual Las Vegas inside Obsidian Platinum. The police think Trevor is a hotel room somewhere on a VR party binge.
Trevor apparently just started using Obsidian Platinum and apparently had met some friends somewhere called The Escape Palace.
Alex determines that Trevor must have paid cash for his hotel room since there's no credit card records of him checking in somewhere.
Kara asks Brainiac-5 to use the DEO's facial-recognition software to identity the bigot that is looking for Dreamer.
Kelly sets Alex up with a set of Obsidian Platinum lenses.
According to Kelly, Obsidian Platinum sets up a number of potential scenarios based on your own thoughts and desires before you enter the game world proper. In Alex's case, it appears that three of her scenarios involve being Supergirl, working as a doctor or having a baby.
There are no rules inside the Obsidian Platinum world.
The virtual Vegas experience has a virtual Siegfried and Roy show.
NPCs in Obsidian Platinum can be identified by the three lines on their neck. The NPCs are AIs run by the
Al says Trevor has spent that last few months in VR instead of spending time with him.
Al gives J'onn a watch that he gave him as a gift to mark their first year on Earth together. Trevor wore it every day until he got a smart watch, hoping J'onn can use it to psychically track him.
J'onn finds the names of two of Trevor's friends avatars on Obsidian Platinum.
One of the Obsidian Platinum users identifies The Escape Palace as a creepy haunted house located in the hills just outside Virtual Vegas.
Alice finds two of Trevor's friends trapped inside a flooding magician's tank, similar to the one she was stuck inside in 219.
Trevor's friends claim they were stuck inside the room for days. They say they last saw Trevor escape from their room with a new player named Richard, who had started hanging out with them.
Richard was the one who suggested everyone try the Escape Palace experience.
J'onn travels to Opal City, to a house he feels is connected to Trevor somehow.
The house belongs to Jennifer Bates, Richard Bate's wife, who was having a virtual affair with Trevor Crane.
Nia calls the detective working Yvette's case, but he hasn't made any progress.
Nia creates a profile on Upswpiez to get the bigot's attention.
Richard Bates is revealed to be a computer engineer who began exploring the technical specifics of how Obsidian Platinum worked.
Brainiac-5 is searching everything on the Internet relating to Dreamer and finds Nia's dating profile.
Alex breaks into one room in the virtual world and is cut off from Kelly in the real world.
Kara and William work on the story of Yvette's attack together.
Brainiac-5 calls Kara and tells her that he thinks Nia is trying to use herself as bait to attract the bigot.
The bigot's ID on Upswipez is GoodTimes1995.
The room Trevor is trapped in causes his virtual avatar to blow up like he was standing on a land mine and be reformed in a painful fashion, over and over. He says Richard Bates keeps coming back to the room to watch him explode over and over.
Alex is able to force Richard Bates out of the virtual world by shooting him with an imaginary taser.
J'onn tracks down Richard Bates in the real world, in Room 10 of the Coastline Motel.
After Bates tries attacking J'onn, his eyes become red-rimmed and he seems to hallucinate the world changing around J'onn.
Alex talks Trevor down and gets him to retake control of his body.
Trevor is at the National City Grand, Room 315.
According to Kelly, Alex should not have been able to blast Richard out of Obsidian Platinum. Alex says they can figure it out later.
Nia ambushes the bigot, who seems stunned that Dreamer came looking for him.
The bigot's name is Gregory Bauer.
Nia confesses to Kara that she's hurting far worse than she let on because of Brainiac-5 dumping her and like she's lost control of her life and going after the bigot was something she could do.
Kelly and Alex agree that virutal cheating counts as cheating and that virtual torture is real attempted murder.
Kelly says she believes her work can help people but agrees with Alex that VR technology should be regulated and the people allowed to program it limited.
Trevor comes to meet Alex in person and thank her for saving him.
Yvette decides to delete all her social media. She says she's tired of putting herself out there because she should have known better than to trust that most people could accept a trans woman of color or that she could find a man who loved her for her.
Brainaic-5 gives the detective handling Yvettte's case a list of people connected to a group Gregory Bauer was part of that was planning attacks on trans women on-line and identified several users who had claimed credit for several attacks.
Alex is still having trouble getting the Hand of the Soldier to work in the real world.
Alex gets a phone-call from her mother telling her that Jeremiah Danvers has been found dead.
Alex goes to Kara's apartment to tell her the news.
Margot is seen wheeling Richard Bates out of the hospital and placing him in a room with other Obsidian Platinum users - some of whom are somehow floating in mid-air.
Location
Opal City
The Bottom Line
Were it not for some strong performances, this might instantly have been the worst episode of Supergirl ever filmed. As it stands, it definitely has one of the weaker scripts, and surprisingly this is more because of the clunky virtual reality storyline (which would have seemed silly and dated had it been an episode of VR.5) than the Dreamer-focused story about the problem of violence against trans women.
The script is just lazy in the middle parts, with William and Kara literally reading off the statistics about how many trans women have been murdered by bigots. This severely undercuts the good parts of the episode, such as where Nia takes Kara to task for trying to give her usual chirpy optimistic speech about how we can overcome these problems if we work together, neatly ignoring all the people who are actively working to discourage that kind of unity.
It's also bothersome that the lesson taken away from this episode is that you should just stay off social media and close yourself off from the world. Yet none of that is as painful as the tech jargon rattled off by people who don't understand it. The hearts of the writers may have been in the right place, but their heads were somewhere else entirely.
Plot
A transphobic troll begins attacking trans women through a dating app (including Nia's roommate) and threatens to keep doing it unless Dreamer quits being a superhero. As Kara tries to stop Nia from going over the edge in dealing with the wannabe super-villain, J'onn, Alex and Kelly search for a missing man who may have been abducted and is being held hostage in a virtual world in Obsidian Platinum.
Influences
Various 1990s horror stories built around virtual reality. The title is taken from the 1994 drama Reality Bites.
Goofs
Despite fretting over whether to wear a blue or purple shirt on her date with William, Kara winds up wearing the purple shirt after Alex told her to wear the blue and that blue is her best color.
Yvette is written as the stupidest woman on the planet, not thinking anything is weird about some strange man knowing her virtual boyfriend's name when he approaches her in a bar or when he later approaches her in an alley.
In fact, the only person stupider than Yvette in this episode is the bigot himself, who doesn't really think through the logistical problems of calling out a superhero with actual powers and attacking people who claim to know her on-line. He seems honestly stunned with Dreamer finds him and is able to overpower him easily.
Ignoring the reasons outlined in the episode, it seems incredibly stupid for Obsidian Platinum to operate without rules or without some kind of virtual sysop inside the game to monitor for things like, say, a serial killer/rapist attempting to make his fantasies a reality and targeting other players.
It seems unlikely that there are only 200 anti-trans message boards and social media groups on the entire Internet or that the sum total of their postings could be fit onto a single portable flash drive. Even allowing that the DEO and Brainiac-5 may have some wonderfully huge portable drives.
Yvette's decision to delete all her social media seems to be a bad lesson for this fable. As written, it seems like the episode is saying that dating apps are evil; not bigots, trolls and stalkers who use dating apps as a means of locating potential victims.
The closing montage set to "Everybody Hurts" would be a bit more powerful had the episode ended with Alex and Kara learning of Jerimaih's death rather than most of the song being played over Margot wheeling away Richard Bates.
Performances
Nicole Maines gives a powerful performance in the early scenes and you really feel Nia's rage at the bigot trying to stop her from being a hero and her frustration with Kara's well-meaning but misplaced efforts at empathy and her trying to give a "there's nothing we can't overcome together" speech at the worst possible time to be a clueless but well-meaning ally.
At the same time, Melissa Benoist does a great job in the early scenes trying to convey earnest empathy while realizing that she's not in a place where she can offer moral judgement, as much as it kills her that there are some things she can't solve with a speech about hope and some villains who can't be redeemed.
Super Trivia
Reference is made to the nation of Quarac, which is ruled by a royal family on Earth-Prime. In the DC Comics universe, Quarac is a fictional nation in the Middle East.
J'onn travels to Opal City following the psychic trail attached to Trevor Crane. In the DC Comics universe, Opal City is the home town of the first superhero to use the name Starman, Ted Knight. It was the main setting of the 1994 Starman series.
Jennifer Bates is played by actress Anna Van Hooft, who appeared in a season 1 episode of Arrow as a woman named Jenn who was mistaken for Sara Lance in a photo Dinah Lance believed proved her daughter was alive. Jenn was said to be engaged to be married, suggesting that maybe Jenn is Jennifer eight years later.on Earth-Prime.
Technobabble
There is a fail-safe tied to the bio-metrics of the user of Obsidian Platinum's lenses, that is meant to manifest a button the user can push to end the simulation when they are feeling unduly stressed.
The Hand of the Soldier is apparently capable of generating an electrical shock strong enough for a Kryptonian on Earth to feel it, as Alex is apparently able to teasingly shock Kara with it.
The Martian DNA inside the Hand of the Soldier should code itself to Alex's bio-electric impulses, allowing her to morph it with a single thought once she allows it into her.
Obsidian Platinum connects to a person's biology rather than acting through a link to their brain. It causes everything they experience to feel real.
Advanced Obsidian Platinum users can customize the virtual world but it takes time for the additions to be cataloged by the games' manager. As such, there are some places (like The Escape Palace) where the people running the game have no clue what is going on.
Kelly says the Escape Palace draws upon a user's worst fears, making everyone perceive if differently. In Alex's case, she sees it as a series of tanks like the one she nearly drowned in.
One DEO agent reports to Brainiac-5 that she found over 200 anti-trans social media groups and message boards on the Internet and fit them onto a single portable drive.
Richard Bates is somehow able to customize his rooms in Obsidian Platinum to block remote monitoring.
According to Kelly, Alex should not have been able to blast Richard out of Obsidian Platinum.
Dialogue Triumphs
(Regarding the Martian Hand of the Soldier weapon J'onn gave Alex.)
Alex: This thing is supposed to know what I'm thinking, but it's being very stubborn.
Kara: (grinning) Well, like soldier, like hand.
(Alex raises her wrist at Kara and makes a buzzing noise. Kara jumps back as if shocked as Alex laughs.)
Nia: He wants me to stop being a superhero. He's going after my community to bully me into it.
Kara: Listen to me, Nia, listen. We will find this guy
Nia: Yeah, we will. And when we do, I'll bury him.
Kara: (shocked) Nia! Look, I... I... (sighs) I know this is a personal attack, but you have to trust that when we find this guy the cops are going to put him behind bars.
Nia: (exasperated) Kara, I love you, but do not tell me what I can and can't do right now. There is no catching this guy and redeeming him. There is no "hope speech" that can make this better!
Kara: Nia -
Nia: (firmly) No. Look, my community is vulnerable. This happens more than you could possibly know. And there are guys, just like this jerk out there, who want to hurt us. They want us to hide and to be afraid to be who we are. They want us to disappear and it happens. Every. Day.
Kara: I know. And what this guy did was horrible-
Nia: He's not the first and he won't be the last. We haven't exactly been a priority for the cops. So, just trust me when I say that I am the one protecting this community. And now this bastard is going after my community trying to erase me? No. No, this guy is over!
Kara: (shaken) Look, I know that you're hurting right now. And I know I'll never fully understand. But between us and the cops, we will make sure justice is served. Nia? Just give us a chance?
Nia: Fine. A few hours. Then I'm doing this my way.
Kara: I know sometimes being the good guy sucks. Especially when you know how easy it would be to get rid of someone so vile and full of hate. But, hey not doing that? That is what makes us different from them.
Dialogue Disasters
(Kara and William write a story together and we get the clunkiest message delivery ever.)
Kara: (reading) "Over 24 trans people have been murdered in this country in the past year."
William: The true number's likely much higher. Many of these attacks are misreported because victims are misgendered in police reports.
Dreamer: You make me sick.
Bigot: No, you make me sick you twisted freak! You show up on the scene one day tricking dudes into thinking you're this hot new superhero! The girl next door! But heroes are supposed to be virtuous and honest! And here you are - lying!
Continuity
Two months earlier, a man named Richard Bates testing a virtual ski vacation in Obsidian Platinum's beta became trapped inside the game when the End Simulation button failed to manifest.
Kelly Olsen was overseeing Bates' experience. She promised to report the error, before Bates was led away by Margot, the woman with Leviathan.
Supergirl and Dreamer fight a Dominator together, just before Kara's first date with William Dey.
Brainiac-5 is distant yet formal to Dreamer when the DEO shows up to secure the scene after the fight.
Kara hasn't had a date in two and a half years.
According to the news, Lex Luthor just had dinner with Crown Prince Raakaan el-Farah of Qurac and, per his advice, Obsidian Platinum will soon be available in that nation.
Alex is still having issues training with the Martian Hand of the Soldier weapon.
Nia's roommate Yvette has a profile on a dating app called Upswipz. This was the same dating app made by the tech company Ray Palmer briefly worked for in L301.
Yvette has been seeing a man she met on-line exclusively for three weeks. She's going to meet him in person for the first time at a club that night and she wants Nia to go with her.
Yvette does not know that Nia is Dreamer or that Nia's ex "Barney" is a DEO agent and an alien from the future.
Yvette describes herself on her Upswipz's profile as Dreamer's best friend.
Kara and William go to a pool hall on their date. Kara claims she's only played 8-Ball one time in her life, but manages a near perfect shot.
Nia has a flash at the bar of blood being on her hands.
Yvette is approached by a man who somehow knows about Angus and doesn't take the hint when she asks about her being spoken for just before she gets a message from Angus telling her to meet her outside. She still seems to have no idea what is going on when the same man approaches her and talks about Angus standing her up.
Nia has another vision in the bathroom of Yvette being attacked.
The bigot leaves a note with Yvette that is addressed to Dreamer, saying the world doesn't want a trans superhero and that unless she quits he'll keep attacking trans women.
The police put together a sketch of what the bigot looks like.
Nia agrees to wait a few hours to give Kara and the police a chance to find the bigot before she goes off on her own.
Al, who runs Al's Dive Bar, comes to J'onn and asks for his help in finding his brother, Trevor, who has been missing for a week.
Trevor lives in Al's basement and spends a lot of time on-line.
Trevor's given name is Trevor Crane.
Al called the police but the only lead they found was an invitation on Trevor's computer to go to a weekend escape experience in the Virtual Las Vegas inside Obsidian Platinum. The police think Trevor is a hotel room somewhere on a VR party binge.
Trevor apparently just started using Obsidian Platinum and apparently had met some friends somewhere called The Escape Palace.
Alex determines that Trevor must have paid cash for his hotel room since there's no credit card records of him checking in somewhere.
Kara asks Brainiac-5 to use the DEO's facial-recognition software to identity the bigot that is looking for Dreamer.
Kelly sets Alex up with a set of Obsidian Platinum lenses.
According to Kelly, Obsidian Platinum sets up a number of potential scenarios based on your own thoughts and desires before you enter the game world proper. In Alex's case, it appears that three of her scenarios involve being Supergirl, working as a doctor or having a baby.
There are no rules inside the Obsidian Platinum world.
The virtual Vegas experience has a virtual Siegfried and Roy show.
NPCs in Obsidian Platinum can be identified by the three lines on their neck. The NPCs are AIs run by the
Al says Trevor has spent that last few months in VR instead of spending time with him.
Al gives J'onn a watch that he gave him as a gift to mark their first year on Earth together. Trevor wore it every day until he got a smart watch, hoping J'onn can use it to psychically track him.
J'onn finds the names of two of Trevor's friends avatars on Obsidian Platinum.
One of the Obsidian Platinum users identifies The Escape Palace as a creepy haunted house located in the hills just outside Virtual Vegas.
Alice finds two of Trevor's friends trapped inside a flooding magician's tank, similar to the one she was stuck inside in 219.
Trevor's friends claim they were stuck inside the room for days. They say they last saw Trevor escape from their room with a new player named Richard, who had started hanging out with them.
Richard was the one who suggested everyone try the Escape Palace experience.
J'onn travels to Opal City, to a house he feels is connected to Trevor somehow.
The house belongs to Jennifer Bates, Richard Bate's wife, who was having a virtual affair with Trevor Crane.
Nia calls the detective working Yvette's case, but he hasn't made any progress.
Nia creates a profile on Upswpiez to get the bigot's attention.
Richard Bates is revealed to be a computer engineer who began exploring the technical specifics of how Obsidian Platinum worked.
Brainiac-5 is searching everything on the Internet relating to Dreamer and finds Nia's dating profile.
Alex breaks into one room in the virtual world and is cut off from Kelly in the real world.
Kara and William work on the story of Yvette's attack together.
Brainiac-5 calls Kara and tells her that he thinks Nia is trying to use herself as bait to attract the bigot.
The bigot's ID on Upswipez is GoodTimes1995.
The room Trevor is trapped in causes his virtual avatar to blow up like he was standing on a land mine and be reformed in a painful fashion, over and over. He says Richard Bates keeps coming back to the room to watch him explode over and over.
Alex is able to force Richard Bates out of the virtual world by shooting him with an imaginary taser.
J'onn tracks down Richard Bates in the real world, in Room 10 of the Coastline Motel.
After Bates tries attacking J'onn, his eyes become red-rimmed and he seems to hallucinate the world changing around J'onn.
Alex talks Trevor down and gets him to retake control of his body.
Trevor is at the National City Grand, Room 315.
According to Kelly, Alex should not have been able to blast Richard out of Obsidian Platinum. Alex says they can figure it out later.
Nia ambushes the bigot, who seems stunned that Dreamer came looking for him.
The bigot's name is Gregory Bauer.
Nia confesses to Kara that she's hurting far worse than she let on because of Brainiac-5 dumping her and like she's lost control of her life and going after the bigot was something she could do.
Kelly and Alex agree that virutal cheating counts as cheating and that virtual torture is real attempted murder.
Kelly says she believes her work can help people but agrees with Alex that VR technology should be regulated and the people allowed to program it limited.
Trevor comes to meet Alex in person and thank her for saving him.
Yvette decides to delete all her social media. She says she's tired of putting herself out there because she should have known better than to trust that most people could accept a trans woman of color or that she could find a man who loved her for her.
Brainaic-5 gives the detective handling Yvettte's case a list of people connected to a group Gregory Bauer was part of that was planning attacks on trans women on-line and identified several users who had claimed credit for several attacks.
Alex is still having trouble getting the Hand of the Soldier to work in the real world.
Alex gets a phone-call from her mother telling her that Jeremiah Danvers has been found dead.
Alex goes to Kara's apartment to tell her the news.
Margot is seen wheeling Richard Bates out of the hospital and placing him in a room with other Obsidian Platinum users - some of whom are somehow floating in mid-air.
Location
Opal City
The Bottom Line
Were it not for some strong performances, this might instantly have been the worst episode of Supergirl ever filmed. As it stands, it definitely has one of the weaker scripts, and surprisingly this is more because of the clunky virtual reality storyline (which would have seemed silly and dated had it been an episode of VR.5) than the Dreamer-focused story about the problem of violence against trans women.
The script is just lazy in the middle parts, with William and Kara literally reading off the statistics about how many trans women have been murdered by bigots. This severely undercuts the good parts of the episode, such as where Nia takes Kara to task for trying to give her usual chirpy optimistic speech about how we can overcome these problems if we work together, neatly ignoring all the people who are actively working to discourage that kind of unity.
It's also bothersome that the lesson taken away from this episode is that you should just stay off social media and close yourself off from the world. Yet none of that is as painful as the tech jargon rattled off by people who don't understand it. The hearts of the writers may have been in the right place, but their heads were somewhere else entirely.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)