Thanksgiving came a week early to Supergirl www.tv.com/shows/supergirl/community/post/supergirl-ncis-la-cbs-rescheduling-paris-attacks-144761524589/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.tv.com/shows/supergirl/community/post/supergirl-ncis-la-cbs-rescheduling-paris-attacks-144761524589/">after CBS made the respectful decision in the aftermath of the Paris attacks to pull the previously scheduled episode ("How Does She Do It?") that featured National City being hit by a series of bombings. Supergirlis a series that is still establishing itself, and the potential for problems arising from skipping an episode—or losing it all together—are greater for it than for a veteran drama like NCIS: Los Angeles, which also pulled its originally scheduled episode. But jumping straight to "Livewire" from "Fight or Flight" didn't do much damage to the show's arc or its structure. Aside from the turkey being undercooked by a week, Cat namedropping a kid we've never met, and James and Lucy already taking off to Ojai as a couple, everything was right on track. And to be honest, I didn't need to see James and Lucy rekindle their relationship. 

Supergirl is still getting off the ground, and no offense to Jenna Dewan-Tatum because I'm sure she's great and maybe one day we'll care about Lucy as a character, but her relationship with James is barely on my radar. I'd rather see the series develop the characters it already has before introducing new ones to complicate its still forming friendships and relationships. And as luck would have it, this week we learned a bit more about Winn, Alex's relationship with her mother, and what happened to Kara and Alex's late father.

Although Thanksgiving was a bust—the already tense dinner was interrupted by Livewire, a.k.a. Leslie Willis, a radio personality who had it in for Cat after she was demoted for bashing Supergirl on her show—Winn revealed to Kara that he was just glad to be able to spend it with her because his family didn't do holidays on account of the fact his father was in prison (and if you don't care about spoilers, you can comicbook.com/2015/10/26/exclusive-henry-czerny-cast-as-toyman-on-supergirl" href="http://comicbook.com/2015/10/26/exclusive-henry-czerny-cast-as-toyman-on-supergirl" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">find out who he is and why he's there). It wasn't a big character-defining moment, but these little breadcrumbs helped to build characters in a series like Supergirl that has to tell its story around a procedural structure. Not only was this the first real glimpse the show gave us into who Winn was beyond being a tech guy and being best friends with/harboring a crush on Kara, but it's the show's way of setting up his father's eventual arrival in National City. It also served to contrast Kara's current family situation, which was rocky and complicated, but a little less sad.

This week, former Supergirl Helen Slater returned as Kara's foster mother after appearing briefly in the pilot, but her disapproval of Kara outing herself to the world as Supergirl was mostly a retreading of Alex's original reaction in the pilot, so the real story was the fact their mother was upset Alex A) allowed Kara to reveal her true identity, and B) had gone to work for the DEO. You could chalk it up to moms being moms and the fact they always worry about their children, but Dr. Danvers placed a heavy burden unfairly upon Alex's shoulders and then had the audacity to be upset when she wasn't able to carry it. Nice parenting, mom. 

Since the Danvers took Kara in, Alex was expected to watch out for and protect her sister, and she's still being held responsible for Kara's actions as an adult because Dr. Danvers has never really known how to parent Kara. That's a failing on her, not on Alex. She expected her child to be the parent she couldn't or wasn't strong enough to be and then turned around and blamed Alex when she failed. That is some Grade-A bullshit. It's no wonder Alex always felt second best to Kara if that was the type of environment in which she was raised. Dr. Danvers was well-meaning and a loving mother, so it's not as if she's on the same level as Winn's criminal father, but it was unfair and unforgiving what she did and how she treated Alex all those years. 

But this story is also what's currently allowing Supergirl to explore the human side of its story, and that is more interesting to me than Kara defeating whatever or whoever is threatening National City in any given week, and so as frustrating as it was to watch this all too familiar family drama play out, it's hard to fight against the series fleshing out a character in this way. Focusing on Alex's real insecurities as the sister of Supergirl makes her a more sympathetic and likable character, and in the wake of the reveal that her father died after going to work for the DEO in exchange for Henshaw allowing Kara to have a normal childhood that didn't involve being studied under microscopes, it's important for Alex to be that person. The bond between Kara and Alex is the foundation of the show that keeps it grounded in reality, and the stronger it is, the stronger Supergirl will be.

While the show continued to deepen the human half of the Danvers sisters, Kara was off building a foundation for her own relationship with Cat, who was being attacked by Livewire. Like I said, I'm not particularly interested in whatever threat is bearing down on National City in any week, but in this case, Livewire was a human made powerful when struck by lightning that traveled through Kara. It meant, for the first time, Kara really was responsible for the fate of the person who was causing mayhem, even though she was simply trying to help rescue Leslie when it happened. Livewire was a fine enough villain—her motivations were intact and the special effects were cool for being on a TV budget (please don't get me started on the wig)—but Livewire's story was still just a conduit to deepen Cat as a character. Cat made Leslie and then she broke her, and if Cat's not careful, she has the power to do the same thing to Supergirl. Right now Cat is on board with Supergirl because she makes her money and money makes her powerful, but one slip-up and that could all change. 

But the real meat and potatoes of this storyline was actually, for once, the human side. Kara revealed to Cat that her parents had been killed when she was 13 and you could almost see Cat's heart grow, if not three sizes (wrong holiday and all), at least a half a size. It's what also led to Cat's realization that she hardly knew her assistant at all, which was blatantly obvious by the fact she still didn't recognize her as Supergirl. Yeah, I know that is part of the lore, but it's becoming increasingly more difficult for me to accept it here in this day and age, especially with, like, facial-recognition software. I can accept a woman can control electricity but not that Cat doesn't recognize Supergirl as the same person she was literally just talking to in her office moments before Supergirl arrived. But I digress. Like the relationship between Kara and Alex, Kara's relationship with Cat as both her boss and as a powerful adult figure in her life is one of the beams supporting Supergirl, and developing Cat into a real person so she's not just a caricature is what's ultimately going to strengthen the show's infrastructure. 

I don't know if it was the result of jumping from Episode 3 to Episode 5, but this week the show was also much lighter on its feminist agenda—Kara's mean-girl comment did make me cringe, however—and I think it's doing a better, but not perfect, job of showing Kara in action rather than telling us why what she's doing is important. There will continue to be growing pains, but Supergirl does at least feel like it's finding its way rather nicely. If the show keeps focusing on the human within in tandem with its heroics, I don't see any reason that won't continue.