Supergirl Season 4: 4 Ups & 3 Downs From 'Menagerie'

Downs...

3. Lena And James' Forced Conflict

Unfortunately, this week's instalment also highlighted that not all conflict is good.

Lena Luthor and James Olsen's on-again/off-again relationship is getting rather hard to keep track of and, regrettably, they hit another wall in this week's episode.

Lena spent much of the episode troubled by something and, when she finally opened up to James about it, revealing that the government wanted to partner with her on her research, his response was a little jarring. He opened by telling her that he couldn't fathom why she would want to partner with them, despite the fact that she never stated, or even alluded to wanting anything of the sort. In fact, throughout the episode, we clearly saw her concern over the thought of it.

Furthermore, James then told her that he wasn't sure if he could support her "point of view on this one". Well, he must be psychic because he spent so much time assuming that he knew what she wanted that she never even got a chance to tell him what her point of view actually was.

As a result, their fight (which predictably escalated) left us all rather confused. It felt like the writers were only given so much time to make the argument happen and instead of letting it happen naturally, forced the conflict within the confines of this single scene. It didn't come off as natural at all and instead, made the whole thing rather awkward.

Sometimes, it's the little things that cause escalation and there was none of that here. Instead, it jumped straight to boiling point without ever building to it and, due to this, both characters ended up behaving incredibly out-of-character.