I’ve
already written ample evidence of my love for Brainy, included a Favorite
Characters write-up and a Relationship Spotlight on his dynamic at the DEO with
Alex. It’s time to come around and talk about Brainy again, though, because I’m
still thinking about the end of season 4. Brainy-related spoilers for the
episodes “Red Dawn” and “The Quest for Peace.”
The basic
set-up: Brainy, Nia, and J’onn are investigating the Department of Alien
Affairs, where detainees are being funneled to a secret facility run by Lex
Luthor for nefarious purposes (aren’t they always?) Nia talks Brainy into
trying the old Wookiee Prisoner routine, and they’re of course caught and
captured. (Side note: bonus points for Sam Witwer’s excellent acting of Brainy using
his holographic image inducer to pretend to be Ben Lockwood.) The two are
separated, and Brainy is taken away for interrogation, where he’s tortured and the
baddies threaten to hurt Nia next.
Between
the repeated electric shocks the bad guys are giving him, a hard crack to the
head, and Brainy’s general state of distress at the whole thing, he’s
“aligned,” essentially restored to the factory settings of his techno-organic
ancestors. The show has given us previous hints that Brainy comes from
highly-villainous stock – I admit that I knew nothing about Brainiac-5 before
he appeared on Supergirl, but
evidently, the original Brainiac is a big-time Superman villain – but this is the first time we actually get a
glimpse of it. In a tour-de-force
scene, actor Jesse Rath knocks it out of the effing park as Brainy glitches,
breaks down, and reboots. He goes from such desperation/mania/fury/terror to
utter, blank coldness. The newly-aligned Brainiac-5 (it just doesn’t feel right
to call him “Brainy” when he’s like this) ruthlessly dispatches the henchmen
holding him and returns to his friends, who don’t initially realize how he’s
been changed.
This is a
classic sci-fi scenario. Though it has multiple iterations – possession,
body-swapping, mind-control, sudden loss of soul (hey there, Angel!), and in
the case of AIs like Brainy, hacking/malfunctions – the basic premise is
simple: a hero temporarily becomes evil. And for sure, this Brainiac-5 kills
without compunction, knocks out J’onn, and ensures Nia’s continued capture.
He’s most definitely not a good guy.
But for
me, what really sets this storyline apart from other scenarios like this is the
simple fact that, aligned, Brainiac-5 isn’t
purely a villain. He hasn’t physically become his ancestor. Rather, he’s become
like him: completely logical and
entirely without emotion. While this isn’t good, it doesn’t mean he
automatically switches sides and teams up with Lex, and he doesn’t decide to go
off on his own and take over/destroy the world either.
Instead,
he remains ostensibly on the side of the good guys, as everything Brainiac-5
does in his aligned state serves Team Supergirl’s ultimate goal of figuring out
what Lex is up to and stopping him. That’s exactly what Brainiac-5 does, only he
does it with mercenary efficiency. Putting Nia in danger to achieve his aims
doesn’t matter to him, because that sort of “collateral damage” doesn’t effect
his equations. I really love that, that Brainy doesn’t just suddenly turn into
an evil killer robot. This dark gray, dangerously-logical Brainiac-5 is so much
more interesting than that.
I’ll
admit I’m happy that Brainy is turned back by the end of the season finale,
because I just love that techno-organic. However, the aligned Brainiac-5
fascinates me, and now that the door has been opened on that side of him, I
certainly wouldn’t say no to a reappearance for a later arc.
And
because it needs to be repeated, how
awesome is Jesse Rath in that initial alignment scene? Every now and then,
I just pull it up on YouTube to relive how much I love it. It’s the kind of
scene that’s so amazing, it makes me freshly bitter over how the Emmys are
mostly-dismissive of genre shows. I know that Supergirl will never, ever get Emmy love, pound for pound, are
there any supporting actors in a drama who demonstrated such a range of
emotions in a single scene this past year?
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