#and totally earn herself the nickname Supergirl

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Gold Medal Girlfriends 🥇👩‍❤️‍💋‍👩🥇

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#Supergirl 213 Recap "Mr. & Mrs. Mxyzptlk"

We pick up right where we left off, with Kara and Mon-El being rudely interrupted by the arrival of Mxyzptlk, an interdimensional imp primarily known as a Superman villain (although villain is kind of a strong word...he's more of a Superman irritant).

Mxy, as he helpfully nicknames himself to save us all a lot of trouble, has come to declare his love for Supergirl and ask for her hand in marriage. Except that he's more stalker than suitor, so it's more like he's here to demand her hand in marriage. He's not keen on the word "no."

While it's played for laughs to an extent, this is another great feminist story for Supergirl to handle. Real women all over the world suffer harassment, terror, assault, and death, all at the hands of men who decide they shouldn't have to put up with rejection. Mxy is here to represent the quintessential toxic male. He even calls her a "nasty woman" when he realizes he's not going to get his way, just in case you weren't quite clear this guy is a callow twerp.

Both Mxy and Mon-El, as they essentially compete for Supergirl's attention, demonstrate the ultimate difference between her way of dealing with the world and their masculine outlook. Mon-El, eager to get this intrusion over with so he and Kara can get back to the kiss they were about to have, tries to convince Kara that the only way to get rid of a fifth-dimensional imp is to kill him. Mxy interferes with Supergirl's capture of three robbers, and she winds up having to save their lives from Mxy's lethally playful tactics. She expresses equal frustration at both men, because while Mxy just basically sucks, Mon-El is only making her situation worse by forcing her to deal with his emotional eruptions on top of everything else. There have been a lot of episodes in which Kara is the one who can't hold it together, but this week is a good reminder of why she's the moral center.

Mon-El lets slip that he actually does know the right way to vanquish an imp like Mxy ("Why don't you just say your name backwards already?"), earning him some serious Supergirl side-eye over the earlier gotta-kill-him ploy. So now we're on the true path of any Mxyzptlk plotline: How is she going to force this magical menace to say his own name backwards? 

Kara agrees to marry Mxy, telling him it's important to her that they do it on her home soil, which means the Fortress of Solitude. (My husband and I agree that she's probably going to ask him to say Kryptonian vows, and she'll have him repeat after her, and the combination of syllables will turn out to be his name in reverse. That's not what happened, but it's always fun to try to guess!)

She gets him to the Fortress, then flips the script; she's not going to marry him, because duh! She then turns on a forcefield that encloses the Fortress and contains its self-destruct blast, reminding Mxy that he listed things his magic couldn't affect earlier, one of which was, "You can't stop me from killing myself...and I'd rather die than marry you."

He begs her for the code to turn off the self-destruct. She gives it to him, and he enters it on a Kryptonian keypad...only when it's complete does he see what the keys he hit would equate to in non-Kryptonian font. He's been forced to type his name in reverse, and now he has to leave our dimension. I think we can all assume he'll be back...and next time, he'll be a lot worse to deal with, because he already knows he won't get the girl.

With Mxy out of the way, Kara throws herself back into the moment with Mon-El. In other romantic happenings this week, Winn met a beautiful alien at the bar, and they've got a thing going on. It's totally adorable. She's used to playing it tough, because most humans fetishize or ignore her (she's hot and exotic, by the standards of most uptight norms), so she can get laid easily but doesn't go out on many second dates. Winn sweetly yammers about how it's not her alienness that scares him but her femaleness, and he doesn't care what anyone thinks. 

Also, Maggie is again kind of a bitch to Alex, but it gets better this time. Alex has never had a relationship to be excited about on Valentine's Day until now, so she tries to go all out...but Maggie has bad memories associated with V-day, and she kept them secret until the last possible moment, making for a very crappy Hallmark holiday. After a little reminder from Kara that Alex's first Valentine's Day ever is worth stepping outside your own head to acknowledge, Maggie steps up and plans a beautiful evening for them. Points to you, Maggie.

This episode dealt with very serious subjects, yet so deftly that the messages were embedded in the entertainment rather than distracting or detracting. As a woman, I'm grateful to see stories like this get told so well. I'm giving it a 10, for the indignation that boiled in my veins at Mxy's behavior, the tears that welled up in my eyes at Winn and Lyra's second date, and the straight up weeping I did at Maggie's coming through with a romantic gesture for Alex.

What did you love (or not love) about this week's Supergirl?