[7.4/10] I want to slate this one for doing some pretty tired pod people tropes and for our heroes finding a good solution and then seemingly waiting forever to actually use it. But I also want to credit it for coming up with a solid, character-based throughline for Supergirl, giving her the spotlight in the episode, and doing some quality Eldritch Horror design work. So let’s focus on the good. It’s nice to have another Kara-focused episode after the “Little Girl Lost” duology. Her arc involves disdaining the slowness and more boring qualities of Smallville, and wanting the fast-paced excitement and adventure of the big city. Dramatizing that through a mind-numbing conversation about rutabagas vs. turnips is funny, and I appreciate that the advent of “Unity” and her adoptive parents being at risk puts Kara in a “be careful what you wish for” situation, leading her to appreciate the normalcy and safety of small town life with the Kents. The other side of the coin is that a lot of the pop people material is pretty silly. It’s always nice to have Stephen Root aboard, and he adds a nice creepy edge to the local revival preacher who’s secretly a front for this alien monster. (For a split second, I was worried that it might be a repeat of Farmer Brown from “Critters”, an execrable episode of *The New Batman Adventures*). The whole “one of us” routine is a hoary trope, and the episode doesn't do much with it. That said, I like the discovery that x-rays weaken and kill the alien monsters, which allows Supes and Kara to use their x-ray vision as a weapon. It’s conveyed cleverly and works as a specific tool to help them fight an unknown foe beyond the usual punch-fest. That said, it’s weird that despite knowing this, the Super duo devolve into punching and fire and other things to defeat the alien monsters rather than just x-ray blasting at every opportunity. Maybe doing so would be a strain on them? Either way it seems weird how little they use the ability. That said, the design work is really cool. While tentacles coming out of people’s mouths felt pretty corny, the preacher transforming into the multi-tentacled beast was some good body horror, and the elephantine, wiggling menaces that Unity turned out to be were suitably freaky looking extraterrestrial abominations for the good guys to face off again. Overall, this one suffers a bit from feeling like a cheesy old sci-fi movie, but does better at its horror elements and finding a good trajectory for Supergirl.