“For the Girl Who Has Everything” could have, and should have, been a much better episode than it is. Sadly, the episode starts off with somewhat of a disappointment. The thing that attacked Kara at the end of last week’s episode turns out to be a weird plant thing that just puts Kara into a sort of coma, and while unconscious she gets a taste of her ideal life. The rest of the episode mostly deals with Kara’s friends trying to figure out what has happened to her and how to rescue her. The thing is, most of this stuff is very, very boring, and even a major character death at the end of the episode doesn’t really do much to liven things up. This week, the show chooses to focus on basically every character except Kara, but mostly to the extent that it’s a way of returning to a comfortable status quo.

The last few weeks have looked at Winn and James’s relationships with Kara and seemed to be moving both of those relationships towards some kind of change, but this episode reconfirms that they are all just friends. Alex was keeping a secret from her sister at the beginning of the season, but since they’ve both been working at the DEO they’ve had very little conflict. This week, however, Alex gets a new secret, which also happens to be a new reason for Kara to distrust Hank Henshaw. Cat Grant doesn’t appear much in this episode, but Kara’s relationship with her boss is also back to a downright unpleasant square one as well. After weeks and weeks of Kara’s relationships progressing and developing, this episode undoes basically all of it in less than an hour.

The saga of Kara’s plant-induced coma shows us nothing new about the character, which is a huge missed opportunity. Kara’s speech at the end of the episode spells out to us why her ideal world is back on Krypton with her parents, but it doesn’t really ring true. Sure, things haven’t been great lately for Kara on Earth, but they haven’t really been so bad that she should want to regress to her childhood. Even if things have been that bad, the sort of regression portrayed here would be an unhealthy way of dealing with problems. Unfortunately, the episode never really delves into this, and instead sort of glosses everything over with pot stickers and ice cream. It works to establish a new normal, but it doesn’t actual deal in any meaningful way with any of the trauma or sadness Kara has suffered this week.

The thing that seemed most promising this week was Kara’s rage at Non, but it seemed to dissipate as quickly as it arose. Their fight seemed superfluous to Kara’s outburst of emotion, and it doesn’t seem to have actually had any reason for existing other than to add a little more excitement to a dull episode. Similarly pointless was Astra’s sort-of redemption, which would have been much more effective if we’d actually seen Astra more than a handful of times since the show started. It also doesn’t help that she’s really not redeemed here at all and her death has almost no impact on anyone.

It’s a disappointing episode that rolls back a lot of progress the show had made in earlier episodes, leaving us with essentially a blank slate for the rest of the season. With Maxwell Lord imprisoned at the DEO (which apparently has no consequences at all), that leaves Non (now likely motivated by a desire to avenge his wife’s death) as the major villain for the remaining episodes. Without the personal connection that existed between Astra and Kara, however, this leaves Non a fairly one-dimensional character, and with the show paying scarce attention to its overarching storyline I can’t see this improving without a real commitment to changing the format of the series.

Miscellaneous thoughts:

• Kara can’t get drunk, apparently.
• Hank-as-Kara dealing with Cat Grant should have been comedy gold, but it was a tragically squandered opportunity.
• The thing that seemed most promising this week was Kara’s rage at Non, but it seemed to dissipate as quickly as it arose. Their fight seemed superfluous to Kara’s outburst of emotion, and it doesn’t seem to have actually had any reason for existing other than to add a little more excitement to a dull episode.
• Similarly pointless was Astra’s sort-of redemption, which would have been much more effective if we’d actually seen Astra more than a handful of times since the show started. It also doesn’t help that she’s really not redeemed here at all and her death has almost no impact on anyone.