I accept that there are always a few facepalm moments in this show (like a bunch of bats coming out of nowhere to carry a full-grown man's dead weight, or Kory just knowing how to use powers she just discovered to move a Lazarus Pit's contents (or maybe how Rachel fought her father and emerged from the dust with different hair)), but this one really bugged me as a completely missed opportunity.
"How about stop the bullshit," Conner bit out, abandoning the soot-filled water in the sink and crossing the room toward Gar. "Just come out and say it: if I wasn't a fucked-up half-breed, none of this would have happened."
"Don't say that word," Gar replied automatically, his voice threatening. He didn't let Rachel call herself that, and he didn't allow the word from others either.
"I'm talking about the Lex part of me. It's like everyone's just waiting for him to take over. So you can all do your happy dance now because Superboy definitely did not save the day."
"Don't do this to yourself," Gar told his suffering friend.
"Great," Conner said, his voice dripping with laughter and sarcasm. "Advice from a talking green tiger. Thanks."
Gar's eyebrows shot up. Uncalled for. This was nothing like comforting Rachel when she was in one of her blame it all on me moods. "You're right," Gar said with a strained smile, flipping him off with both hands as he stepped back toward the stove. "You're not Superman."
He let out a frustrated groan as Conner stormed to the door. "Being both is why we even got close to saving him." Conner stopped in the doorway.
Even if Conner reacted to feeling culpable with irritability and aggression, he needed to hear this. "You built the device to free Hank in just a few hours because of his super-speed, but Superman's super-powered, not a technological genius. Lex Luthor's intellect may be most often described as..." Gar hedged, knowing there was no good way to say it, "well, 'evil,'" he said, ripping the band-aid off, "But it was his half of you that managed to design a device capable of removing a crazy Batman-tech bomb from a guy's heart in just a few hours."
Conner slumped, the aggression sapping out of him. "So, maybe it takes an evil genius to reverse engineer a cure for something like that?" he asked, clearly hoping there was good in his bad side.
Gar nodded. "Yeah."
Honestly, how did they have this scene and miss that Superman isn't any sort of engineer?
All dialogue through 'you're not Superman' are direct from the show, and did anyone else pick up on the hostility in Ryan Potter's delivery when he told Conner not to say the word "half-breed?" It was such a little moment I almost feel like I'm reading into it, but at least in my head, it's because Rachel called herself that once or twice and he hated it.