Will You Be Powerless To Resist Powerless?

What Is This Thing?

Life in Charm City can be perilous, what with fights constantly breaking out between superheroes and supervillains in which ordinary citizens can end up literally caught in the crossfire. That's why there's a pressing need for Wayne Security -- no, it's not run by Bruce Wayne; it's run by Bruce Wayne's cousin! -- to engineer solutions for the problems the powerless face. But will a company that's lost its way turn things around with fresh new face Emily Locke running its R&D division?

When Is It On?

Thursdays at 8:30 PM ET on NBC.

Why Was It Made Now?

There's a superhero show on nearly every night of the week; for those nights when there aren't any, you can hit up Netflix for one of its many Marvel originals. (I assume this DC-affiliated effort ended up on NBC -- and not The CW, where all its other shows live -- because The CW has given up on half-hour sitcoms.)

What's Its Pedigree?

The series was created by Ben Queen (A to Z)...though he doesn't really work there anymore; he left the production last summer, and has been replaced by Justin Halpern (originator of both the "Shit My Dad Says" Twitter feed and the TV show based on it) and Patrick Shumacker (also a $#*! alumnus who worked on Halpern's next show, Surviving Jack, and on iZombie, among many others). Vanessa Hudgens -- formerly of the High School Musical franchise, but more recently of Fox's live Grease -- plays Emily, cheerful foil to Van Wayne (Alan Tudyk, of everything), Bruce's less famous brother and the head of Wayne Security's Charm City office. Emily's research team includes Teddy (Community's Danny Pudi) and Ron (Ron Funches of Undateable). Van's assistant is played by Christina Kirk, who had a small recurring role in Manhattan, and played a brittle boss on Queen's short-lived A to Z.

...And?

The show nods to its comic book roots in cute ways: for instance, its opening credits feature the covers of DC comic books (I'm afraid I can't say with any certainty whether they're real or dummied up for the show), on which the camera then zooms to a bystander in the background, representing the normals who make up the show's cast. And the set and costuming are bright, striking primary colours, like comic book panels. There's also a wink, for the purists in the audience, in the name of the company Emily worked for before she moved to Wayne.

Speaking of Wayne: as Van, Tudyk commits with gusto to the role of Bruce's sycophantic cousin, desperate to be plucked from Charm City obscurity and relocated to the big show that is the Gotham office. The vainglorious but basically useless boss isn't exactly a brand-new TV archetype, but Tudyk is a pro and steals all his scenes.

...But?

I think the show was aiming for kind of a Better Off Ted-with-superheroes vibe, but it doesn't quite work. Ted also had a sunny newcomer running a team of nerds creating impossible sci-fi products, but (a) Veridian Dynamics primarily invented things that were harmful to organisms, making the show enjoyably dark, and (b) Ted's Linda also had hidden reserves of subversion and hostility that gave her character more depth. As of the pilot (which is the only episode NBC provided via its press site, and which shows signs of retooling -- like a montage of Emily's life in her small hometown where she's talking to other characters, but with Emily's narration over it, suggesting those scenes were shot and semi-scrapped), Emily seems to be...exactly what she seems to be: an optimistic dreamer who's going to knock all the cynicism out of her big-city colleagues by sheer force of indomitable spirit. Making the least edgy character your sitcom's protagonist is not really a winning play; that, plus the fact that Emily's a female character played by an actor with very little evident comic talent means that I can make a not-that-bold prediction: in future episodes, her comic contributions will be either not to understand things the funnier characters say and require their explaining it to her in a funny way, or to fall down a lot due to her adorable clumsiness. NO, I'M NOT PSYCHIC, I'VE JUST SEEN TV BEFORE.

Emily aside, the show feels like a huge missed opportunity. I am actually totally here for a story about the real people on the fringes of superhero stories -- I pretty much hated Christopher Nolan's Batman movies, but I loved Gary Oldman's Jim Gordon -- but I don't know if it's possible to do a good job with the idea in half-hour increments on a network TV series. When we do get to see superhero/supervillain battles, the effects look very cheap (though it's possible they'll be better in the actual episode than in the screener). It also kind of seems like the format is each episode revolving around Emily's team creating some kind of device or serum or tool to keep normals safe from collateral superhero/villain damage. To put a feel-good button of impossible technology on this story of a world that doesn't exist? Who cares? When real life has recalibrated our beliefs as to what constitutes a supervillain, the guy who can only fly and throw fireballs will have a hard time scaring anyone.

...So?

Take the above non-endorsement with the knowledge that when it comes to pop culture, I am generally anti-superhero. But given that it's on NBC, and aiming for the broadest potential audience, Powerless is probably insufficiently nerdy to work for comic megafans either.