Comic book fans whenever we see a show that features super heroes nine times out of ten it's a drama or an animated comedy. However what you may not know or simply forgot is that there was a show that was set in a comic book world but was a straight up comedy and well after seeing the first for the first time since it first aired in 2017 I can see why this show lasted only twelve episodes and so here is my review pf the first episode of "Powerless" with the episode being called "Wayne Or Lose" enjoy the review everyone.
The plot of the episode is Emily Locke is hired as the new R&D director at Wayne Security but finds that her team is unmotivated and to make things worse Bruce Wayne might pull the plug on Wayne Security and fire everyone who works there unless the team and Emily can think of an idea that will save the company and thus there jobs. For a pilot episode this story was weak as all hell with the story not playing not even playing that big of a role in the episode and at times not even being present and when the story is brought it's usually when there's some form of joke going on and and so you can't really focus on the story since there trying and failing in my opinion to tell a decent joke and trust me we'll get to the jokes later on in this review.
Starring in the episode is Vanessa Hudgens as Emily Locke , Danny Pudi as Teddy and Christina Kirk as Jackie. Also starring in the episode is Ron Funches as Ron , Alan Tudyk as Van Wayne , Jennie Pierson as Wendy , Marc McClure as Emily Locke's father , Bill A. Jones as Marv Wolfman , Martin Garcia as Man , Josh Breeding as Steve , Kimani Ray Smith as Jack O'Lantern and Atlin Mitchell as Crimson Fox.
The acting in the episode was better then the story and alot of things in this episode but that's not really a high bar to reach. Don't get me wrong the acting in this episode is fine but it's clear to anyone who has seen this show or seen these actors in other things that the actors in this episode know that they are in something bad and just don't care and while like I said they are turning in good performances the script doesn't help them out at all and is honestly one of the worst scripts i've seen for a comic book show in a really long time.
You guys want to know what makes this a comic book show it's not the fact that there are superheroes and supervillains it's the fact that as it states in the shows poster this show is set in the DC Comics Universe. So when people talk about how DC produces good TV shows you could bring up this show as a an example of how they can also make bad TV shows and there would be nothing that people could say that would go against that at all.
They really do hit you over the head with the fact that this is set in the DC Comics Universe because there are a ton references in this episode. Which while it is indeed fun to see characters mention characters like Batman and Superman (who yes get name dropped in this episode) it can also be quite tiring and it makes those references feel like nothing more then fan service because of the fact that they adds freaking nothing to the overall episode or the episodes overall story.
I wouldn't blame you if you forgot all about this show because until a few days ago I forgot that this show even existed. Just to give you an idea how bad this show was it was given an order of twelve episodes and out of those twelve episodes only nine aired on NBC with the final three episodes released on TVNZ OnDemand which as far as I can tell is a New Zealand online streaming service so technically the final three episodes never even aired in America where the show was produced and made.
One of the more notable things about this show is the fact that it's showrunner left the show in August 2016 and was replaced by Justin Halpern and Patrick Schumacker. The duo I assume had the task of retooling the entire show which by this point was already fully cast and was months away from airing it's first episode and so to say that the production of this show was both troubled and rushed as hell would be a huge understatement.
You know how I know that this show was retooled because so little of what was in the original trailer actually happens in the episode. Hell even the above poster shows where the shows characters originally worked so it's clear as day that the show was retooled before it made it to air and that what scenes were already filmed where inserted into the pilot episode in an attempt to make the show somehow work.
To this episodes credit it is only twenty two minuets long and so it does go by really freaking quickly which in this case is a good thing. I say that it's a good thing because this is a really bad pilot and so to see that it not only isn't on for that long but that it actually flies by when it's on is a great thing because it means that the pain behind watching this bad show won't last for long and we can go back to forgetting all about this show pretty quickly.
Honestly guys and girls if the word comedy wasn't featured on the poster for this show you would have no idea that this was meant to be funny. Simply because so few of the jokes are actually funny and the ones that are funny at best will get a small chuckle out of people and not make them laugh out loud but for this show jokes that get just a small chuckle out of you is honestly a good thing that's how bad the jokes are in this episode.
Overall if you guys think Teen Titans Go! or the Batwoman TV show is bad then I beg you check out this show because then you'll see what bad truly is. Yes there are a few redeeming factors but those factors aren't enough to make the show good nor this episode even close to being enjoyable but it is fun to watch just how bad the show is and the fact that they even tried a comedy set in the DC Comics Universe is admirable and given that if the jokes were funny a comedy set in the DC Comics Universe could actually work as it is tho the show gets a 3.5 out of 10 from me.
All of the images that I used in this review were gathered from the official Powerless fandom wiki page and Google Images. Since I know that no one is going to care about where is best to get high quality images from either this show or this episode i'll just say that even tho I found the official Powerless fandom wiki page to have very high definition and high quality images just use whichever website you want for images from either this show of this episode that is if you remember about this show five minuets after reading this review that is.