TV: Super Silly Who Wants to Be a Superhero?

But watching writers type comic book scripts or meet with artists doesn't exactly make for riveting TV, so Superhero's producers have come up with one of the oddest concepts on the air: The contestants must dress up as the characters they've created and participate in challenges that test their "super powers," and the one who's the best hero ends up winning the contest. The problem, as Lee (who's the show's host and sole judge) notes in the first episode, is that real people can't fly or turn invisible or punch through walls or do any of the things superheroes typically do. You'd think that would be a barrier to making a show like this, but the producers just plow ahead as if it's not important.

Instead, Lee tells the contestants that they will be judged on other "heroic" characteristics like honesty, courage, integrity and so on. Also presumably on whether their costume is cool enough. Thus the show becomes not about who can create the most interesting character, but who can perform well in stupid challenges. At least at the start, there are no teams and no voting out of fellow contestants, so there's little of the conniving or competitive drive that pushes most reality contestants. Never mind the fact that this is a stupid way to create a new superhero—it's also a stupid way to create an entertaining reality show. Its sheer stupidity does give Who Wants to Be a Superhero? a sort of campy charm, though. You want to keep watching just to see what sort of dumb idea the producers will come up with next, and how they'll make it relate to being a superhero. The first challenge involves the contestants finding somewhere discreet to change into their costumes at a public park. What this has to do with anything related to anything is a mystery to me. (An additional element finds the contestants "saving" an actor playing a lost little girl, which in a real superhero story would more likely be a trap set by a super-villain.) At least the winner of American Idol gets a record contract, and even the winners of such forgotten talent contests as Next Action Star and The Entertainer actually got positions related to the talents they were allegedly displaying. The winner of Superhero won't get to be a superhero because superheroes do not exist.

The contestants, one hopes, know that this is true, and so they seem to be taking things only marginally more seriously than the audience. "Stop smiling. This really is very serious," Lee tells one contestant during the first episode's elimination ceremony. But the octogenarian Lee, who appears only via video hook-up, looks like he recorded his entire appearance on his lunch break, and obviously doesn't take things seriously, either. The show is virtually guaranteed not to lead to an interesting new comic book or movie character, or fame for any of its participants. It's also yet another example of the way Sci Fi dilutes the value of the genre it allegedly promotes (see also: the channel's embrace of pro wrestling). But in the times when it seems like everyone might be in on what a joke the show is, it can actually be pretty funny.