Unfair Advantage

This Fall featured several everyday superhero shows in which white men are given extraordinary power and placed above the law, and yet, we’re still supposed to feel sorry for them.  It’s an odd trend, and it’s worth examining for a moment.

Many superheroes start as underdogs.  That makes sense.  It’s easier to get excited about someone getting the power they need and deserve than it is about an overdog being handed even greater advantages.  So to offset the “overdog is handed advantages” problem, each of these shows paired these advantages with a terrible price.  We are meant to recognize that the price more than offsets the advantage—and in several cases, it actually does—but price notwithstanding, it was very hard for me not to identify the overarching theme of each show as “with great power comes great adventure (oh, and responsibility too).”

The unfair advantage problem is exacerbated by the fact that these empowered men are generally paired with  tremendously competent women and/or people of color who are not handed the same unusual advantages but are still expected to help the empowered man be his greatest self.  It’s hard not to contextualize this television trend as part of a larger sociopolitical picture in which political, racial, and religious majorities all to often overlook the advantages and power they hold in society and interpret challenges to their dominance as persecution, obliviously expecting the less-privileged to step aside or even support them in their indignance. 

I don’t mean to condemn the shows.  It's true that with great power can come great adventure.  And several of the shows, I think, are actually quite good.  But the concept makes me squirm—and the fact that it’s a recurring theme this year makes me squirm even more.

The Player (NBC, new Fall 2015.  Action/Adventure.)

Watched:  All episodes.  

Premise:  Former FBI agent tries to prevent crimes and unravel larger mysteries while a shady conspiracy bets on whether or not he’ll succeed.

Promise: In the interest of full disclosure, I know people involved in making this show.  But even if I didn’t, I am quite confident I still would have liked it.  Tonally, it was a bit uneven, but most of the time it embraced the tension and humor of Person of Interest or Human Target.  Philip Winchester and Charity Wakefield each comfortably embodied their respective roles as Adventure Man and Computer Woman, respectively.  (And although there were a few things that didn’t work—the conspiracy plot felt labored, and there were a few cringeworthy moments of gender and racial stereotyping—there were a few things the show did exceptionally right.  First, although it handed its protagonist power at a price, it handed equivalent power (and price) to its supporting characters, each of whom lived above the law but rode a razor’s edge of personal danger.  Second, it was one of very few shows on the air to feature a competent STEM woman who wasn’t infantilized or de-fanged with a quirk-punk aesthetic.  And third, although the show set up as its inciting incident the protagonist’s loss of his wife, it wasn’t at all about fridging.  In fact, it became increasingly clear over the course of the season that the show’s women and people of color (and that’s pretty much everyone else on the show) were all resourceful, savvy fighters just as much as the white male lead was.  Ultimately, I enjoyed the show because it was fun—about ingenuity and fights and chases and ridiculous heroism and silly, over the top conspiracy.

Verdict:  The show has for all practical purposes been canceled, and I’m sad about that.  I would have liked to see it find its tone and stride. 

Minority Report (Fox, new Fall 2015. Superhero Procedural.)

Watched: first 4 episodes

Premise:  After the age of pre-crime enforcement has ended, an adult pre-cog endures risk to continue solving murders. Based on the movie of the same name.

Promise:  This show was a great opportunity to critique the dangers of a surveillance state.  And yet, at every opportunity, it seemed to endorse the police state and the pre-crime concept.  Even Person of Interest is more wary of surveillance-based assumptions, if that’s even possible.  And that was only one of the many areas where this show fell frustratingly short of its potential.  Despite good racial and gender diversity in its cast, the show fell back on exactly the troubles this post led with—a bunch of women and people of color have to endure risk and tie themselves in knots to allow this gifted-yet-encumbered white man to be effective, and the only benefit they see from it is vicarious based on his success.  And unlike the Player, this one had a “quirky” tech girl and didn’t have any freewheeling fun.  

Verdict:  This one, too, is effectively canceled, but I’m not so sad.  I wanted to like it.  But after a while I got tired of watching what felt like propaganda for the surveillance state.

Limitless (CBS, new Fall 2015.  Superhero Procedural.)

Watched: Fall season.

Premise:  A slacker gains temporary drug-induced access to ultimate intelligence and deploys it for the FBI. Based on the movie of the same name.

Promise:  Like the others, a white guy is given an advantage and a very shady opportunity to do good, and takes it, relying on the help and support of women and people of color who endure some of the same risks but are not given the same advantages.  Here, though, the guy’s personality tends toward smugness and self-pity about the opportunity’s downsides.  By all reasonable measures, this one should be the worst of the bunch.  And occasionally it does feel a bit insufferable.  But despite myself, I find its joy and fun sort of infectious.  The show’s concept is annoyingly unscientific, but the show helps the viewer get past that by employing a tone of self-aware comic-book fantasy that lightens the mood of what could otherwise be intense or troubling subject matter.   (A few shows are doing this.  iZombie has some of it; Scream has some of it; I can’t think of others off the top of my head, but Limitless takes a very explicit form of it.)  Every episode has a theme that uses entertainment genre as a jumping off point, some more obvious than others, that rewards entertainment obsessives like me.  (The most distinctive was an episode that very explicitly embodied tropes and references from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.)  Most of the time, this tactic is fun and effective rather than grating.  And I have to admit, I am a sucker for shows where the hero wins by being smarter.  (MacGyver Forever!)

Verdict:  I still find the central character’s smug self-pity sort of insufferable, and I still sometimes have trouble suspending my disbelief of the central concept, but I am entertained.

Agent X (TNT, new.  Action/Adventure.)

Watched:  First 6 episodes (I had to look that up; they blend together a bit).

Premise:  The Vice President’s office has a secret operative who carries out independent missions in the national interest.

Promise:  I initially thought this was a sort of cross between National Treasure and The Player, but now we’re a few episodes in the “secret society” element has faded a bit into a more conventional conspiracy arc plot, and the tone has settled not far from that of the Transporter TV series.   Here, like other shows in this batch, Action Man has an Important Job To Do, is given a Resourceful Handler, and is placed Above The Law at a personal cost of having to be Emotionally Isolated.  Unlike the other shows, the premise doesn’t always involve Action Man relying on the support of less-empowered women and people of color…but that’s because there aren’t many women or people of color with whom to invest that sort of challenge.  There’s no shortage of competent women, but aside from the Vice President (played by Sharon Stone, who could be a real guiding force, but sadly is often shown being tied up in her own emotions and/or one step behind those around her), they’re mostly sexy day players with whom our hero flirts while relying on and/or saving them.  Like Transporter, the action takes precedence over the personal aspects of the stakes, making the personal elements seem tacked-on, providing faux depth rather than genuine humanity.  The show also passes up lots of opportunities to deal with the sort of moral challenges and ambiguities that the premise—giving the Vice President secret Constitutional power to act domestically and on foreign soil contrary to known law—could really explore in interesting depth.  But, perhaps disappointingly, depth isn’t the point here.  The point is silly action fun, and the show generally delivers that.  

Verdict:  Lots of missed potential, but no shortage of silly action fun.    

On the DVR/Unreviewed:  Blindspot, Scream Queens, Rosewood, Quantico, The Last Kingdom, Supergirl, Wicked City, Flesh and Bone, Into the Badlands.