A slacker is recruited to a secret super-science agency's troubleshooting team.
This is a silly, colourful show that is densely packed with laconic gags and references to sci-fi properties. The lead character Wendy ( a cute Natalie Morales) is written as a fun mixture of disengaged slacker, curious adventurer and dismissive badass. Based on the pilot episode, Wendy is the show's best asset.
The rest of the cast of characters - including Matt Keeslar as the straight-laced hero Middleman - have potential, but they were mostly placeholders to hang gags or plot threads on. That shallowness may be a choice by the filmmakers or something that will be remedied as the show goes on. It is consistent with the show's breathlessly overwritten exposition and casually included sci-fi weirdness.
If I was making a rash judgement I could call it a one-joke show, that joke being that the characters have seen all this before - and more so still for audience members who have consumed enough media to recognise, say, a specific supervillain scheme recurring in different properties.
Genre self-awareness is fun in the short term, but trickier as a show goes on. If literally everything is possible, and every past weird threat has been confidently defeated by a succession of past heroes, then the stakes seem pretty low. You would hope the filmmakers are aware of this and have a solution. There are clues as to what that might be.
When Wendy accepts the call to adventure, she imagines herself in a stylised montage as an agent, as if she was Emma Peel from the credits of the 60's British TV show "The Avengers". That image of glamour and cool is an aspiration that she and the show presumably will fall short of in funny ways.
However, I take it as a hint that The Avengers is the precedent for how to write this show. The Avengers was largely built on the playful chemistry between the leads Steed and Peel, which carried the show through variously realistic or silly episodic stories.
There are hints that Wendy is going to dump her current awful boyfriend and that Keeslar's Middleman wishes she liked him instead. If their relationship showed more spark than snark by episode three, I would have confidence that this show has legs.
This is a silly, colourful show that is densely packed with laconic gags and references to sci-fi properties. The lead character Wendy ( a cute Natalie Morales) is written as a fun mixture of disengaged slacker, curious adventurer and dismissive badass. Based on the pilot episode, Wendy is the show's best asset.
The rest of the cast of characters - including Matt Keeslar as the straight-laced hero Middleman - have potential, but they were mostly placeholders to hang gags or plot threads on. That shallowness may be a choice by the filmmakers or something that will be remedied as the show goes on. It is consistent with the show's breathlessly overwritten exposition and casually included sci-fi weirdness.
If I was making a rash judgement I could call it a one-joke show, that joke being that the characters have seen all this before - and more so still for audience members who have consumed enough media to recognise, say, a specific supervillain scheme recurring in different properties.
Genre self-awareness is fun in the short term, but trickier as a show goes on. If literally everything is possible, and every past weird threat has been confidently defeated by a succession of past heroes, then the stakes seem pretty low. You would hope the filmmakers are aware of this and have a solution. There are clues as to what that might be.
When Wendy accepts the call to adventure, she imagines herself in a stylised montage as an agent, as if she was Emma Peel from the credits of the 60's British TV show "The Avengers". That image of glamour and cool is an aspiration that she and the show presumably will fall short of in funny ways.
However, I take it as a hint that The Avengers is the precedent for how to write this show. The Avengers was largely built on the playful chemistry between the leads Steed and Peel, which carried the show through variously realistic or silly episodic stories.
There are hints that Wendy is going to dump her current awful boyfriend and that Keeslar's Middleman wishes she liked him instead. If their relationship showed more spark than snark by episode three, I would have confidence that this show has legs.
