2 out of 5

Created by: Scott Buck

covers season 1

It’s not a horrible show, just erring slightly below mundane most of its runtime, but it does recuringly  prompt a big ol’ stinking question of: Why?  The choices the show makes are puzzling; supposing there was a budgetary limitation that guided writing, injecting our moon-dwelling Inhumans – an ancient race of humans metamorphosed into superhumans by (what we’ll call) proprietary ‘teragen crystal’ tech – onto Earth and mostly stripping them of their abilities makes sense, but then Why make a show about moon-dwelling superheroes in the first place?  Okay, so you’re stuck with the setup from a previous show (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. – completely unmentioned during the course of Inhumans but responsible for introducing the concept), and you’re stuck with the money, so you scribe up this tale, but then Why double-back to undermine your efforts by trying to go big and bold with sequences taking place on Attilan, the abandoned moon kingdom?

For that’s the cause of our location swap: Napoleon-complex Maximus (Iwan Rheon) is annoyed at his lack of specialness (his Inhuman ‘power’ was to be human…  whoops!) and so incites a rebellion from Attilan’s lower classes (about ten people wearing overalls, apparently), declaring himself King and kicking the royal family – Black Bolt (Anson Mount), Medusa (Serinda Swan), Karnak (Ken Leung), and Gorgon (Eme Ikwuakor) – Earth-side.  Queen Medusa’s head is shaved, separating her from her living locks (ironically a point of much contention in the lead-up to the show, thanks to some questionable CG); shockstress Crystal (Isabelle Cornish) has her teleporting dog tranqued and is kept as moon collateral; Karnak takes a knock on the head which makes him conveniently forget how to use his uber-strategist powers and have a puppy love subplot; Gorgon falls in quick bromance with some fight-spirited surfers, and Black Bolt gets arrested.

Hey, not bad, but again, we spend half or time cutting back to the moon, for Maximus to mug and say things that would hardly inspire rebellion, walking across the same three cheap, empty sets, like an old Doctor Who serial but without the charm.  And because this nonsensical plot drives the Earth-bound events, it lays a gloss of dramaturgy atop the whole thing that makes the fish out of water bits fall incredibly flat.

Or how about Medusa’s ability to adopt to her new shorn look like a supermodel?  How about the lack of rhyme or reason to that dog’s abilities, or that of Christa’s for that matter?  How about anything that gives the Inhumans a sense of history or reverence, instead of just assuming we care because: Marvel?

It’s a show at odds with itself, both externally (whatever studio limitations were presumably enforced) and internally, with all of its decisions and representations coming across with head-scratching motivation.

Anson Mount handles his silent role well and there are brief flashes per episode that work, though it’s mostly the action stuff.  When the show tiptoes into shallow world-building waters, we get a sense of potential and are reminded of Agents of SHIELD’s slow start, but this is even a far cry from that, as SHIELD at least clearly gave off a vibe of chintzy sci-fi action; Inhumans has no idea what it wants to be, and less of an idea as to how to be… anything, really.

But at least they kept it to eight episodes.