2 out of 5

Developed by: Brian Michael Bendis, Charlie Huston

covers season 1

Unfocused, repetitive, not as deep as it thinks and excessively crass, ‘Powers’ is, at least, true to comic creator Brian Michael Bendis’ writing.  However, the big (or small screen) is a bit more forgiving of Brian’s ham-fisted ways, and ‘Powers’ ends up being pretty well executed camp with decent effects and a consistently garish tone.  It’s still littered with flaws but sort of just swears at them, slow-mo punches someone and then moves forward, and dribbles some entertaining ideas along the way.

The gist is that, in a world of super-powered goods and bad – the Powers – responsible handling of said powers ain’t a focus, and thus the human-staffed Powers Bureau was formed to police their behavior.  On their side they have some tech assistance from a ‘Triphammer,’ a human who invented his own suit-of-armor to fight crime, as well as a bonafide once-hero Christian (Sharlto Copley) who, once part of a team with Triphammer – fought “Wolfe” (Eddie Izzard) and ended up losing his powers.  We join sweary, grumbly Christian as he’s partnered with newbie Deena (Susan Heyward), and swears and grumbles about getting his powers back.  Now there’s some meat here, in terms of a possible procedural, or investigating the politics and social dynamics that drive a society obsessed with the stardom of its Powers, and while the latter is meandered through, the former is pretty much left cold after episode one to focus on a churning plot with Wolfe’s escape attempts from the Powers jail and Christian’s relationship with his former teammates, who are wrapped up in affairs in various ways.  It seems a shame to divert so far from an obvious focus, and it also requires spreading the plot out verrryyy thinly over ten episodes, leaving us with a lot of drawn out and repetitive sequences to fill time.  It’s also hard to get too wrapped up in affairs when the show isn’t concerned with actually establishing a sense of history or reality: the very existence of Powers Bureau just feels taken for granted and thus unimportant.  Is it supposed to seem like a shoestring operation, or is that just budget constraints and poor writing?  Are we supposed to actually like Christian’s childish outbursts and frequent f-bombs?  Are we supposed to think Deena is a capable cop and not just a whiny hanger-on?  None of this matters to the show; it has its beginning and endpoint, and then someone obviously mapped out beats to be heat episode by episode and the rest was filled up with more swearing.

But again, credit to the campy entertainment value of this, as the show is watchable, and at times, pretty cool.  And then at other times, you’ll loathe telling people it’s based on a comic as it sets the comic-adaptation expectations back to a sort of cheeseball fandom status.