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Powerless - New DC Universe based Sitcom

I'm wondering how small Luthor's hands are.

The news anchor at the end who announced the arrest of the Joker was named Marv Wolfman. I guess he writes comics on the side. ;)
 
"The writers quickly realized that the professional base case scenario for insurance adjusters is that they take money away from someone."

Uh..don't they sell their safety products to people?..and they can't be cheap so their still taking money away from someone....I guess that was a better excuse then just saying the Test audience hated the Insurance based episode they first produced.
 
jep316 said:
"The writers quickly realized that the professional base case scenario for insurance adjusters is that they take money away from someone."

Uh..don't they sell their safety products to people?..and they can't be cheap so their still taking money away from someone....I guess that was a better excuse then just saying the Test audience hated the Insurance based episode they first produced.
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It might be that insurance salespeople have a negative reputation that they rip people off. Plus, I think the new premise of inventing gadgets is more interesting. A call center with people saying "would you like to buy insurance against a superhero dropping a train on your car?" is less interesting as a plot device than geeks building wacky gadgets.
 
Romulan_spy said:
It might be that insurance salespeople have a negative reputation that they rip people off.
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But that was actually part of the core idea -- that Emily was a compassionate insurance agent who tried to help people rebuild, but her new boss Del Heller (the original version of Tudyk's Van Wayne) was the bad kind of insurance guy who just wanted to maximize profits by denying as many insurance claims as possible. After Emily found the courage to stand up to Crimson Fox and complain about superheroes' cavalier attitude toward collateral damage, she was seen as an office hero and that emboldened her to stand up to Heller's ruthlessness and defend her more compassionate approach to insurance.

So I'm not convinced that she couldn't have been portrayed positively in the original version. If anything, I think she came off as more heroic in the original trailer, because she was more of an underdog and was very courageous in standing up against corporate culture even at risk of her job. That was the original premise behind the show, that it was about standing up for the little guys in a world where they tend to be at the mercy of the powerful. The new version is less about protesting the power imbalance and more about just trying to survive it.
 
Christopher said:
But that was actually part of the core idea -- that Emily was a compassionate insurance agent who tried to help people rebuild, but her new boss Del Heller (the original version of Tudyk's Van Wayne) was the bad kind of insurance guy who just wanted to maximize profits by denying as many insurance claims as possible. After Emily found the courage to stand up to Crimson Fox and complain about superheroes' cavalier attitude toward collateral damage, she was seen as an office hero and that emboldened her to stand up to Heller's ruthlessness and defend her more compassionate approach to insurance.

So I'm not convinced that she couldn't have been portrayed positively in the original version. If anything, I think she came off as more heroic in the original trailer, because she was more of an underdog and was very courageous in standing up against corporate culture even at risk of her job. That was the original premise behind the show, that it was about standing up for the little guys in a world where they tend to be at the mercy of the powerful. The new version is less about protesting the power imbalance and more about just trying to survive it.
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The original plot does sound good. But I think the issue is more that insurance itself is a less fun premise than a team creating gadgets. With the new premise, they can introduce all kinds of funny gadgets and also do a lot of physical comedy like the scene we got with the inflatable suit. So I feel like the new premise holds more comedic promise than the original one. How much comedy can you really do with selling insurance? It would have to be in the background with the comedy coming from somewhere else, similar to how the show "The Office" was about a company selling paper but the jokes rarely came from actually selling paper. But with the new premise, the jokes can come from the gadgets themselves.
 
Romulan_spy said:
The original plot does sound good. But I think the issue is more that insurance itself is a less fun premise than a team creating gadgets. With the new premise, they can introduce all kinds of funny gadgets and also do a lot of physical comedy like the scene we got with the inflatable suit. So I feel like the new premise holds more comedic promise than the original one.
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Slapstick is just one form of comedy, and there have been many successful sitcoms that didn't rely on it.

How much comedy can you really do with selling insurance?
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I think maybe all the competing insurance commercials on TV may have given you a false idea of what insurance work is about. It's not just about selling policies. Insurance is about giving people financial assistance in dealing with their problems, whether getting medical treatment or repairing a damaged car or rebuilding a home after a fire or whatever. In this case, Retcon Insurance would've covered damages caused by superhero/supervillain battles. Presumably, the stories would've involved clients coming in to tell their stories about how a super-battle damaged their property or their business or whatever, and the characters investigating those claims, seeing the aftermath of the super-battles, and so forth. There would presumably have been debates over whether they had a responsibility to cover the damage (e.g. the bit in the trailer where they debated whether damage caused by Wonder Woman was an act of god, which is insurance-speak for a natural mishap they don't have to pay for), which could've required investigating the specifics of a case more fully, maybe interviewing the heroes or villains involved to assess whether they really caused the damage, etc. And of course the quirky characters coming in to file their case-of-the-week claims would've been a source of humor, not unlike the litigants in Night Court, say.

So it would've been a lot like Marvel's Damage Control comic (which they were going to do a sitcom of, though it seems to have stalled), a comedy focusing on the efforts to clean up and rebuild after super-battles and deal with their impact on normal people, except focusing less on the actual physical cleanup and rebuilding and more about the people trying to rebuild their lives.

One other type of insurance that often shows up in fiction is the insurance of valuables against theft. For instance, George Peppard's mystery series Banacek was about an insurance investigator who tracked down valuable stolen objects (since recovering them would mean not having to pay out the claim) and occasionally stumbled into murder mysteries along the way. I'd imagine that museums, art galleries, businesses, etc. in comic-book universes would be eager clients of supervillain insurance. If you opened, say, a joke shop or pet store in Gotham City, you'd pretty much be asking to be robbed. Come to think of it, it might be rather hard to convince anyone to insure you in that case.


But with the new premise, the jokes can come from the gadgets themselves.
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Sitcoms aren't a succession of isolated gags. They're stories. The "sit" is short for "situation." That means that the humor comes from the situations the characters find themselves in and the way they react to them. A slapstick gag is not a situation, though it can occur within one. A succession of sight gags is worthless if they aren't in service to an interesting story. There are plenty of interesting situations to be derived from investigating the aftermath of superpowered conflicts and trying to help the people who suffered property damage therein, and there are interesting situations to be derived from an idealistic employee who wants to help people butting heads with an unethical boss who just wants to take their money. (And there's definite slapstick/sight-gag potential in scenes of the aftermath of super-battles. For instance, both the original trailer and the opening montage of the final pilot had a shot of workers trying to remove a giant robot that had crushed somebody's house.)

And there could definitely have been interesting situations derived from Emily's original reputation as someone who stood up to superheroes, someone that her friends and co-workers expected to continue to do so and be a voice for the little guy. How would she cope with that fame? How would it play out in her future interactions with superheroes? What if a supervillain had tried to co-opt her somehow? I don't see as much story potential in an Emily who's just a superhero groupie in a city where everyone else is jaded about heroes. There was an interesting tension in the idea of Emily being both an idealist who wanted to help people and someone who stood up to actual superheroes. It put her on both sides of the fence, in a way, or at least served to call out those heroes who were losing sight of their responsibility to regular people. The new Emily's role seems more one-dimensional.
 
I see potential in the series - especially with the reverse engineering concept they touched on. There could be a lot of comedy in them trying to crack open a HERO Dial, for instance.

They could even end up with seriously powerful artifact by mistake if it was intended for Lucius Fox but got delivered to the wrong place. An example would be an Eclipso diamond which would bring out the evil side of the characters showing that their dark sides are pretty pathetic.
 
Okay, it has potential, but wasn't that funny yet. Best bits, as predicted, were Tudyk and Funches, and I was surprised by how well Wendy worked as a pessimistic foil to Hudgen's character. Liked the DC in-jokes, but what I really loved was the totally awesome title sequence:

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I watched the pilot a couple days ago and thought it was pretty fun. Definitely not at the level of the preceding sitcom Superstore, which hits a lot of familiar notes for me since I work at a Wal-Mart, or the other big genre sitcom The Other Place.
As expected Alan Tudyk was a highlight, and we did get some pretty good DC jokes. Most of the other characters were pretty good, and there were a few good parts that weren't DC/superhero jokes.
I'm not quite sure what to make of the end though, it kind of made Batman look like an asshole.
Christopher said:
Slapstick is just one form of comedy, and there have been many successful sitcoms that didn't rely on it.



I think maybe all the competing insurance commercials on TV may have given you a false idea of what insurance work is about. It's not just about selling policies. Insurance is about giving people financial assistance in dealing with their problems, whether getting medical treatment or repairing a damaged car or rebuilding a home after a fire or whatever. In this case, Retcon Insurance would've covered damages caused by superhero/supervillain battles. Presumably, the stories would've involved clients coming in to tell their stories about how a super-battle damaged their property or their business or whatever, and the characters investigating those claims, seeing the aftermath of the super-battles, and so forth. There would presumably have been debates over whether they had a responsibility to cover the damage (e.g. the bit in the trailer where they debated whether damage caused by Wonder Woman was an act of god, which is insurance-speak for a natural mishap they don't have to pay for), which could've required investigating the specifics of a case more fully, maybe interviewing the heroes or villains involved to assess whether they really caused the damage, etc. And of course the quirky characters coming in to file their case-of-the-week claims would've been a source of humor, not unlike the litigants in Night Court, say.

So it would've been a lot like Marvel's Damage Control comic (which they were going to do a sitcom of, though it seems to have stalled), a comedy focusing on the efforts to clean up and rebuild after super-battles and deal with their impact on normal people, except focusing less on the actual physical cleanup and rebuilding and more about the people trying to rebuild their lives.

One other type of insurance that often shows up in fiction is the insurance of valuables against theft. For instance, George Peppard's mystery series Banacek was about an insurance investigator who tracked down valuable stolen objects (since recovering them would mean not having to pay out the claim) and occasionally stumbled into murder mysteries along the way. I'd imagine that museums, art galleries, businesses, etc. in comic-book universes would be eager clients of supervillain insurance. If you opened, say, a joke shop or pet store in Gotham City, you'd pretty much be asking to be robbed. Come to think of it, it might be rather hard to convince anyone to insure you in that case.




Sitcoms aren't a succession of isolated gags. They're stories. The "sit" is short for "situation." That means that the humor comes from the situations the characters find themselves in and the way they react to them. A slapstick gag is not a situation, though it can occur within one. A succession of sight gags is worthless if they aren't in service to an interesting story. There are plenty of interesting situations to be derived from investigating the aftermath of superpowered conflicts and trying to help the people who suffered property damage therein, and there are interesting situations to be derived from an idealistic employee who wants to help people butting heads with an unethical boss who just wants to take their money. (And there's definite slapstick/sight-gag potential in scenes of the aftermath of super-battles. For instance, both the original trailer and the opening montage of the final pilot had a shot of workers trying to remove a giant robot that had crushed somebody's house.)

And there could definitely have been interesting situations derived from Emily's original reputation as someone who stood up to superheroes, someone that her friends and co-workers expected to continue to do so and be a voice for the little guy. How would she cope with that fame? How would it play out in her future interactions with superheroes? What if a supervillain had tried to co-opt her somehow? I don't see as much story potential in an Emily who's just a superhero groupie in a city where everyone else is jaded about heroes. There was an interesting tension in the idea of Emily being both an idealist who wanted to help people and someone who stood up to actual superheroes. It put her on both sides of the fence, in a way, or at least served to call out those heroes who were losing sight of their responsibility to regular people. The new Emily's role seems more one-dimensional.
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I understand where there is potential in what you're saying, but it's hard for me not to think of medical insurance companies who are willing to let a person die from a preventable medical condition or other types that will do everything possible to screw people out of money that they deserve after an accident or something. I understand that things tend to be more complicated than, but that's still my initial gut reaction to insurance companies, and it would be hard for me to get past that to actually root for insurance agents.
Something like what Wayne Securities does is much easier to root for.
 
JD said:
I understand where there is potential in what you're saying, but it's hard for me not to think of medical insurance companies who are willing to let a person die from a preventable medical condition or other types that will do everything possible to screw people out of money that they deserve after an accident or something. I understand that things tend to be more complicated than, but that's still my initial gut reaction to insurance companies, and it would be hard for me to get past that to actually root for insurance agents.
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Yes, and that's exactly what Tudyk's original character was meant to represent, the side of the insurance business that's uncaring and only out for profit. Emily represented the idealist within the business who stood against that mentality and tried to restore compassion to the industry. It's the same kind of story we've seen many times before, an underdog idealist within an industry that's become heartless -- like, say, a crusading attorney who walks away from a cushy corporate practice in order to help the little guy and fight for justice (like Linda Hamilton's character in the 1987 Beauty and the Beast) or an idealistic teacher who tries to inspire kids the rest of the school system has given up on (like Welcome Back, Kotter or Stand and Deliver) or a noble politician who strives to bring integrity back to a system filled with corruption and greed (like basically every lead character on The West Wing).
 
I watched the pilot last night. It's morphed from being an insurance company sitcom to a research and development company. I wonder when that happened. The original idea had promise, too. I saw online somebody mention the pilot shown at a convention months before it aired, was different - apparently changes were made.


The premise is good,it has potential, but it's flawed writing. It's that modern look at me in your face comedy and it's funny because it's quirky or a quick mean joke was made shit. If they want real quirk with substance, writers from "Scrubs" need to be brought it. If they want better character play and edge, writers from "Newsradio" should be brought in. As it stands, I'm not sure it'll get a second season. I'll check out a couple more episodes, but it needs to improve before I'd watch a full season.

Personally, I'd recast two or three characters, if not replace them all together with new characters.


It was nice to hear Adam West narrate the pilot opening. It gives me a hope that he'll come in later as Bruce Wayne for apparances. Heck, maybe Burt Ward will make a cameo as Dick Grayson.
 
That would be one hell of an age difference for cousins. I guess it's not impossible, but it seems unlikely to me.
 
JD said:
That would be one hell of an age difference for cousins. I guess it's not impossible, but it seems unlikely to me.
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That's what "cousin once removed" or "twice removed" or whatever means -- cousins who are one or more generations apart. For instance, your parent's sibling's child is your first cousin; your grandparents's sibling's child (or your first cousin's child) is your first cousin once removed; your great-grandparent's sibling's child (or your first cousin's grandchild) is your first cousin twice removed; etc. Here's a chart explaining it. Basically every relative you have who isn't a spouse, parent, child, aunt, uncle, nephew, or niece (with appropriate grands and greats appended) is a cousin of one type or another. There's no limit to how many generations apart two cousins can be.

Of course, we know that Batman is an active crimefighter in the Powerless universe, so there's no way Bruce Wayne is 88 years old there.
 
I think it's quite clear that the makers of Powerless intend Batman to be Bruce Wayne. A number of their jokes are predicated on the fact that the audience knows that and the characters don't.

I was going to suggest Batman: The Brave and the Bold's Diedrich Bader to play Bruce Wayne, since he's one of the better Batman voice actors and has plenty of sitcom experience, but at 50 he's pushing it a little. Although Ben Affleck is 44, so maybe it's not out of the question. There's also the current voice of Batman in DC's animated movies, Jason O'Mara, but he's kinda busy running SHIELD right now.
 
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