The more superhero stories pervade our TVs and movie screens, the more room there is for superhero parodies.
The latest one is created by SNL head writer and comic book geek Seth Meyers who created this show along with his Saturday Night Live cohorts and populated with a cast of mostly SNL talent along with his brother Josh (Mad TV).
The hero, Prock, is a mild-mannered guy who ranks towards the bottom of the barrel of all the world's superheroes (this is a world overwrought with superpowered-humans who are all organized in a full-on bureaucracy that's part of the satire) but has a lot of smarts and when his dad announces his retirement, he goes on to lead a ragtag group of misfits. It's the kind of plot you've seen in all kinds of stuff from "Sky High" to "Mystery Men" to the "Misfits" to a comic book that Taran Killam just wrote.
The show is really clever in the way that I'd expect from an SNL head writer and gets its satirical jabs in where it can get them.
The problem is generally that many of the characters are weak and uninteresting and, well, those characters take up a lot of the screen time. Taran Killam plays a one-note redneck speedster, Keenan Thompson plays a mama's boy who sounds like Kenan Thompson always does, Bobby Lee plays a boy who turns into sumo wrestler. His character being the kid on the team seems like it has some potential to be any sort of character dynamic but it's quickly dropped.
Ike Barinholtz is moderately potential-filled as the sidekick, and a lot of the more interesting characters come from outside the superhero team: Bill Hader as supervillain Malocchio and Josh Meyers as rival Prock.
Interestingly enough, a couple of SNL's writers Emily Spivey and Paula Pell voice characters here. Pell's character is equally one-note with a moderately gross angle about an old woman being sexy and Spivey's character, a super-secretary of sorts with a charming Southern accent named concierge is the kind of character who feels like she belongs in a more well-rounded cast.
