Emily, still trying to find her place in the office, finds that dealing with Van is causing more harm to business than anything else. Van, being a member of the Wayne family, is untouchable though, and is in control of everything. When they lose a major client, Emily attempts to bring in representatives from the lost city of Atlantis to talk business. When Van promises a huge party to celebrate an upcoming Atlantian holiday, and an impossible to put together visit from Aquaman, Emily and Van must pull every string to impress the Atlantians and get this new, huge client.
Though the plot of this episode doesn’t sound spectacular written down, it’s the shenanigans these characters get into that make this episode work so well. Van, dealing with losing the client and subsequently the already fading approval of his father, gets into a state of depression. Just as anyone in this kind of despair would do, Van decides to pick up folk music and sing his troubles away. This, and many other bits in the episode, are comedic gold for the series and highlight the personalities that these actors and actresses bring to their characters.
The rest of the team, Teddy, Ron, Wendy and Jackie, are suspicious that one of their coworkers, Alex, is secretly the superhero the Olympian, using this day job to protect the secrecy of his alter ego. After several failed attempts to catch Alex changing into the Olympian, such as putting a camera in the bathroom to catch him changing, Wendy proceeds to do the only sure fire thing that will prove Alex’s superpowered secret. She smashes him with a chair, and as Alex collapses in agony, the team has the answer they’ve been searching for.
These bits work well for POWERLESS. They’re just the right amount of silly and witty for the series, and exemplify the style that this series is taking. Unlike last week’s episode, only the second of the series, this episode felt original and more true to what POWERLESS has advertised itself to be. With such strong comedic talents involved in this series, it feels as through they’ve left these actors and actresses run with their characters and make them reflections of themselves.
Powerless has also started to embrace its ties to the DC Universe more. Though last week featured a superhero fantasy league, this week uses more actual references and characters from the world it originates in. With the Atlantians as potential business clients, POWERLESS is able to combine the DC Universe with the work place comedy setting in a way that feels natural and unforced. What was once a major concern for the show, causing audiences to fear that the series may rely too heavily on ties to the DC Universe, has been put to rest and shown that first and foremost, POWERLESS is still going to be a comedy, more interested in making people laugh than making them squeal at the mention of Batman or Superman.
Now, with POWERLESS going into its fourth episode, the series is finished introducing its characters and is now able to experiment with the chemistry of their interactions or how they’re conveyed to the audience. The audience is now familiar enough with these characters that time doesn’t need to be spent on showing what their personalities will be like, but rather they can spend time developing them further, making the characters more relatable, or just all around funnier.
Van, who gets an in depth look into his family life in this episode, continues to be his incompetent self. But now that the audience sees more into how he was treated poorly by his father, his incompetence begins to have more meaning behind it. Just as Van puts the harmonic up to his mouth when his father takes control of the account away from him, the laugh becomes a little bit more meaningful.
I’m excited to see where POWERLESS goes from here. Only three episodes in, what we’ve seen doesn’t define the show. However, after this episode, I’m more confident in what the show will become. Last week was a set back, but this week was reassuring that the series knows what it should be. In a world of dramatic comic book television, POWERLESS is going to be the comic relief that we’ve been waiting for. These early stages are all too important for a series to determine whether or not it will stay on air, but this episode was definitely a confident step towards the series continuing in its time slot.
Written by William Staton, POWERLESS Beat Writer -- Click to read William's posts
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