This is Unreal

You know how, when you are approaching an accident on the freeway, you tell yourself that you aren't going to rubberneck. Checking out the carnage is for the less civilized folks. You're better than that. You're just going to keep on driving, eyes on your own lane, and not try to figure out who hit what and how much their insurance premiums are going to go up because of it. Then, when you finally get up to the scene of the accident, you can't help taking just a little peek, and the foot eases off the accelerator just a little and you find yourself thinking, "So that's what happens when a Geo Metro and a Hummer collide."

That is what happened to me with "Who Wants to Be a Superhero." I don't watch reality TV. I might have caught half an episode of the first Survivor before I decided this is beyond lowbrow entertainment and my life is too short for that. I got two thirds of the way through the episode of The Apprentice where they were doing an ad campaign for the Star Wars video game and DVD before the interpersonal politics became so bad that not even Star Wars could keep me watching. The whole premise of Who Wants to Be a Superhero was utterly offensive to me as a fangirl (see previous rant on the subject, below). Stan Lee was selling out fanboys and fangirls everywhere to reinforce the stereotypes of us as immature and out of touch with, of all the irony, reality. Part of me wanted to reach through the television, grab him by the mustache and the aviator glasses and yell, "You've been to Comic Con. You've seen us. You know we aren't like that! Why are you doing this to us?"

I TiVoed the first episode of WWTBASuperhero anyway. Might as well see what I'm railing against. You know what? As much as I hate to admit it, the show isn't half bad. If you can get past the superhero campiness, the first episode was an oddly compelling hour of television. At least in the first hour, it wasn't the typical reality show bit of strategic alliances and backstabbing. The challenge of the week wasn't "who can be subjected to the most disgusting thing without losing their lunch." The show, at this early date at least, seems focused less on being a superhero than on being a decent human being--a rare thing in reality TV, from what I hear.

The challenge set up for the first episode was ostensibly who could pull the "Superman in a phone booth" the fastest (for a program done by the former head of Marvel, all the superhero references seem to be to DC comics characters). Contestants were supposed to change from their streetclothes into their superhero costumes without being seen, then run to a designated finish line. But Stan Lee pulled something that anyone who has ever picked up more than two issues of a comic book could have seen straight through (thus giving us, the audience, a nice reveal as to who are real fanboys and fangirls, and who are in it to be Reality TV Stars). An 9-ish-year-old actress was positioned just shy of the designated finish line, crying that she was lost and couldn't find her mommy. We'll overlook the fact that she was not at all convincing. The unstated but transparent goal of the exercise was to see who would consider helping a lost child more important than winning a contest for a TV show. Some of them did, and those that weren't were called on the carpet (or illuminated cubes, rather--I gotta get me some of those) to explain their inaction. That turned into more groveling than actual explanation, but still, it was nice to see win-at-any-cost be detrimental to one's success rather than essential. I'm eager to see if that ethic continues through the rest of the show. Yes, I will be TiVoing the next episode.

This is a show where you have to just accept a lot of things that some people might find a little odd (e.g. a woman wearing crullers as a belt). My version of reality is heavy on the comics and sci-fi, so I can just run with guys in tights. If you are the type of person who could see a person in a full-body Yoda costume walking down the street in June and your only thought is "he's too tall for Yoda," you'll have a leg up watching the show. Everyone else, set your TiVo, revel in the campiness, realize these people are not normal human beings, and get ready to have your faith in the general decency of humanity (if not, necessarily, the decency of humanity's wardrobe) renewed.

I'll check back as the show progresses.