Hygena obtains the first three items that she needs to diguise herself in WHO WANTS TO BE A SUPER HERO?: Disguise.
© SCI FI Channel
Mania Grade: F
Episode: Disguise
Starring: Stan Lee
Produced By: Andy Sheer, Stan Lee
Episode: Disguise
Starring: Stan Lee
Produced By: Andy Sheer, Stan Lee
WHO WANTS TO BE A SUPER HERO?: Disguise
By: Stephen LackeyDate: Saturday, August 18, 2007
The more I look at this show the more I get frustrated with the realization that Stan Lee, one of the iconic creators of comic books, and the producer of this series don’t look at modern comics to influence this series. Hollywood is reading comics (at least the creators are, most of the actors are obviously fibbing about their familiarity with comics), so what’s wrong with these guys? Beyond that this week’s episode of Who Wants to be a Super Hero? features product placement so obnoxious that I almost forgot about the Dodge Fantasticar.
This episode is the conclusion to last week’s “To Be Continued” in which the heroes returned from an elimination to find their lair ransacked and the safe that contained their secret identity files and a check to be donated to a charity emptied. Stan appears on screen and tells the heroes that the goods are to be dropped from one criminal to another. The mission of the heroes is to get locales to give up items of clothing that the heroes can use to disguise themselves and meet the criminal to retrieve the check and their secret identity. So the bulk of the show follows the heroes walking the street asking passersby to give up shoes, a shirt or jacket, and pants. This sequence reveals a couple of heroes’ weaknesses, most notably of which is Hygena’s apparent phobia about dirty clothes.
I question the intelligence of some of the contestants when it comes to the transparent distractions and side missions built into the series by the writers. This time it’s a woman who asks them each for help with finding her kid. Everyone helped her except Basura who didn’t shrug her off but did seem conflicted about whether to stop and help her. At that point it was obvious that Basura had just participated in her last mission.
This mission featured the pink haired anime influenced esurance character from the company’s commercials. Esurance wrote the charity check and in return got to have their character not only be the contact for the mission but also to mention the name “esurance” more times than I could count. Sure some money went to a charity but this level of product placement is way to annoying in a show with such a threadbare plot holding it together that I can barely stay with it to start with.
Also this week the group was taken one of this country’s holy grails of comics Golden Apple Comics. Once there they met the president of Dark Horse Comics and were presented with covers for their comics. The artwork was mostly good but the president’s reading of his script was horrendous. The final prize went to Parthenon who got to make a call home and he was also allowed to pick one other hero to also call home. He picked Hygena. I’m sure this sequence was gold to the two of them but overall I found it just formulaic and couldn’t wait until the calls were done.
