I don’t watch a ton of Syfy, that channel that puts out a new addition to the Megaoctosaur vs. Crocoshark-Bot-Piranha 3D franchise every Saturday night and somehow still finds the time to broadcast Final Destination and Saw marathons, because honestly they look like a modern-day Roger Corman factory, sans good taste. Pretty much anything on Syfy is instantly disposable, and it’s not like Alphas doesn’t continue the proud tradition on being something less than essential. But the spring ended a twenty-or-so episode run of the actively awful No Ordinary Family. Maybe anything at all would look good next to Vic Mackey learning to slow dance — a fifth season of Heroes, an eleventh season of Smallville — but I think Alphas has some genuine welcoming charm to it. Alphas also has some half-assed characterization and a concept that makes zero sense, but there’s only so much you can ask for on a show with a guy who can download internet porn directly into his head.
The “Alphas” each have their own superpower, and they work in an office. If that were all, super low-concept, I’d be totally into that show, and the best parts of Alphas so far have all taken place in their generic office park workplace with its generic soda machine and generic, but often amusing, banter between co-workers. But then the Alphas all have to go off and fight crime, and it doesn’t make a lick of sense — there’s even a pretty long scene in “Cause and Effect” where the characters all explain how they have no business whatsoever fighting crime. At least the nonsense is acknowledged — since last week’s Chloe King twisted itself into knots getting its heroine to a fight scene in San Fransisco’s notorious illegal poker den abandoned warehouse district. David Strathairn plays the team’s Professor Xavier Mohinder from Heroes role of researcher slash exposition fairy with some gravitas for a thankless fluff part — and I do understand that he’s the star, but you don’t watch a superheroes show for the guy without superpowers — and he comes thisclose to keeping his reams of scientific jargon and pop psychobabble from becoming ponderous. It’s still the worst, nothing but justification for the dull action set-pieces that litter the show. The Alphas team spends their time catching and rehabilitating — supposedly — rogue superheroes, because the United States government is both too incompetent and too reflexive to put its vast resources to work on keeping crazy kids who start riots with their pheromones from tearing society apart.
…Come to think of it, it looks like the Universal cable channels have limitless faith in the buffoonery and incompetence of the government. Between this show, Burn Notice and Covert Affairs on USA, and the fact that a military sniper team has yet to kill even one of the real housewives of New York, Universal seems to be pushing rugged individualism as a necessary recourse.
Back to Alphas, the chasing superheroes gone bad thing particularly drags since I feel like the show’s onto something with its idea of the somewhat neutered superpower, and the contrast between the characters’ extraordinary abilities and the dullness of their day-to-day lives. I chuckled aloud at the carpool scene early in the pilot, where Strathairn picks up Gary and Rachel in what’s probably a government issued Batmobile — a minivan, like he’s taking the kids to soccer practice. The office in Queens is a nice touch, as well as Gary’s repeated insistence on being allowed to drive or borrow Bill’s gun. I should be asking what Gary contributes to the team at all, since his power of reading electromagnetic radiation (“Except for Nokia. It’s a different protocol.”) seems like it could be replaced by some guy on the internet. But I enjoy the way he bugs his co-workers — and I enjoy the way they put up with it. The snappy workplace back and forth actually bears a little resemblance to a less sociopathic Archer or Aqua Teen Hunger Force.
I guess the villains too have a bit more post-modern nuance than the traditional bad guy who proudly admits to his membership in the League of Evil and just wants to take over the world because there’s no room in his existential crisis for art or friendship, the kind of weirdo who assumes that just because he’s evil that means his cat is evil too. But only a little bit more nuance — the show’s Hobbesian ground rule is that handing anyone just an ounce of power turns them into a drunken madman, which is perfect grounds for a hero versus villain debate on a Deep Philosophical Topic — or, fuck it, every week it’s just free will. And I’ve seen how these things go — sooner or later, it’ll turn out that everyone’s superpower is metaphorically significant or ironic, and the show will become a downer, like when Heroes gave that crippled girl super-speed. That’s why I just want The Office with superpowers, because I like hanging out with these people and I don’t want to give that up.