More Reality TV

So I mentioned a couple of weeks ago about Who Wants to Be a Superhero? It's a weird show, a combination of reality tropes and cheesy cheese. The thing is, sort of like The Apprentice, the show's biggest weakness is its centerpiece: Stan Lee. The attack dog challenge was awesome, but some of the others, like the prisoner interview challenge, have been either ill-conceived or just too simple and vague. In some cases, Stan The Man has had to grasp at straws in choosing which hero to dismiss.

For instance, Stan took one hero to task for making fun of another's costume. "Superheroes are supposed to make people feel good about themselves," says the man who introduced the concept of heroes who constantly bicker and fight in the Fantastic Four.

One challenge involved heroes ordering food in a restaurant and being seduced by a sexy waiter/waitress into giving up their secret identities. "The number one rule of being a superhero is never give up your secret identity," says the man who started a new era in comics by introducing superheroes whose real identities are common knowledge (the Fantastic Four, again).

And then there's Major Victory, a former male stripper who keeps getting chided by Stan about taking off his cape during challenges. "You'd never see Superman taking off his cape," Stan says. Well, apparently, Stan didn't read the same Superman comics I did, because Superman took his cape off all the time, wrapping Lois Lane or Jimmy Olsen in it to protect them when he flew them to the Fortress of Solitude. Batman has also taken his cape off a few times, for instance, to fight a hawk or to duel R'as Al Ghul.

And perhaps most frustrating of all, whenever he talks to the superheroine Lemuria, Stan can't pronounce her name (although to be fair, no one else can, either), pronouncing it "Lumeria," except for the occasional voiceover.

I'm looking forward to the final episode, although I fear that Fat Momma, she of the doughnut utility belt, could well win it all, which would just be wrong. I would rather see Feedback win, although he has crazy-ass long mutant arms and is taking all this way too seriously. But he's got the best costume, he's a martial artist, and he plays the game well.