THE TOMORROW PEOPLE

** (out of ****)

If the Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. pilot took a couple more baby steps towards figuring out how to bring superheroes to the small screen, The Tomorrow People took a giant leap back. Television’s special effects will always get better (or cheaper), but they will never be as good as film’s. Coming up with quicker, less expensive ways to do the effects is not the answer. People will always bitch that TV’s special effects suck, and they will always bitch that superhero movies are too big, too loud, and never have enough character moments. Well, maybe that will just be critics…but there will still be bitching! The key is for the two mediums complimenting each other, providing what the other one can’t. They don’t have to be of the same shared universe, like Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (fuck that title) is to The Avengers. They just need to know their role in the genre, and give us that. Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (OK, now I’m just copying and pasting) is never going to give us a truly deep look into the characters, but might slide by on the charm. The CW’s The Tomorrow People won’t either, but has next-to-nothing else to give us, either.

The first thing people found about Smallville was the phrase “No tights, no flights.” We all assumed that the only reason for this was budgetary concerns, and we were probably right. But that shouldn’t have been the only reason. “It’s GREAT that we can’t afford to do a bunch of action scenes, so now we GET to explore these characters.” It’s addition through subtraction, a cliche that has never made sense to me until right this minute, even though I’m probably using it wrong. Not a single trace of this line of thinking is here in The Tomorrow People. Instead, it’s “EVEN THOUGH we can’t afford to do action scenes, we’ll do some anyway, and EVEN THOUGH we can’t afford writers, we’ll make someone do it, and people will still watch this shit because this is the kind of thing that is popular right now we think who cares.” It might as well be the company-wide motto of The CW.

A group of kids have powers they call the Three T’s: telekinesis, telepathy, teleportation. One of those shady government agencies we’re always hearing about is tracking them down because they have too much power. Their goal is to turn the powered kids into agents, who will then go and track down their own. There is an underground group forming, beginning the war against the government. They try to recruit Protagonist Man into their club, before the government can get to him. The government agency is ran by Protagonist Man’s uncle. Aw, shit. I just figured out this is Star Wars.

Mark Pellegrino (Jacob from Lost) is the Darth Vader of this little world, and there’s no better display of this show’s cluelessness than this head badguy. Trying to channel four different types of badguys at once, he just turns out to be one of those bars of soap that’s made up of other soaps. It’s too gross to figure out what’s what, so you end up just throwing it away.

The hardest part to figure out is that although this genre might be successful, the CW’s attempts at the genre aren’t ever successful, at least when they are handled like this. Season after season, the CW cancels low-rated garbage that audiences never grasped onto because there was nothing to grab. Smallville, and to a lesser extent Arrow, focused on the smaller moments, and gave you a group of characters you wanted to follow from week to week. Most of the people I know who watched that show tolerated the action moments, as opposed to tuning in for them. It’s probably too late for The Tomorrow People to learn from Smallville’s past. Next time, let’s hope the CW can learn from it’s own past.

-Ryan Haley