5 Problems That Ruin Most Superhero TV Shows

Shows like Gotham and Smallville had way more episodes per season, and tried to remedy this with "monster of the week" episodes. And for shows that come out each week instead of in one binge-able bundle, this helps, because you're never around for long enough to think "Huh, this small Kansas town sure does have a lot of mutated creeps in it." But in this case, it's the human subplots that suffer. You motherfuckers don't know how good you have it. I spent years watching Clark Kent stumble around telling Lana Lang how much he loved her. YEARS. I could've hung out with my family or played with my dogs or gotten hobbies. I could've had a life.

Obviously, we're a little spoiled by other mediums. Superhero movies tend to be around two and a half hours, which is long enough to tell a satisfying story, but short enough that your bladder doesn't combust in the theater. And superhero cartoons tend to be around 20 minutes, while comics tend to have around 20 pages. But in the case of live-action TV, it feels like the storylines are written and set in stone before the number of episodes is given, forcing writers to say "Fucking 13 episodes on six episodes' worth of plot? Ninjas it is, then."

If only they'd kept up with it.

The problem with "grounding" an inherently fantastical story is that there's a constant game of tug of war between your intentions of establishing realism and the siren song of the comic book roots. One says "Hard-boiled crime storriiiiiiesss" and the other whispers "Super stuffffffffffff." And the first season of Jessica Jones does a great job with balancing it. She has immense strength, but her villain has inflicted so much horrifying psychological trauma on her that just walking over and snapping his shitty little neck becomes difficult. That's how you tell a real, grounded human story in a universe with thunder gods and Hulks.

But Season 2 introduces us to her superpowered mother, and in Season 3, her best friend gains superpowers that are similar to hers. And these don't really come from any place of thematic depth, other than doubling the amount of parkour in the show. I already mentioned Daredevil's foray into mystical ninjas after a fairly realistic first season of Vincent D'Onofrio tantrums, but perhaps the most egregious example is Luke Cage's "Judas Bullets." Obviously, you need a way to raise the stakes for the bulletproof Luke Cage, but inventing magic weapons that use metal from the alien invaders in The Avengers is somehow both the most boring AND the most outlandish way to do it.

Admittedly, the "grounded" superhero is a tricky tightrope walk. And when someone tells me "I'm gonna focus on the 'man' in 'Superman,'" it sounds so boring that I want to tear my ears off and throw them at the writer. But when done well, like in Jessica Jones, they can be some of the best stories the genre has ever known.

In the last season of Daredevil, the new villain is Bullseye. Of course, god forbid we actually call him "Bullseye" or give him his own suit (in Daredevil, he mostly wears Daredevil's suit, which looks cool until you realize that, to make sense of the one-on-one fight scenes, the actual Daredevil has to wear his old sweaters). Obviously, allowing for big, colorful outfits would go against the "grounded" part of these series, but if a guy goes blind and has all of his senses become super-heightened and he goes by the name "Daredevil," I'm not going to cry foul when another crazy person decides "Hey! And call me 'Bullseye!' Look at my cool shirt!"

It's such a frustrating one foot in / one foot out approach. Now, The Dark Knight isn't perfect, but I appreciate the fact that at the very beginning, one of the goons asks, "Why do they call him 'The Joker'?" That's all you need. It shows that you embrace the character but don't necessarily want your serious bro Christian Bale saying outlandish villain monikers while he's stumbling around his terrorism metaphors.

And the DC shows on the CW, like Arrow, Flash, and Supergirl, also do a decent job with it, but they're also not trying to maintain any illusion of realism. They'll have a mess of CGI show up, call it "Gorilla Grodd" a thousand times, and hope that you're into it. Basically, it comes down to what you think your audience will accept. And trust us, we've watched Jessica Jones tear down doors with her bare hands. We'll be alright if her foe gets a nickname.

Sometimes they get close. You can tell that the people behind Luke Cage took great care, especially in the first season, to try to replicate the atmosphere of a neighborhood like Harlem. However, since most of the plots involve bad guys who are wealthy and good guys who aren't wealthy but can still somehow afford housing you can fit an entire film crew in, America's most famous city is turned into a montage of different-sized apartments. Even Sallinger, who by all means should get the Texas Chainsaw Massacre treatment and have a creepy murder lair, just gets a normal basement and a living room that looks a lot like it sprang from an IKEA commercial.

NYC is so much more than dimly lit bedrooms, big bland open spaces where villains think about how villainous they're being while listening to classical music or looking at art, and sidewalks. Just look at a series like Mr. Robot, which manages to make NYC look equal parts fresh and beautiful and grimy:

Meanwhile, in Daredevil, you get the sense that Manhattan is mostly hallways. And don't get me wrong, the movie Oldboy instilled within me a deep-rooted love of violent hallway brawls, but I get significantly less enamored with them when they happen seven times. Part of this feels like an attempt to hide a lack of screen combat training (hard to criticize choreography when it's mostly close-up fists and pushes), but the end result is that New York City feels about five feet wide.

I get that some of this is budget-related. Filming in only the most dynamic and awe-inspiring parts of the city would leave little room for catering or special effects or actors. But by writing themselves into a corner, they don't really give the heroes a chance to leave the apartment.

That said, you can't just tell an actor "Hey, we're gonna shelve ya for a few years, but we'll call you when we want you to make a grand dramatic return." They have to eat, so they're gonna go be on other shows, get tied to other contracts, and be unavailable when you want your big "Return of Metallo" story. If they're able to get a character to come back years later, it's completely by luck or writing a massive check. So far, the only superhero show that's been able to replicate the comic book villain format is the '60s Batman show. But then again, that amazing show is full of secrets that mankind will never truly understand.

Daniel Dockery is a writer and editor for Cracked. Follow him on his big, dumb Twitter.

For more, check out Why All Superheroes Are Actually Villains - Obsessive Pop Culture Disorder:

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