Here’s a guide to the shows with which I’m currently most obsessed.

Powerless (NBC):  In a world of superheroes, what happens in the day-to-day lives of the not-so-super?  How do they deal with the myriad fireballs and hijackings and train-derailings?  It’s questions like these with which Powerless deals, with some particularly well cast comedic actors in this first sitcom from DC Comics. 

Vanessa Hudgens plays an idealistic recent Wharton grad who moves to the big city, and goes to work for Wayne Industries (yes, that Wayne Industries), specifically in the R&D department of the division – Wayne Securities – overseen by Bruce Wayne’s egomaniacal dolt of a cousin, Van (played with just the right mix of smarminess and buried humanity, by Alan Tudyk).  Joining Hudgens (Grease Live) and Tudyk (Suburgatory) in Wayne Securities’ Charm City offices, are sitcom vets Danny Pudi (Community), and Ron Funches (Undateable); as well as Christina Kirk (A to Z) who steals virtually every scene she’s in, with a combination of deadpan drollness and worldly wherewithal.

Powerless went through a lot of conceptual changes between inception and airing (what was originally an insurance company is now a security tech company; the addition of the adorably huggable Funches – likely a result of Undateable’s lamented demise); and while I have no idea what the original concept was like, the resulting sitcom is rife with laughs and goofiness and superhero-adjacent action. 

The Mick (FOX) – It’s difficult not to trace The Mick’s humor back to It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia; whether due to co-creator brothers Dave and John Chernin, or their muse, Kaitlin Olsen, in the title role.  Regardless, it works; and it works well.  To give you an idea, I give you Exhibit A: the #KidsAreDicks marketing campaign that preceded the show’s debut.

The fish-out-of-water premise revolves around Aunt Mickey (Olsen), an unapologetic, foul-mouthed, hard-living, degenerate, who – upon being told that her sister and brother-in-law, Poodle and Christopher Pemberton, are fleeing the country – moves into their Greenwich, CT estate, to raise her spoiled niece and nephews, Sabrina (16), Chip (12), and Ben (8).  Aided by her on-again/off-again doofus boyfriend, Jimmy, and the Pemberton’s housekeeper Alba (who, played with aplomb by the silver-throated Carla Jimenez, quickly becomes Mickey’s BFF), Mickey finds herself in a number of situations where you simply stare at the TV, mouth agape, shaking your head, thinking “White people…”

Take this, as a fo’instance…  While dropping Chip (the fantastic Thomas Barbusca) off at his prep-school, he complains about being harassed by a bully.  Mickey’s advice to the young teen, is to use humor to temper violence: “Next time he gives you crap, yank his pants down, and point at his tiny pecker.  That’ll do it!”  Flash forward to Chip walking in from school, slamming the front door, his face a covered in dried blood.  When Mickey asks “Did you laugh at his tiny penis?  That part’s pretty important…” Chip emphatically replies “It was humongous!  I’m lucky he didn’t beat me with it!”

In less-skilled (more reverent?) hands, this could have easily been a calamitous mess; but it’s that sheer lack of veneration that allows The Mick to scale peaks of hilarity to where it has made itself at home.  Whether tackling white-guilt (or the lack, thereof), ageism, revenge, elitism, sex, gossip, country club etiquette, transgenderism, or mullets; The Mick does so with an infectious audacity that will win you over (once you acclimate to the gleeful un-PC-ness of it all).

Imposters (BRAVO): All I knew about Imposters was that at some point in the first few episodes, Uma Thurman would appear as a gangland enforcer named Lenny Cohen.  That’s all it took to whet my appetite for the third of Bravo’s original scripted series (after the Lisa Edelstein dramedy Girlfriends Guide to Divorce, and the Jill Kargman sitcom, Odd Mom Out).

Imposters is a bit trickier to label, though.  It all starts with nice-Jewish-boy, Ezra; who comes home to find that his stunning new bride, Ava, has absconded with his savings. We come to find out that Ava is actually Maddie, a con artist (played with a sultry intensity by Inbar Lavi); and that she (along with cohorts Sally and Max – the wonderful Katherine LaNasa and Brian Benben, respectively) are part of a very sophisticated team of grifters.  The team is given their mark, by their shadowy boss, The Doctor, and then move to the city where that mark lives, infiltrate the mark’s life, and wipe the mark out. 

Why the gender ambiguity?  Because in short order we find that in addition to Ezra (a terrifically cast Rob Heaps), Maddie et al., have scammed not just another husband, Richard (Parker Young, who combines good looks with a sweet but gullible swagger), but also a wife, Jules (angsty beauty, Marianne Rendón).  Obsessed with finding her, the unlikely trio start to track Maddie (or as they knew her, Ava, Alice, and CeCe) down, by comparing notes and investigating her past.  I’m still not sure if this show is a comedy or a drama; or the very blackest of comedies.  Regardless, it sure is fun to watch!

Whatever’s happening on TBS:  I’m not sure what the programming folks at TBS have been using to spike their water, but they’ve just been killing it, across a plethora of genres.  Whether appealing to millennials (Search Party), Gen-X (Conan, Angie Tribeca), or the Baby Boomers (my mom simply cannot get enough of People of Earth), the network that knows comedy is proving that this is more than a mere tagline.  But for me, it’s the one-two-punch brought to the mix, by the husband-and-wife team of Samantha Bee and Jason Jones that really makes this network sing.  Working as co-executive producers on each other’s shows (Full-Frontal with Samantha Bee, and The Detour, respectively), Bee and Jones bring out the best in each other regardless of who is behind the camera and who’s in front.  So, hat’s off to TBS, for bringing this dynamic duo of comedy into the Turner mix.

Get into it!
#SpringTV