Who Wants To Be Stan Lee’s Bitch?
Posted on | September 11, 2007 at 8:53 pm | 11 Comments
In the comments to yesterday’s post, InfK (currently downunder) asked about the second season of the SciFi Channel’s Who Wants To Be A Superhero? InfK worked on the show, so that’s why he was interested. You may remember that I praised season one of the show last year. However, that post was written fairly early into that season, and the show got progressively worse as the season went on. One particular low point was a challenge that involved the contestants interacting with prisoners who were obviously actors and not real prisoners. It was cringe-inducing.
[Spoiler Alert: Some details of season two revealed, including the winner.]
But I watched the entire second season anyway, primarily because of InfK’s involvement and because I wanted to see if they fixed the things that were wrong from the first season. But it pretty much followed the same formula. Some of the challenges were similar, including one that involved attack dogs and one involving kids at a school. They really shouldn’t have gone back to the well like that. Most of the challenges were pretty dull. If they do a season three, it would be very easy for anyone who has seen the first two seasons to win, since you’d have to be a complete dunderhead not to see the formula to the challenges. Most involve some sort of morals issue (always help those in need, set a good example, don’t reveal too much about yourself, act appropriately heroic at all times, etc). The people who got ejected by Stan usually slipped up temporarily in one of those areas. Remember, you’re being watched at all times!
And speaking of cringe-inducing, three words: Giant Evil Stan. The heroes should’ve defeated him by making him trip on his own ego.
The three finalists (Defuser, Hyper-Strike, and Hygena) were extremely reminiscent of the three finalists from season one (Major Victory, Feedback, and Fat Momma). Although this time, the Major Victory-type Defuser won instead of the Feedback-simulacrum Hyper-Strike.
One thing that surprised me was it certainly looked like they were leading up to revealing that the villain of the season, Dr Dark, was actually someone that we already knew in disguise. I expected him to be someone from season one or one of the earlier rejected contestants from season two (I was betting on either Mindset or Ms Limelight, though Mr Mitzvah made sense too). The guide entry on Dish even said “Dr Dark’s identity revealed” as part of the info for the final episode. However, no such revelation was forthcoming. Did they chicken out at the last minute and leave it on the editing room floor? Was it too reminiscent of season one’s “Enforcer” plot? Are they saving it for season three? Why do I care?
So, InfK, reveal away (within the limits of your NDA, of course). I do wonder how much of the show was changed in editing.
Pet Peeve Of The Day: I downloaded the Winterpills album The Light Divides from eMusic and have been listening to it on my car iPod. I failed to read the user comments on the eMusic page and downloaded the bonus tracks. Well, I actually just downloaded the whole album like I usually do – it doesn’t occur to me to download tracks individually and I usually don’t have time to research it. Anyway, track 14 (”Untitled Track 1″) is actually just 5 minutes of silence. Dead silence. So basically I paid 22 cents for 5 minutes of nothing, and plus I had to listen to the whole thing in the car to make sure that music didn’t suddenly start 2 minutes in or whatever. I thought that kind of thing went out in the 90s. It really breaks up the flow of the album. I’m surprised eMusic even included it. And then track 15 (”Untitled Track 2″) is a cleaned-up version of one of the other songs on the album. I really didn’t need that one either. As for the album proper: some of the songs were okay, but most of the album is a bit too mellow/midtempo-y for me. Maybe it will grow on me though.
Latre.
Comments
11 Responses to “Who Wants To Be Stan Lee’s Bitch?”
September 11th, 2007 @ 10:08 pm
You know, I really like eMusic for its selection and price…but Jesus F. Christ, their customer service sucks like the world’s largest Hoover. I sent in a question on 9/2 – no reply (even though, ironically, I did get a “customer satisfaction survey” eliciting my response to my inquiry. You can guess how I filled that one out). I sent another message asking after my first message about four days ago. Still nothing (on either one).
My feeling is that any company that can’t respond to *all* customer inquiries within, say, one working day simply doesn’t care enough about its customers. If it takes them two days, they need to hire more customer service people so they can cut that down to one day. Oh – and of course there’s no phone number anywhere to be found.
September 12th, 2007 @ 5:27 am
Thanks for saving me two seasons of Superhero. Stan Lee is such a whore. And I hate bonus tracks “hidden” behind a bunch of dead air. I always keep checking my iPod until I catch on. Bastards.
September 12th, 2007 @ 5:56 am
Well, I haven’t seen season 2 yet so I can’t comment on any changes or omissions, which would be the most interesting topics for me. Mainly, I’m curious how the people I got to know by watching their every move on unedited footage get portrayed in a 1-hour/week format – I never watched most of the reality shows I worked on (because the funniest stuff generally can’t be aired, so I don’t care how it’s edited) but this show was definitely run differently than the others.
Also, I certainly won’t reveal anything NDA-related in a public forum (no matter how far away I’ve moved since I signed the papers). But I do recall seeing (in the production notes somewhere?) a reference to Dr. D’s identity being revealed as, yes, a major film celebrity – no one you’d guess, but everyone knows his name and distinctive voice. I was dumbfounded; the actor in the costume clearly wasn’t this person, and there was no hint of this in the footage I’d seen, nor any other rumor of a deal being made with the guy. I decided it must be a red herring left to test out the crew’s integrity and can’t explain why it made its way into the promotion for the show.
I can also tell you that the finalists were for the most part the people on the show who were “acting” the least. Apart from an undercurrent of competitiveness that is part and parcel of any reality show, they pretty much were as I presume you saw them, and (unlike many shows) they got along well together.
I don’t know what bits of the extensive background interviews got aired either, but most of the cast have one or two surprises about their “real lives” if you care enough about any to Google them (well, they pretty much all have MySpace pages now too…)
More later perhaps, I have a much earlier bedtime these days!
September 12th, 2007 @ 8:42 pm
Thanks for the info, InfK (or should I say DOCTOR DARK). I look forward to future revelations.
September 13th, 2007 @ 8:15 am
Don’t be so sure about that – bet you weren’t looking forward to this one: http://www.filmschoolrejects.com/news/stan-lee-makes-a-move-on-paris-hilton.php
September 17th, 2007 @ 11:32 pm
Hygena’s husband here. InfK, just wanted to say thanks for your work on the show.
As for Doctor Dark’s identity…friggen NDA…
September 18th, 2007 @ 7:23 am
I’m sorry Hygena didn’t win, Mistwell. She appeared very heroic, but Defuser seemed to have the inside track from the beginning.
November 5th, 2007 @ 3:07 pm
i just came across your post whilst trolling — i’m sorry, i’m in that band winterpills, and we tried repeatedly to get them to remove the empty tracks (makes sense on a cd — does NOT make sense for digital downloads!), and they simply don’t do it. apologies. – philip from winterpills
November 5th, 2007 @ 3:26 pm
Hi, Philip, thanks for the explanation. Yes, eMusic’s customer service is legendary. I can understand your frustration, and I hope you know I wasn’t blaming the band.
BTW, the album has grown on me, like I predicted it would. Good stuff, strong melodies.
November 5th, 2007 @ 7:41 pm
I suspect that perhaps eMusic wouldn’t remove the tracks because, if they’d done so, they’d have to post a notice saying something like “not all tracks available” or at any rate that they album you download isn’t the album you buy in the stores. In this case, of course, no one would care – at least about the silence. But I can just imagine some asshole downloading the album (hypothetically excluding the silent track), then buying the “real” album, finding the silent track – and then bitching to eMusic and threatening to sue over their misrepresenting what was downloaded as being all of the album.
My take is no more goddamned silent tracks, ever. Just stop it. If you want separation between an album proper and bonus tracks, or just to replicate the Side 1/Side 2 LP dynamic, just append X seconds of silence (any more than 30 is a huge pain in the ass) to the end of the last track before the break rather than make it its own track.
When I am king, all bands shall be forced to bow to my will in this matter.
November 6th, 2007 @ 11:29 pm
All bands should be 2fs’ bitch.