Emily Locke arrives as a new director at Wayne Security in Charmed City, full of excitement and idealism about her new job. But she almost gets killed before she can arrive at work. Why? Charmed City is ground zero for fights between minor superheroes and supervillains. Emily’s train is derailed by a supervillain, and the superhero Crimson Fox saves her and the rest of the train. Emily looks like she’s going to explode with delight.
Wayne Security was founded by the distant Bruce Wayne. They try
to create products to help citizens protect themselves from supervillains (and
the fallout from superhero battles). Emily is raring to go with her team of
experts. Unfortunately, the Charmed City division is headed by a lesser cousin,
Vanderveer “Van” Wayne. He is shallow, obnoxious, stupid—everything that would
make a normal person quit. But not Emily. She constantly locks horns with Van, who
often doesn’t even get what the argument is about. But she usually wins—kind of.
What makes things worse for Emily are the three leading
specialists she has to work with. They are technical geniuses, but normally don’t
pay attention to what she says. Teddy is arguably the greatest genius, but is high
strung. He is depressed for almost an entire episode. Ron is easy-going—too easy-going
when a project needs to be done. Wendy is flat-out hostile to Emily, always
insulting her with a smile on her face.
Jackie is Van’s deadpan personal assistant. She started out
young and idealistic like Emily, so she constantly tries to discourage her.
Although, she is sometimes Emily’s ally. Jackie often gets in a good one to undermine
Van, without his being able to figure it out.
Everyone does a fantastic job in the show. The writing is
excellent, sometimes with good workplace humor, often with zany lines that come
out of nowhere. Usually the best scenes are between Emily—played by Vanessa
Hudgens, known from her role in the High School Musical franchise—and Van—played
by Alan Tudyk, known from his roles in Firefly and Transformers: Dark
of the Moon. Vanessa Hudgens is incredible. She goes through multiple extreme facial expressions every minute.
I say that Powerless is the funniest sitcom ever. Currently on The CW.
