There are a ton of superhero shows these days, almost an endless supply of DC and Marvel stories. People crave the hero that faces seemingly insurmountable obstacles, maybe an homage to their sense of wear and tear in their daily lives, that the obstacles they themselves face are insurmountable and it is nice to see good triumph over evil at least somewhere. Or it’s just predictable and therefore comforting.

Enter Doom Patrol. A little more along the lines of the darkness of Deadpool, but it is narrated as if it is a spoof on itself. Enter Charles Xavier-lite, albeit still in a wheelchair yet with hair, and four people he has tried to help adjust enough to have some sort of life. A soft spot to land after a horrendous event.

The main character at first is a race-car driver who seems to have been in a horrific car crash and the only thing that could be saved was his brain. So now he is in a metal robot suit. More Frankenstein than Iron Man. He is helped by a man wrapped in bandages from head to toe, an ex-test pilot for the military who went into near orbit and became inhabited by some strange alien energy cloud. And an ex-actress who became possessed by some sort of water spirit who turns into a melted mass of flesh when she gets nervous. Plus, finally, a girl with 64 different personalities in her, most of whom are rude as f***, and later you find out, can turn into a large flaming Torch-like girl.

Oh I wanted to like it based on the actors. Brendan Fraser plays Robotman. Sometimes good, sometimes annoying. The test pilot is played by Matt Bomer, who I really enjoy. Timothy Dalton plays the doctor, and don’t mind him. Diane Guerrero as Crazy Jane isn’t a draw, but I don’t mind her. And while I am not familiar with April Bowlby as elasti-girl, I really quite like her. Yet none of them are enough.

Bad acting, ridiculous narration, strange campy feel to it. More like you’re watching a 1950s spoof of something. It is almost unwatchable. With it being superheroes, and a bit of a Deadpool feel to it, I was initially thinking renewal. Now that I’ve seen it, I’m going with CANCELLATION.

Okay then. Well. I watched the premiere episode of Deadly Class. And well. Hmm.

How do you review a show that is a cross between Deadpool and The Breakfast Club, with no preppies or jocks, just the rebels and the assassins?

Ostensibly, the show is about a school for kids to become assassins. I don’t know why I expected a slightly lighter touch, maybe like Kingsman or Deadpool, or a Hogwarts rip-off where everyone’s a Slytherin. Nope, it’s dark, it’s moody, it’s all the problems of being a new kid in a tough high school except everyone’s in a gang capable of killing you if it wasn’t against the rules. Although some of the rules are more like guidelines.

Enter the main character, Marcus, who is rumoured to have burned down an orphanage with 12 people inside. On the run from the police, with nowhere to go, he is offered a place to stay at a secret school. Master Lin, head of the school for the Deadly Arts, wants to give him a home and a purpose, or at least train him not to be prey. The opening scene shows a history class talking about WWI starting with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and when someone passes a note in class to the new boy (Marcus), Master Lin breaks her nose with his walking stick and continues on with the lesson. This is not your typical high school, obviously. The rest of the episode is him hooking up with the unaffiliated students, trying to find his way through the hierarchy without getting killed his first day, and working on his first assignment — to kill someone who should be killed, hide the evidence, and provide proof.

Marcus is played by Benjamin Wadsworth and he’s a bit uneven in the episode, ranging from wide-eyed scared kid to tough guy who will stand up to anyone. Decent but hardly great acting. Master Lin is played by Benedict Wong, and if he ever leaves behind the role of being the Inscrutable Asian, I’ll find out if he can act. Adequate but not earth-shattering.

Other students pop up to keep life interesting — Saya, a Yakuza kid; Petra, unaligned goth chick; Maria, a gangbanger’s girlfriend; Willie, a pacifist hiding in the school; and Billy, a weird possibly gay kid, who is willing to align with anyone who would take him. All of them are decent actors, none of them are given much to do.

Again, I have no idea how to rate the show. I liked it, but it is pretty dark and confused. I would not want to bet on renewal though, so I’ll go with the original prediction of CANCELLATION.

I didn’t know much about Boomerang other than it was about someone working in advertising, and when it started, I noticed it was only sitcom length. And the opening scene was a REALLY bad commercial for some stupid soda, with ridiculous characters and ridiculous lines. I thought it must be a really unfunny comedy.

Nope, it’s a semi-drama about two young up and coming black advertising types who want to find their own way, even though both work for a big ad company that their parents built. I only say that because I watched the first episode, had almost no clue what the premise of the show was or where it was going, and had to read the IMDB description to figure it out. The dialogue was obvious, the show was short, and there was about as much content as a sitcom without the jokes.

They couldn’t even hold my interest at sitcom length. I’m not even going to bother reviewing it in more detail — my pick was originally CANCELLATION, and I see no reason to change it.