Review: Misfits (2009)
Misfits is a new 6-episode series airing in the UK about five young people who are caught in a freak storm and receive super powers. However, unlike most shows of this sort, they’re not really the heroic type. In fact, they’re performing community service at the time and are all under an ASBO (Anti-social behavior order). So immediately, they set out to abuse their powers as they learn more about them.
Alisha, Curtis, Kelly, Nathan and Simon find, however, that they were not the only ones affected by the storm. Their social worker, Tony, was turned into a super-strong killing machine, bent on murdering the Misfits until they used their powers to kill him and his one victim and bury them both under a bridge. Jeremy, Nathan’s mother’s current boyfriend, turns into a dog, in spirit if not in body, at night and roams the streets naked. Ruth, an apparently pretty young woman that hooks up with Nathan, turns out to be an 82-year old woman that wanted to be young again. We’re not really sure exactly how many people were affected or what the means of power transfer was in the storm.
But one thing I have to ask, did they purposely go out looking for the ugliest actors and actresses they could find in England? I’m not expecting them to be beauty queens, but geez, most of them are just downright ugly. Everyone keeps going on and on about how supposedly beautiful Alisha, the girl with the “fuck-me” power is, but holy crap… I wouldn’t touch her with a ten foot cattle prod. And Kelly? Half the time you can’t even understand what she’s saying. I know she’s supposed to be low-class, but she’s hardly even speaking recognizable English. She’s like trailer-trash with a mouth-full of gravel.
What’s worse, perhaps, is they’re trying to cast most of them as sympathetic characters, especially Alisha and Simon, but I’m not all that sympathetic toward them. You have Alisha, the fuck-slut, who now can’t touch anyone without making them go mega-horny. Poor baby. To put it in American comic book terms, she’s the Rogue character, the one who has to do without human contact, but in Rogue’s case, at least her power was useful for those occasions she did have to use it. Alisha’s exists only for abuse. Even the scenes where Curtis admits he likes her, not because of her powers but because of her personality (and geez, he’s got low standards doesn’t he), the talk is only about sex, that’s all they really have in common. Or Simon, the boy with invisibility powers, who gets ignored by everyone. While he’s certainly the brightest of the group, that’s like patting the slightly-less-retarded boy on the head because he doesn’t drool as much as the rest of his special education class. Not a hint of sympathy from me, sorry.
It’s a good try, it’s nice to see them trying different things in the all-too-predictable superhero market, but at least try to make them worthwhile human beings. It seems like they specifically went out of their way to make the characters unlikeable and maybe that’s the case, but isn’t the whole genre based around wishful thinking? What would it be like to have these powers? What would you do with them? But what’s the point if the powers you get suck? The power to get laid? The power to make people bald? The power to run around naked acting like a dog? Why would anyone want them to begin with, and even if they got them, when your characters are as anti-social and irredeemable as these, why would anyone care what happens? I realize that the powers are supposed to reflect the inner character of the individuals, but when they have no positive inner character… what can we expect?
Granted, the series isn’t over yet and maybe there will be a huge turn-about at the end, but based on what I’ve seen so far, I’m not holding out a lot of hope. I guess I’m even giving it a bit of a better rating based on the assumption that it’s got to get better, that these kids have to turn out to be somehow worthwhile in the end, but with more than half of the series gone and none of them showing anything even resembling a heroic bone in their bodies, or even the inclination to care about anyone else, I guess I’ll have to keep my fingers crossed. Unfortunately I have a feeling it’ll end with a flurry of low-class teen angst and stupidity and I may regret sitting down to watch the whole thing if that happens.
(2.8/5)
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