I was really trying, until the "that was a permanent marker" cliché not even halfway through the first episode. Is your writer's room really that shallow? How do you have a cast with Alan Tudyk, Ron Funches, and Danny Pudi, all of whom are hilarious, and turn them into flat unfunny stereotypes? I halfway expected them to mug right at the camera at the end of their lines. Vanessa Hudgens plays a paint-by-numbers small town girl in the big city, and in a show set in a world of comics and superheroes, she's unbelievably cartoonish. I've heard Better Off Ted name dropped a few times in reference to Powerless, but Ted had carefully constructed satire and deep, biting sarcasm, whereas this doesn't even hit the level of a Chuck Lorre laugh-tracked sitcom. If this show makes it to season two and has a chance to retool there might be a diamond in there somewhere, but for now it seems like it's all rough.
