POWERLESS Crowns Its Champion in “Van v Emily: Dawn of Justice”
Season 1, Episode 7: “Van v Emily: Dawn of Justice”
Written by Greg Lisbe & Jared Miller
Directed by Jaffar Mamood
[All photos courtesy NBC Universal]
Ron (Ron Funches) and Teddy (Danny Pudi) are talking out on the office balcony about Teddy’s girlfriend when Jack-O-Lantern (Kimani Ray Smith) zooms by throwing a pumpkin bomb at them causing Teddy to fall off the balcony, in a flash, he’s rescued by Charm City’s newest hero, Green Fury (Natalie Morales).
Meanwhile, Emily (Vanessa Hudgens) goes to Van (Alan Tudyk) to complain that she doesn’t have her own office. Van tells her that there is no space.
So she goes over Van’s head and talks to the home office in Gotham. Turns out, there is a space in it that has a spider in it; if she gets rid of the spider, it’s hers.
Van is upset over Emily’s actions and tells her to get back to her cubicle. Back in her cubicle, Emily is crushed, but she goes to Van to demand her office back and ends up challenging him to a game of Green Arrow darts.
The team warns Emily that this is a bad idea and that Van is a sore loser, confiding in Emily why Van is Employee of the Month ever month.
Later the game is set up, and after some trash talk, they play. At first, Emily lets Van win, but her competitive nature and Van’s bragging causes her to actually try to win. Emily still ends up losing.
The next day Van is in such a good mood, he’s given the office all new chairs and scones. He’s even gonna let Emily get her office.
Meanwhile, Teddy has created a dummy to throw off the balcony to get Green Fury’s attention; unfortunately, he goes off the balcony with it. Instead of being saved by GF though, he’s saved by The Olympian (Joel Michael Kramer) instead.
Emily has her office, but she’s still not happy that she lost and challenges Van again. She lets the proverbial cat out of the bag by demonstrating to him that people have been letting him win all his life. Van is crushed. Emily has completely broken him with this revelation. Van and Emily talk, and she tells him that he beat her all on his own with no one’s help. Van’s ego is reinflated again.
Meanwhile, Teddy is out on a date with his girlfriend when a thief steals her purse. Green Fury stops the robbery and Teddy gets to meet her face to face, putting him in an awkward situation with his girlfriend.
Analysis:
This episode was a definite improvement over last week.
We get plenty of references in this episode: Lois Lane, Green Arrow and an appearance by The Olympian, as well as a new superhero to take Crimson Fox’s place, Green Fury.
Green Fury is better known as Fire in the DC Universe. She first appeared in Super Friends #25 in October 1979. Beatriz da Costa was given her powers by Brazilian mysticism and was the president of Wayne Enterprises in Brazil. After Crisis on Infinite Earths, her history was changed to that of a super model turned Brazilian secret agent who got endowed with powers in a pyroplasmic explosion.
Green Fury’s special effects were decent but brief. I wish that they had an all over fire effect on her as that would make the costume look better.
This was a big insight into Van and Emily’s competitive natures. Van was competitive because he thought he never lost (mainly because everyone let him win to avoid his nasty streak). Emily was competitive because she has a bit of a superiority complex. Emily got her way but STILL felt the need to not let Van gloat, causing her to go confront him and burst his bubble about his own superiority complex.
I must applaud the title for this episode. At the very least, it was way shorter than the movie.
I’m kinda getting worried here, because the production vs air order of the episodes is pretty wild. So far it’s been this: 2,3,6,7,5,8,10. Episode 1 was the original pilot so that can be discounted. But what happened to episodes 4 and 5? When will we get to see them and if they air, will they make sense out of order?
I’ve been giving it some thought and I really think this series would have worked better with either a longer runtime, two-part episodes or a more serialized format.
Next week, this series gets an “Emergency Punch-Up”.
Powerless airs Thursday at 8:30/7:30 Central on NBC. It can also be found on Hulu, Amazon, and NBC.com. For more information, visit the official website.
