POWERLESS Formally Introduces The New Hero in “Green Furious”
Season 1, Episode 8: “Green Furious”
Written by Dean Loray
Directed by Michael MacDonald
[All photos courtesy NBC Universal]
Breaking News! The Olympian (Joel Michael Kramer) and Green Fury (Natalie Morales) have split up!
Anyway, Emily (Vanessa Hudgens) sees Green Fury being mobbed on the street by the paparazzi after pulling off a rescue. While her attention is on them, Jack-O-Lantern (Kimani Ray Smith) takes the moment to try and fry our new hero with a pumpkin bomb! Luckily, Emily grabs Fury and saves her. “I owe you one,” she tells Emily and gives her a signal device so she can call on the green haired one in the future.
The team looks at Emily’s “prize”, with Teddy (Danny Pudi) being furious because he’s still hung up on the firey lass.
Today, Emily is going to sit in on a board meeting with Van (Alan Tudyk); he tells her not to talk, but just laugh at his jokes.
Jackie (Christina Kirk) has brought her daughter, Ruby (Willa Miel Pogue) with her to work because she was suspended from school for hitting. Wendy (Jennie Pierson) warms right up to the tyke, much to Jackie’s chagrin.
In the board meeting, Emily is dismayed that they’re considering axing the Poncho that Emily likes. So, Emily speaks up and tells them that they need a new ad campaign with a superhero selling the product. She pulls out the signal device and summons Green Fury, impressing the board.
Fury is a little upset that she was summoned for something so trivial, but Emily convinces her that this will help reshape her image which was damaged by the breakup. The green haired heroine agrees to be in the commercial.
Meanwhile, Ron (Ron Funches) is in a focus group when Teddy busts in with his new leather jacket, wearing it in the hopes that Fury will notice him. The group just tears him down.
Meanwhile, Wendy and Ruby are becoming friends, when Jackie comes over and asks Wendy to stop hanging around with her child.
At the commercial shoot, Emily is dismayed to find that the executives have taken her tasteful commercial and made it really sexy, featuring a nude Green Fury and very little of the poncho.
Jackie is at the end of her rope with Ruby and tells Wendy that she can have her. All she really wants to know is why Ruby hit that other kid. Ruby finally comes clean and admits that the kid was saying bad things about Jackie.
Meanwhile, back at the studio, Green Fury isn’t having the changes that the execs made, she trusts Emily though and they come up with a compromise.
The Olympian, a total glory hound, is called in to do the commercial. We see the finished commercial with a bare naked Olympian washing a car and Green Fury demonstrating the poncho at the end. The commercial tests positively.
The commercial works and the paparazzi are more interested in The Olympian then Fury’s life. Fury even got a call from the Justice League…Europe.
Analysis:
This episode was… not bad. In fact, I might say this has been one of the best episodes of the series so far.
We get a good look at our new hero, Green Fury, and she doesn’t even like that name.
We get a “b” story that stays short and in the background allowing the “a” story plenty of time to work with.
And for the ladies, we get The Olympian “naked”.
We also got some good DCU references including Darkseid, Justice League Europe and The Scarecrow.
I just wonder if we aren’t missing an episode between this one and the last, as last week Green Fury had just arrived and this week were she and The Olympian were breaking up.
Maybe it’ll be in next week’s episode, “Emergency Punch-up”, the reason that “Green Furious” was switched for this episode was because “Emergency Punch-up” featured a gas attack and that just happened in Syria. Although this episode does come after “Van v Emily…” in the production order, so I guess we will see.
How difficult must it be to live in a world where you need to carry around a security poncho so not to be injured or killed? That must kinda suck.
Natalie Morales’s performance as Green Fury was pretty good. I do wish that her flames would cover her body all over like in the comics, but that might be beyond the budget of a half hour sitcom.
Finally, we still have no idea if this show will get renewed. The viewership has been consistent at around 2 million, but that might not be enough to save it.
Next week, this series gets an “Emergency Punch-Up”, (we hope).
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.
