POWERLESS Warms Up to “Cold Season”

Season 1, Episode 5: “Cold Season”
Written by Amy Mass
Directed by Clark Mathis

[All photos courtesy NBC Universal]

A hot day in Charm City…and everyone is wearing coats. Every spring, a cold-themed villain invades Charm City. Who is it this year? Frostbite. Brrrr.

Teddy (Danny Pudi) has a new invention that’s just right for cold season: a pair of powered gloves that will not only unfreeze objects but also heat up your coffee. Emily (Vanessa Hudgens) thinks Teddy should enter them in the Wayne innovation contest. Teddy is reluctant to do so, but Emily enters them behind his back. Jackie (Christina Kirk) tells her the story of the last time Teddy was pushed into something like this…it wasn’t pretty.

Meanwhile, Van (Alan Tudyk) needs help putting together a Superman kiddie car for his girlfriend’s kid; Jackie won’t do it, so he coerces Ron (Ron Funches) into doing it for him.

Teddy gets obsessed over getting the gloves to be perfect. It starts to push him to the edge…so Emily tells him that they’ve made it to the finals (a lie).

Van, meanwhile, calls Ron. Turns out the kid is a girl and she wants a Wonder Woman jet kiddie car…which are invisible. Ron is willing to help, even though Wendy tells him that Van is taking advantage of him.

The team from Wayne X drops by to rub it in Emily’s face that they won the contest. She goes to Teddy at his apartment to tell him the bad news and meets his ultra-successful family including his brother, the space doctor. Teddy is humiliated.

Back at work, Teddy seems fine, but when they start to work on a new version of the fear gas detector, Teddy starts to freak out. So Emily tries to calm him down out on the balcony. Just then Crimson Fox (Deanna Russo) lands on the balcony! Look out! Frostbite attacks and freezes Crimson Fox in a sheet of ice.

Locked out of the office, they use the gloves to unfreeze the Fox and have a chat about what it’s like to have over-achieving siblings. Unfrozen, Fox asks to use the gloves to defeat Frostbite.

Meanwhile, Van calls and asks for more and more from Ron. He snaps and tells Van off. Later, in person, Van and Ron apologize to each other. Van asks for a treehouse, Ron is only happy to oblige (sucker).

Marv Wolfman (Bill A. Jones) reports that cold season is over! Crimson Fox used the gloves to defeat several cold-themed villains, and Teddy is very happy.

Analysis:

First off, this was such a fast paced episode, helped along by nifty Wayne Tech transitions between scenes; very nice.

So many cold villains were listed it was fantastic. The one we get to see for a hot few seconds was Frostbite.  The only Frostbite I know in DC Universe lore was the hero Frostbite from “Young Heroes in Love”. The answer to the riddle came from fellow SciFi4Me correspondent Jeff Hackworth, who identified the character as Ice’s counterpart from Earth-3 in Justice League Quarterly #8 (1992). [You can hear that exchange in the latest Rogues Gallery.]

We did get a good look at Crimson Fox in this episode as she got frozen by Frostbite.  I like the costume, but I’m not really sold on the actress’ performance.

Did I mention that this episode was jam packed? We had the cold villain wrapper, the “A” plot with Teddy and Emily and the “B” plot with Van and Ron. The two plots would have been even better if they had been a little longer. The way this episode went they both seemed short and tiny.

Van is a really a jerk. He takes advantage of Ron to put together kiddie cars for the brat of his latest girlfriend. I gotta give them credit for the invisible jet car gag, impractical as it is. How did he put that together? I’m also going to guess the kid loses it in a day. It would also seem like it would be a safety hazard. Maybe safety laws are a little lax on Earth-P?

A big question here: after they gave the gloves to Crimson Fox, how did Emily and Teddy get back into the office? They never melted the ice off the door. After she takes off, they’re still stuck on the balcony. Did someone in the office call for help?

The team from Wayne X (sounds like an Elon Musk type of team) are really good. They built a nearly human robot. Wonder if they have Professor Ivo working with them? Also, if they’re in the same building, are there other tech teams in the same place?

Next episode, we learn the power of friendship…and how to use that to your advantage in “Ima Friend You”.

 

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.