Posted: 07/11/2011

Alphas

by Phil Forsyth

Series Premiere Monday, July 11 at 10pm ET/PT on Syfy

Syfy’s new leading hopeful Alphas is a show made by people who clearly know the math to an ensemble hero plot line. Taking cues from more recent adaptations of superhero back stories, the pilot plays like the first recruiting of key characters from comic book franchises like X-Men, The Justice League of America, or The Avengers, where you have a central leader (played here by a superb David Strathairn) pulling together good if troubled people with special abilities to put them to use conquering the forces of evil. And it’s got a good chance of succeeding where franchises like the recent X-Mens failed by being a series…like the comics that spawned such plot lines. After all, there are twists and turns and a lot more background for these ensemble productions than you can cram into just a few hours.

In Alphas, Strathairn plays Dr. Lee Rosen, who works predictably for some government agency doing low profile secret agent stuff with his crack team of super-powered misfits. The sort of awkward casting includes Malik Yoba as Bill Harken, the group’s genuinely unpleasant tough guy in trouble for using his super human adrenal strength a bit compulsively and without much thought. It makes for good chemistry when he continually bumps heads with Rachel (who has heightened senses) and Gary (a high functioning autistic teenager who can read information transmitted in the air such as television, radio, and Wi-Fi signals).

The Pilot for Alphas centers around the addition of new guy Cameron Hicks (Warren Christie) who has the ability to hit targets by banking shots off random things in a given area. Clever. But let’s hope the heightened physical ability and aim have more applications as the show goes on. The real mystery in the Pilot is what the hell manipulative, spoiled, town housing, 5th Avenue queen Nina Theroux (Laura Mennell) is doing mixed up with this bunch. There are some clues but a back story is yet to make itself known. Her powers of influence over free will would seem to make her the most powerful of the alphas and yet she submits to her given tasks and shows up for meetings with the good doctor and her compatriots as though attending an AA meeting. Oh, what rich spoils lie in her past that brought her here?! The intrigue.

There’s a real danger in underwriting characters in an ensemble cast. The result can be that you have a lot of uninteresting people floating around when you might have done better with one interesting one. It’s hard to make some people care about one or two characters in an entire season. When screen time is stretched to encompass many, it’s hard for anyone to get much memorable attention. The Pilot for Alphas is determined not to let this happen and spends maybe more time than necessary trying to make you like these guys. And maybe not enough showing off their cool party tricks. But now that that’s out of the way, maybe we can get on with the biff-bang-pow. We get more than a little in this Pilot anyway. Dr. Lee Rosen is a fine character to center this show around. He is quirky and likeable and well played by Strathairn, from whom we could expect no less. Let us hope more of these ensemble characters get as much emphasis lest they go the way of more expendable characters from the comics they emulate.

The special effects for the series are impressive. Syfy typically short changes the effects on some new shows but there’s no evidence of that here. Though they do keep it simple (a few CGI bullets, Gary’s visualizations of Internet streaming) and it all looks seamless and tidy where there should be a bit more mess what with all the fires and explosions we can expect from a series full of super-powered ordinary people with little self-discipline. There are no alien invaders yet but the zip of these light shows does give you the impression the show could pull it off if it tried.

Another technical aspect I always enjoy is when shows have definitive taste. The music for Alphas is both thoughtful and appropriate. Set designs are kept pretty minimum and often there seems to be nothing to look at but the show pops visually in other areas. Wardrobe and setting all seem to be handled with care and we get a nicely costumed James Bond type villain right up front. But the camp of colorful spandex super suits seem to have gone out of style these days. Don’t watch for any Batman style suit ups. They’re not coming.

Alphas is right in playing it safe with a minimal setup. Shows like it (Heroes, for instance) have done well but crashed and burned at times when they got over ambitious. And movie adaptations practically ruin a perfectly good story when they try too hard to include a lot of characters (X-Men: The Last Stand anybody?) Alphas has taken a more concise approach and it works. But there are hints of bigger things to come. Secret organizations, past secrets to be revealed, the true origins of who the alphas are working for, what happened to Nina Theroux and why is she so good at what she does? We’ve barely grazed the surface of who the alphas are working against and something more sinister is surely afoot.

Tune in next week to find out what adventures are in store.

Phil Forsyth is a musician, filmmaker, and writer living in Chicago.

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