Excelsior!

Watch very unusual and fascinating show on the Science Fiction channel (doubt could find again if tried) last night. Show called Who Wants to Be a Superhero? reality show in which Grown-ups wear superhero suits and compete to see--in the words of Stan Lee who is the host--who has the heart and soul to be a superhero. The contestants live in a Lair. At mention of word Lair, and the behavior of the contestants, which is strangely serious given that the men are wearing full-body spandex suits and the lone woman looks like she is wearing a cheap Halloween costume, Dave says Oh Mah Laawrd, and we both sit up on edge of couch. During the episode (the second to last--there are only three contestants left) a flat panel TV screen periodically fires up and Stan Lee gives instructions to the Superheros. Am both wistful and yet somewhat glad that come to the show as late as have come. For example, have missed episode in which the three remaining contestants have had to battle attack dogs (superheroes naturally do not have any real superpowers so are intelligently wearing big suits and helmets) to disable fake looking giant electroshock machine or some such device that throws off sparks. One contestant, Hygena--who when not wearing her dog proof suit wields a magic feather duster and wears a modified French maid outfit--offers to be Bait so that the other two contestants--Hyper-Strike and The Defuser--can complete Mission. Am very sad to only see this exciting sequence in flashback as Stan Lee critiques the superheroes' actions. Do get to see--in Media challenge--the superheroes being interviewed by Kennedy (of last century's MTV fame). Favorite part is when she asks Hyper-Strike if he can do a handstand on the interview couch. Yes he can, and he does. In final episode, which conveniently follows the first we see, the superheros Learn to Fight from a person who says his name is Balls Mahoney. Feel certain that this is a pseudonym. The superheroes are fitted into harnesses and then they fly around in front of green screen, executing flips and shouting out their tag lines. The Defuser's line is Excelsior! which do not very much care for because of woeful moment in mid-childhood when threw up in lobby of the Excelsior hotel in Venice--but this, naturally, did not enter into his calculations. After the fighting, the superheros have private conversations with Stan Lee, who makes them talk about their personal traumas which have lead them to superherodom. Hyper-Strike--whose real last name is Stork--says that he was a weird kid who didn't have very many friends--and (he continues) if you have a name that rhymes with something, forget about it, he was Stork the Dork forever. Hygena had a late term miscarriage which made her very afraid of many things, but the show has given her the courage to Try Again. The Defuser watched his older sister get caught up in a bad crowd and turn to drugs, and when he was young he wished that a hero could walk off the pages of a comic book and come help out his family. Are you crying? Dave asks. Tell him no, but neither do I turn my face to his. Dave notes that this is the only reality show he's ever seen in which everybody is Good. Agree, emotionally, but later worry about how much of own time on earth is spent wondering about the lives of others.