If I had to write a definition for ham-fisted The Awesomes would be one of my first references. The show has some interesting characters, decent animation and a great cast of voice actors which made me wonder why this show isn't better. The answer being the writing. The script feels like it is really holding the show back. It bludgeons the watcher over the head with whatever it is trying to convey giving the viewers no intellectual credit whatsoever. It feels like it's a kid show in it's delivery with sporadic adult content thrown in. Almost like a less funny, much more adult Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs (which is an excellent movie).I realize this is harsh on many levels so let me rein it in. Kenan Thompson, Ike Barinholtz and Taran Killam are excellent; their characters are what have gotten me through the series. Ironically the two characters we're supposed to feel the most strongly about: Prock and Hotwire, are the most difficult to care for. Their rapport felt rushed and kind of materializes out of nowhere. Their relationship, much like the show gets better as it begins to take form, but it just feels like it should be better.My advice is to watch it, digest it and come to your own conclusion. I hope this post doesn't keep any one from trying the show out but lets some like-minded viewers know what they're in for.

The more superhero stories pervade our TVs and movie screens, the more room there is for superhero parodies.The latest one is created by SNL head writer and comic book geek Seth Meyers who created this show along with his Saturday Night Live cohorts and populated with a cast of mostly SNL talent along with his brother Josh (Mad TV).The hero, Prock, is a mild-mannered guy who ranks towards the bottom of the barrel of all the world's superheroes (this is a world overwrought with superpowered-humans who are all organized in a full-on bureaucracy that's part of the satire) but has a lot of smarts and when his dad announces his retirement, he goes on to lead a ragtag group of misfits. It's the kind of plot you've seen in all kinds of stuff from "Sky High" to "Mystery Men" to the "Misfits" to a comic book that Taran Killam just wrote. The show is really clever in the way that I'd expect from an SNL head writer and gets its satirical jabs in where it can get them. The problem is generally that many of the characters are weak and uninteresting and, well, those characters take up a lot of the screen time. Taran Killam plays a one-note redneck speedster, Keenan Thompson plays a mama's boy who sounds like Kenan Thompson always does, Bobby Lee plays a boy who turns into sumo wrestler. His character being the kid on the team seems like it has some potential to be any sort of character dynamic but it's quickly dropped. Ike Barinholtz is moderately potential-filled as the sidekick, and a lot of the more interesting characters come from outside the superhero team: Bill Hader as supervillain Malocchio and Josh Meyers as rival Prock. Interestingly enough, a couple of SNL's writers Emily Spivey and Paula Pell voice characters here. Pell's character is equally one-note with a moderately gross angle about an old woman being sexy and Spivey's character, a super-secretary of sorts with a charming Southern accent named concierge is the kind of character who feels like she belongs in a more well-rounded cast.

Tried to watch "The Awesomes"... I really did but... meh. It's clearly a labour of love from Seth Myers, but that's about all I can say for it. It suffers one of the fatal flaws that Alphas did for me; for a show about Superheroes, there is surprisingly little superheroing or action about it.It's a lot of introspective self-indulgent whining by a c list superhero squad thrust into the spotlight, and it really doesn't even do that well. It lacks the pop-culture cache of Futurama, the edge of Watchmen, the genre-awareness of Incredibles, or the whit of Kim Possible, even though it is clearly trying for all of those marks. The plotting takes a lot of predictable tropes, and sadly it can't execute them well enough to make them interesting, or poorly enough to make them camp.The animation is stilted and low quality. In an era when even an amateur can turn in Caanes and Sundance quality work from a moderately powerful PC; it's flat, jerky, and the designs and color choices are uninspired. In the first 22 minute installment, the only things visually that caught my eye were a hairnet and a biplane. Not a character, a costume, a setting, or even a gadget, but a plot gag and one-note throw-away joke. It feels like a three minute SNL animated bit stretched to 22 minutes, which makes it painful on some level....in the end, this show falls into that deadly zone of mediocrity; it's not aggressively bad enough to be talked down, but it's not good enough to be talked up either. In short, its not surprising no one is talking about this show at all. Hulu's limited budget could have been far better spent elsewhere.Sorry Seth, but stick to observational humor, because clearly superheroes is not your forte.

I have to admit, I'm unsure who the target audience is, and maybe I'm exactly who it was made for, but I think this is great. As a longtime superhero fan, and a gamer (and admittedly a superhero RPG player), I think they nailed the misfit Hero concept pretty comfortably. I agree with the other review (there's only one at the time I'm writing this) that it could be edgier, and it could probably be made to appeal more broadly (how many viewers have ever participated in a tabletop Superhero themed RPG, really?), but unless it's trying to be, or compete with Family Guy, it's probably OK with what it is.I can't see the show being around long, which is the biggest reason I didn't give it a higher review. I think it would be a bigger hit if, honestly, there were less focus on Prock, and a decent bit more about each member of the team, and if they could isolate a target audience. That's why Drawn Together worked, despite being seen as crude, sick, stupid, and random (in my unabbreviated opinion). They knew who their audience was.I hope the writers read this. I would love to see The Awesomes stick around.