The Awesomes, on Hulu
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Caution: potential spoilers.

An animated comedy series created by Seth Meyers (of SNL fame) and Mike Shoemaker, who also serve as executive producers, along with Lorne Michaels. Also, Meyers voices the main character, Jeremy 'Prock' Awesome. Prock is a genius with two doctorates, so his official title is Professor Doctor Awesome. ('Prock' is a portmanteau of 'professor' and 'doctor.') However, all he's ever wanted to be is a superhero. His father is Mr. Awesome, who founded the superhero team The Awesomes, which he led for 70 years. The team was funded by the U.S. government, which has a rating system for superhero powers. Mr. Awesome is a 10, but Prock is just a 2. (He has the ability to stop time, though he's not supposed to do it, because using his power could eventually kill him. Nevertheless, he frequently does stop time, just long enough for him to pace around and think things through. It's a neat little storytelling device that allows us to hear what for anyone else would be an internal monologue. Less frequently, he may actually use the power for heroic purposes.)

Season one
At the start of the series, a supervillain called Dr. Malocchio is wreaking all kinds of havoc in Washington, D.C. Prock seems to be the only hero left who can possibly stop him, but just as they're about to clash, the show flashes back six months. So the rest of the 10-episode season will lead up to that climactic confrontation. The story begins with Mr. Awesome retiring as leader of the Awesomes, to fly off into space and catch up on his reading. He offers the leadership of the group to Perfect Man, who declines the position, and instead quits the team to go solo. So Prock offers to lead the team, and his father reluctantly agrees. However, almost all the other heroes also quit the team. The only one who remains is Muscleman, who has been Prock's best friend since they were kids. As his name suggests, his power is being really strong. He's also somewhat slow-witted, but basically a nice guy. With most of the good heroes gone, government agent Joyce Mandrake cuts funding to the team, and reclaims all the tech and vehicles from their headquarters. However, Prock begs for a chance to prove himself, so she gives him 48 hours to assemble a new team of heroes. Mandrake also takes away the team's support staff, except for one secretary, called Concierge. She's not happy to be stuck with this job at first, but she helps Prock find new heroes, from a file of people who had previously applied to the team and been rejected by Mr. Awesome.

The first person to join is Frantic, who is super fast. The reason he was rejected was for being crazy, though I feel like that's a bit of an exaggeration. (He mainly seems to just have ADHD, which is sort of appropriate, given his super power.) They also recruit Gadget Gal, one of the original members of the Awesomes, who is 80 now, and retired. However, in a scuffle with an enemy, she gets blasted by a rejuvenation ray, and now her body is once again that of a 25-year-old (though she talks with old-fashioned slang, and a mid-Atlantic accent, and has some outdated attitudes). And they recruit Impresario, a guy who has a jewel from outer space, which allows him to create energy-based manifestations of anything he thinks of (much like Green Lantern). But he has an overbearing mother, so his creations always include a talking image of her. And there's an 11-year-old Asian kid named Tim, who can transform into a huge Sumo wrestler (so his superhero name is 'Sumo'). While all this is going on, Dr. Malocchio breaks out of prison, feeling that with Mr. Awesome having left Earth, this would be the ideal time to take over the world. He unleashes a monster to test the new Awesomes, and with Prock's leadership, the team nearly defeats the monster... until Perfect Man swoops in and finishes the job, claiming all the credit for himself. Which is frustrating, but at least Concierge begins to have some faith in the team.

Unfortunately, Mandrake requires the team to have seven members, and so far there are only six. So the Awesomes hold try-outs to find a final member. Most of the applicants are terrible, but Prock finally hires a woman named Hotwire, who has electrical powers. (Though he chooses her because he's attracted to her.) A bit later, a group of villains attacks their headquarters, which had been left defenseless by Mandrake's equipment repossession. However, Prock once again proves his leadership skills, and the team defeats the bad guys, so Mandrake finally agrees to restore the team's funding, on a six-month probation. So things are looking up, except that Dr. Malocchio has used his charisma (he reminds me of Ricardo Montalban) and his mind-control powers to convince the world that he's reformed, and that the world would be better off without superheroes, because without them around, there would be no supervillains. (Incidentally, Prock and his father are both immune to Malocchio's mind control.) Oh, and it's not long before we learn that some member of the Awesomes is eventually going to betray the team. It's also not long before we learn who the traitor is, and why.

Anyway, the show is fairly amusing and clever, and has some decent characters. And I really liked the whole story arc, and how it was finally resolved. I guess I should also say I kinda like both the opening and closing theme songs. And I should mention that before every episode is the same animated ad for Jack Link's beef jerky, featuring Sasquatch at an audition for the Awesomes. And at the end of every episode is a different animated Sasquatch commercial that ties into the Awesomes somehow. Which is kinda funny.

Season two
My description of this season will include some spoilers for both seasons one and two. But first I'll say that this season, there are no more Sasquatch ads. Anyway, season two picks up 30 days after the end of season one, with both Malocchio and Hotwire being declared legally dead. So of course Prock is sad about Hotwire, but the team needs to find a replacement for her, to maintain their government funding. Most of the team would like to recruit a new vigilante called Metal Fella, who wears Iron Man-like armor. But Prock would rather stop Metal Fella's heroics, partly because he keeps beating the Awesomes to crime scenes and defeating the bad guys before they can. But also (or perhaps this is just an excuse), he doesn't like the fact that Metal Fella is a vigilante, without being sanctioned by the government. But by the end of the season premiere, Prock comes around, and decides Metal Fella is cool. And viewers (but not characters) will learn Metal Fella's secret identity (which didn't surprise me at all). In the second episode, Perfect Man rejoins the Awesomes, but one second later gets arrested by Mandrake for treason. So they still need to get a seventh member, and by the end of episode two, Concierge takes that position. Meanwhile, it turns out that Malocchio is still alive. He's on a space station with Mr. Awesome, who is trying to cure him of the serum that had given him his powers as well as turning him evil. Since Mr. Awesome and Malocchio had been friends before the latter turned evil, he wants to turn his old friend good again.

Anyway, the main villain this season is Malocchio Jr., a nice guy who gets pushed too far by pretty much everyone, and decides to use the serum his father had bequeathed him. He gets a super power and turns evil, but his initial rampage is thwarted, and it will be some time before he can use his power again. In the meantime, he begins recruiting people with grudges against the Awesomes to form a team of supervillains, and he gives all of them the serum, as well. But the Awesomes are unaware of that for most of the season, and have other random things to deal with. Prock starts dating a lawyer named Jaclyn Stone (though that doesn't last). Perfect Man hides from the law at the Awesomes' base (and has some ridiculous storylines of his own going on). And... those are the most important plot points. By the end of the season, Malocchio Jr. and his team will enact their plan, and ultimately be thwarted. Perfect Man will be pardoned. Prock will finally be in a relationship with Hotwire, who also didn't die last season. And we'll get an idea of who the main villain will likely be in season three, which should be awesome.

Season three
Heh... now that the season has begun, I can reveal the fact that I ended my recap of season two with a pun. Because in the process of turning Dr. Malocchio good, Mr. Awesome accidentally turned himself evil. So this season's villain is literally Awesome. But just before the evil fully takes over, he puts Malocchio in an escape pod to return to Earth and warn the Awesomes. Unfortunately, Mr. Awesome gets to Earth first and begins surreptitiously creating problems for the team (who are happy to have him back). Meanwhile, Malocchio gets lost in space, and then picked up by an alien band. However, due to oxygen deprivation, he's lost his memory.

Unfortunately, Hulu became subscription-only around the time this season was released, in 2015. I got to see the first two episodes for free, but that's it. I didn't finish watching the season until 2020. And now that I've seen it all, I don't really want to reveal any more of what happens than what I wrote about those first two episodes, five years ago. I'll just say I enjoyed the season, and there were some surprises, and I thought it ended well. Except that there's a story hook for the next season, which was never resolved because the series was cancelled after season 3. So that's disappointing. Still, I'm happy to finally be caught up on the series.