Down To The Wire

I guess I'll have to take time out of checking out the Heroes DVD set to do my weekly reviews of Who Wants To Be A Superhero?. The season is wrapping up, as we've narrowed the contestants to the final four. I'll save the small talk for the end, since I've got a review to get to.

The episode opens with Stan telling the superheroes will receive their next set of orders in code. He tells them that their first code is so elementary, that they'll have to solve it at an elementary school. Again, like last year, they're going to be involved with a group of fourth graders. Each hero is given a multiple choice quiz, and each answer will give them a particular letter of the alphabet needed to reveal the code. They have to split up into groups with the kids, and since time is of the essence, they only have five minutes to decode the message.

So they break up into four. Parthenon is the first to finish, but he does ninety-nine percent of the work himself and barely gets the kids involved as all. (He was quoted as saying, "This challenge could have been called 'Are You Smarter Than A Fourth Grader?,' and I believe I am." Damn, dude, that's cold.) The other three make sure to get the kids as involved as possible, to the point that Hygena finished her part of the code with only thirty-nine seconds left just to make sure the kids in her group were involved.

Their message gives them directions to an intersection that leads them to a park, but when they arrive Doctor Dark and Stan's evil clone hijack their communicators and decide they're gonna screw around with the heroes. Evil Stan gives the heroes random embarrassing tasks to perform, and not knowing the difference between the two Stans, they all blindly obey. Most notably: the Defuser liberates a number of hats from their owners and asks a random bystander how to resolve a "super-wedgie;" Hygena does a song-and-dance routine before trying to stop traffic; Hyper-Strike starts snooping through peoples' belongings; and Parthenon borrows a mother's cane in order to dance a jig, before dumping the cane in a trash can. Though the Defuser gets suspicious and Hygena thinks the orders are odd, nothing comes of it.

Evil Stan eventually sends them to an abandoned warehouse, where he tells them that Good Stan's stolen pencil was inside a shipping container. Hygena discovers the pencil, but the container's doors slam shut and Doctor Dark reveals his scheme. He gives them sixty minutes to escape, otherwise he'll dispose of them. Using random objects inside and around the container along with pieces of their costumes, Hyper-Strike and Parthenon come up with a plan that leads the four to their escape in the nick of time.

As they return to the lair, Good Stan assures the heroes that it's really him and asks them to fill out their mission reports. Revealed in this report:

• Hygena could've been more involved.
• The Defuser shouldn't have dropped the pole they used to acquire the tools outside the container. He defends himself, however, by saying that he didn't drop it, but that it broke on its own.
• Parthenon was a bit too pushy.

Stan calls the heroes to the rooftop for the next elimination. He reprimands them for not even bothering to question the orders they were given by Evil Stan, and calls to the chopping block are Hygena (for her continued meekness, as well as being a traffic hazard), Parthenon (for his pushiness, and failing to bond with the children); and Hyper-Strike (for telling the kids his real name). Though in his defense, that was an attempt to teach the kids to not be ashamed of who they are. It is Parthenon who is asked to turn in his costume, as Stan reveals that exactly zero of the schoolchildren liked him.

And as the episode comes to a close, Doctor Dark enlarges Evil Stan to gigantic proportions and unleashes him upon the city. So not only is he an evil clone of Stan Lee, but he's also Stanzilla. Maybe they need to have him fight with a Mothra-ized evil Jack Kirby clone, or an evil Frank Miller clone that looks like Rodan. Or how about turning an evil Alan Moore clone into a three-headed dragon like King Ghidorah? Throw in MechaStanzilla, and it'd be a nerd's dream movie.

So now we're getting down to the nitty gritty, as we're within the final three. The next episode will be the last of the season, a two-hour conclusion that will feature the three remaining heroes getting their own action figures, a cameo from ECW star Balls Mahoney, and - most importantly - the announcement of the winner. And since it's a double-length episode, I'm sure it'll be a double-length recap. So you can be looking forward to that. All three would be great winners, but personally, I'm pulling for Hyper-Strike.

It's not too late for them to give a comic book to Major Victory from last season, is it?