Alphas – the x men but awesome

I mentioned this show before a couple of weeks back, but with the second season ending in such a spectacular fashion i feel its time to talk about it more. This show does the who mutant outsiders the best I've seen in a long time, maybe even the best yet. Don’t get me wrong x men is great and one of my favourite teams/ mass of teenage angst of all time, but alphas finally does what so many other shows have tried and failed, to make super powers and the stories that go with them mildly believable. So i can gush more effectively about this show I'm going to compare it to another recent super hero show, Arrow. This is the new green arrow gritty reboot that came out about three weeks ago and before i start to poke holes in it, i want to stress that it is as great a show (so far) as Alphas, it just falls into some of the traps that Alphas didn't.

Ok so first of all there is the main premise of the two shows (and others like them), being a superhero is a viable thing. Normally with such programmes the writers expect a bit of suspension of disbelief, which i am happy to do if i get shows such as Buffy (it surprises me that people don’t think of Buffy as a superhero series, she’s a super powered vigilante trying to keep the world safe and stop apocalyptical happenings, what else would you call her?) or misfits. But these two shows are going for realism, something which is somewhat of a double edged sword in that if you’re not careful it can limit the range of the series. But luckily both series have so far managed to keep the pretence of realism in place. This is no mean feat when part of the roster of superheroes and villains is a girl who can turn invisible and  another who has ninja powers (its really super agility but when ever I see him do a flip or something else awesome but entirely unneeded i think of ninjas) but they manage to pull it off.

“i am the night, the shadow, the embodiment of fear... look at this SWEET ASS FLIP” every nijna ever

They use medical babble to and try to stick to what the human body can do, and give each of the powers a flaw. This on other websites has been seen a a bit of a gimmick, but the human body is not designed to be able to lift a car, and so when it does the body suffers. It makes the powers seem more real, and it also makes the all important decison of which power you would have if you could that bit more difficult. Alphas then sets up a world in which these people could exist, and would be human, with human problems as well as super hero problems. The Alphas powers makes sense, for instance super strength puts a massive strain on the heart it is part of a enhanced fight of flight reaction that grants him strength but forces his heart to pump much faster then is safe. And the more awesome the power the more extreme the consequence. In one episode a man can move super fast but is dying, as his body is eating itself, as it can’t sustain itself. Medicine

That's the problem with shows like arrow, because he is technically not super powered the writers seem to presume that they can set him in the  normal world, and that it would work. But the problem with superheros is that they could never work in real life, where bullets are real, getting to a crime scene would take an hour or two by train and very few people are good or bad. Arrow is a vigilante, and with a vigilante it is had to see them in any other light then as criminals with better training. They break the law, almost kill hundreds of people and even if they do just tie someone up what would the police have to arrest them with? Being in the way of this masked crazy person. Being caught by a super hero in the real world would seriously help the criminal during the court case, and the hero would end up freeing more bad guys then anything else. To make the arrow more of a super hero then vigilante there needs to be just as much world building as for Alphas, maybe more. With mutants most people could guess the precautions and effects on society, or on the person, after all it has been done more then a few times for example in the excellent 1990s version of the x men cartoon. But with such programmes as Arrow and the sadly cancelled The Cape, just as much or perhaps more care needs to be made to show a world very like ours but that could accommodate green arrow as more then a crazy vigilante who is a danger to himself and others.

Alphas also has one of the most interesting villains around at the moment, Stanton Parish and his red flag group, a bunch of home grown terrorists who see no other way to get the recognition they deserve. Writing this i realise that the motivation for most of the group is unclear, sure the government are being dicks to the mutants but why would you blow up trains and cupcakes stands (I’m not sure if they do this, i just like to think they do) to prove it. But maybe its not about trying to prove anything, or gain anything, perhaps its just that these people who have had to hide all their lives want to fight a war against the oppressors  Their leader is Parish a civil war soldier who can live forever, and sees no way that humanity can live with mutants. The show spends real time making you hate him, but understand him which is an impressive trick for any show to do.

Alphas then in as excellent show, it makes mutants normal and has at least the veneer of science to make it respectable. The characters have much more depth then they could easily of had and the plot is gripping. The second season has just finished with one of the most interesting season finales I have seen this year. Its definatly one to watch.