NBC, Don’t Screw Up Wonder Woman

It’s hard out there for women superheroes. Horny little comic book artists are always making them all-boob, and can you imagine what a drawback that would be to fighting crime? Getting punched in the breast hurts pretty bad, I’ve been told. So I figure most scumbag villains are gonna aim directly for them, and I don’t care what magical island I’m from, if my job fighting crime entailed getting punched in the breasts all the time by meth addicts, I’d get to the point where I’d be like, “Oh screw this. Let them rob the bank. Fuck this nonsense.” If every Batman supervillian agreed they would only kick Batman in the testicles, Gotham would be a smoldering crater. You just can’t get out of bed everyday thinking, “I’m going to be kicked in the Balls by Dr. Freeze today, AGAIN.” So, it’s hard out there for all superheroes, but lady superheroes get the worst of it.

Pretty much any dude superhero gets a $5 billion 3-D movie whenever they want, while lady superhero movies have a tough time finding an audience. Usually characters like Jean Grey or Rogue of the X-Men are used as damsels in distress to fuel stories around Cyclops and Wolverine. (For instance, they don’t even have a Wasp in the upcoming Avengers movie, and Wasp was arguably the best Avenger of them all! She survived an abusive marriage to the lame Ant-Man to become one of the Avengers’ greatest leaders, but I guess there’s just no way they can make a tiny woman flying around in movies, since there’s just no technology that would ever make that possible. We’re still at least 10 years away from any green screen stuff that would make a lady look like the size of a bug next to a mug on a coffee table. Great job, Avengers movie makers.)

But the greatest of all Lady Superheroes is Wonder Woman. She’s not a lady version of some dude superhero like Spiderwoman, Supergirl, She-Hulk, or Shazam Lady. There is no Dude version of Wonder Woman. There is simply Wonder Woman, the only Latina superhero I have ever heard of. OK, she’s from the Amazon, which is in Brazil, so she’s South American. Some kind of Greek-mythology South American lady from some kind of magical island unstuck in space-time, Wonder Woman comes to fight in New York in our time because she frees some CIA guy and helps us win WWII. Can you imagine being a Nazi in a bunker and seeing Wonder Woman come over the top? With her boots and bracelets and lasso? THEY SURRENDERED IMMEDIATELY, THAT’S WHAT HAPPENED.

So news that NBC is working on a pilot is exciting. The old Wonder Woman show with Lynda Carter was awesome. Everything about it was awesome. I don’t remember anything about it other than watching it all the time and being like, “This is so awesome.” She would do this awesome twirl, and in a starburst of colors would change from whatever clothes she was wearing to her Wonder Woman outfit. With the rope hanging off her hip. She didn’t even need a mask, because she would beat the crap out of you so hard you wouldn’t even remember what she looked like. Invisible Jet? That makes the Batmobile look like a broke-down stoner van. “Wonder Woman, there’s a crime happening in Miami! Batman is driving the speed limit down Route 1 like a goddamned boy scout. Can you just fly Aquaman there in your AMAZING INVISIBLE PLANE??”

So there’s basically no reason this new Wonder Woman show can’t be the #1 show in the country. They cast Adrianne Palicki from Friday Night Night Lights, which I’ve never seen but have on my cable box somewhere, don’t ask me where. They didn’t even bother to audition anyone else, so she must be fucking great. David E. Kelly is producing the show, and he usually does law stuff my grandmother would watch if she were still with us. And he unleashed Ally “The End of Feminism” McBeal upon the world. (Turns out Ally McBeal wasn’t the end of Feminism, though. Maybe Sarah Palin is? I say Feminism is strong in the hearts of everyone who wants the ladies to overcome the hierarchy. Which I’m totally for, please ladies topple that. Matriarchy Today! Why can’t we have a Queen? Beautiful, strong and deadly?)

Anyway, awesome new superhero show! I usually watch half-assed cop shows waiting for a new Star Trek to be announced, because all the network shows I like get cancelled anyway. Which is what I hope won’t happen to Wonder Woman. Give her a goddamned chance, NBC. Not like The Bionic Woman. You gave that horseshit Heroes show like three seasons to get bearable and it never did. NBC is in fourth! Place! This is through a combination of complete incompetence and choosing lousy shows. You could still come in fourth place but make awesome shows. Only smart people watch 30 Rock and it’s an awesome show headed by one of the greatest comedians ever. Tina Fey’s funny, she rules, I’d give her Thursday and Friday and Sunday nights to let her do whatever she thinks is funny on your little schedule. You got nothing else going on, so if you’re going to come in last, at least do some weird great shows.

And Wonder Woman has all the makings of a weird, great show. Ms. Palicki will be playing Wonder Woman and her alter ego, a magazine editrix. And the editrix’s assistant, because women work way harder than dudes! Bruce Wayne is just rich, and lies in bed all day. That’s why he wants to punch each and every coked out henchman on the way to defeating the Pharoah. Or whoever. Wonder Woman’s enemies are mostly ladies. Sometimes ladies posing as men for some weird reason, because women are always trying to bring other women down. (The more beautiful and powerful, the more everyone’s willing to pose as a man and create a device that shoots blue killer snow and command an army of mindless drones to get you fired from your magazine job. And hopefully this is some kind of iPad magazine, because magazines will soon all be extinct — by soon I mean August, so before this show ever airs — and no one wants an unemployed Wonder Woman. That would be sad.) And I don’t want to see Wonder Woman dating lame dudes every week, like some kind of Seinfeldian revolving door. Wonder Woman beats the crap out of men and then takes what she needs sexually from them while they’re half-conscious but totally aroused. And maybe also from defeated super villain ladies, I could write that episode. She doesn’t need any loser boyfriends. She needs to kick ass with her awesome boots. And loser boyfriends can’t pull a fast one on Wonder Woman, because she’s got that lie detector lasso. Where were you last night? (Without lasso) “The Library.” (With lasso) “At a club called ‘The Library.’”

So just don’t screw this up, NBC. Network TV is boring. All the best shows are 13-episode shows on non-network channels, because there’s just too many bullshit filler episodes in a 23-episode season. Too many Claire “Where’s My Baby?” moments, if you know what I’m saying. No one cares where your baby is, we care about where Sawyer’s chest is. Put Sawyer on this Wonder Woman show! And I’ll give it a Penis Emmy!

Ladies, you can grow up to be superheroes. In delightful underoo outfits. Let’s just hope the dudes who write it don’t give you lame shit to say. I liked Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but why did she always talk the way a Nerdy Dude Would Fantasize About How Lady Superheroes Talk? About comic books. Women don’t have to talk about comic books to get our attention. They just have to be themselves. And punch us in the face and tie us up with yellow rope. And we’ll be like, SWOON! Tuning In Every Whatever At Whatever Time.

Jim Behrle tweets at @behrle to amuse you.

Photos via WhatIsTechnoAgain and PostmodernBarney