Wonder Woman

    I’ve never read a single Wonder Woman comic.  That said, I had no expectations going in.  I knew she had super strength, a lasso, and some bullet-deflecting bracelets.
    This is TERRIBLE TV.
    There are technical issues, and I actually liked seeing those.  The fight sequence at the end doesn’t have all of the effects work done on the lasso, and most of the wirework is still visible.  I actually found that much more endearing, and I felt like that made me appreciate the effort much more.
    Where the episode fails is in making a hero.  Let’s start at the beginning.
    We open the episode on a kid getting an acceptance letter from a college.  He and his family are happy.  Then the kid’s eyes start bleeding.  They call an ambulance.
    Then we go to a city.  Wonder Woman is chasing some guy through the streets.  We hear police reports that suggest that the guy is running at superhuman speeds.  Wonder Woman catches him.  While he’s on the ground, she injects him with something.  Police show up, ask that she hand him over.  She sneers, and complains that if she hands him over, he’ll just lawyer up.  She reluctantly hands him over, pushing the guy across the ground to the police.

    So our introduction to the character indicates that she doesn’t believe in the justice system, she believes in administering justice on her own, and that she’s unfriendly.  (At least, that’s what the sneer communicated to me.)

    Over the course of the story, Wonder Woman goes to a hospital to question the guy that she caught at the beginning of the episode.  She TORTURES HIM.  She actually causes pain for a guy who is already incapacitated in the hospital.  Afterwards, a cop reiterates that she JUST TORTURED INFORMATION OUT OF THE GUY.  Wonder Woman doesn’t see anything wrong with this.
    At the end of the episode, there’s the big finish battle.  She defeats a bunch of musclebound goons.  The action is okay, but not anything too special.  Toward the end of the fight, she reaches a hallway.  She fights one goon as a security guard is firing shots at her.  She deflects bullets with her bracelets.  She defeats the goon, then throws a metal pipe at the security guard… IMPALING HIM AGAINST THE DOOR BEHIND HIM… THROUGH THE NECK!
    She actually throws the metal pipe through his neck!

    There are lesser problems.  There’s an effort made to put a feminist edge on the character, which makes sense.  She spends some time during a meeting complaining about how busty they made an action figure of her.  She acknowledges that she is well-endowed, but complains about it regardless.
    This would be okay… except that there are two issues.  First, her subordinate points out that she approved the design.  She denies this.  This is sloppy writing.  It’s a he-said she-said argument, but I’m inclined to believe that she would have approved the design before it went into production.  It’s her company.  The other problem is that they establish earlier in the episode that Wonder Woman exists to be merchandised.  She funds her crime fighting through her merchandising.  Come on.

    These are complaints I have about male heroes as well.  I don’t think a show that focused on Rorschach could work, since he’s too brutal, and I can’t agree with his actions.