It’s always kinda weird to see your headlines out in the wild on social media. Weird, and not always good. They’re often taken out of context, shorn of the point they were making to be contorted so people can win an imaginary argument with me and make me look stupid. Not this time though. This time the Powerpuff Girls are involved, and I managed to make myself look stupid all on my own. I have to admit, I’m stupid still.
The trailer for the live action Powerpuff Girls series, which would have starred Chloe Bennett, Dove Cameron, and Yana Perrault as the titular heroes, has leaked four years after the series was scrapped. The comments below this leak are near universally trashing it as dated, campy, and reaching such levels of self parody it circles back around to being funny. And in one comment, someone finally wins that imaginary argument they’ve been having with me since 2021 by pointing out that I said ‘The Powerpuff Girls Reboot Looks Great, You’re All Just Mean‘. Well, one more time for the kids in the back: The Powerpuff Girls Reboot Looks Great, You’re All Just Mean.
Powerpuff Deserved A Chance To Be Judged
Obviously, I understand the deck is not stacked in my favour here. This is a thing that everybody thinks is a pile of garbage, including the people who paid to make it. So much so that they decided that throwing it on an actual pile of garbage was a better business decision than releasing it to the public. Of course, similar decisions were made regarding Batgirl and Coyote vs. Acme, and we do not tend to shrug our shoulders and decide the suits probably know best in those cases.
I don’t really disagree with much of the criticism either. It looks a little cheap, but it’s a CW superhero show and I don’t think that critique holds much water. The rest? You betcha! They hold so much water they’ve taken up a side hustle as a bucket. It’s extremely dated, but the world has changed a lot and I don’t think ironic side eyes at gender normativity would have been out of place in 2021. As for campy? Yeah, it’s a show for grown ups who still like Powerpuff Girls. Did you want gore? Staccato dialogue? Mise en scene that metaphorically emphasises the struggle of inner city youth in America?
Look, I’m the last person to say ‘get lower standards’. I understand that this looks trash and a lot of people will therefore dismiss it as trash. They’d be right to. But if you think this seems like a parody of nostalgia cash grabs, that’s because it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and has feathers like a deliberate parody of nostalgia cash grabs. ‘It’s bad on purpose’ is not the best defence, but it certainly is a defence, and ultimately Powerpuff seems like it would have been a lot of fun. From the writer of Juno and Jennifer’s Body, you have to embrace the cringe to get to the good parts (and sometimes the cringe is the good part).
Powerpuff Would Not Have Been Out Of Place On The CW
Some of my favourite TV shows are CW shows. I think I’d struggle to say any of them are good, but I love them anyway. That’s what Powerpuff seems to be in the ballpark of. As well as things like Legends of Tomorrow, Supergirl, and Stargirl (which all look similarly cheap and cheerful in their recreation of Hollywood superhero VFX), Powerpuff would have joined the ranks of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Vampire Diaries, Gossip Girl, and Reign. Nothing in this trailer tells me it wouldn’t have had a middling first season, found its feet by the second, then be cancelled due to rising costs and failure to draw as many viewers as The Flash in its third.
I don’t think anyone looking at a CW show written in the boom of adult remakes then shelved for four years is lying when they say it looks bad, but the idea that it’s some egregious sin against television seems a little put on. Most simply, it feels like a post-Mindy Kaling Velma reaction to a pre-Mindy Kaling Velma world. I maintain that ‘Bubbles is a wash out who drinks too much’ is a funny pitch for a Powerpuff Girls reboot, and the trailer does not assuage me of that opinion.
I don’t know if any more of Powerpuff will leak, or what state it will be in, but I doubt it will ever claw back anything close to a legacy. It’s just another pile of garbage floating in the sewers of television forever – but it’s a flag I will proudly stick my flag in. Powerpuff, I definitely probably would have enjoyed you a little bit.
