Thank God I’m going to Canada next week — or I’d never recognize Manhattan, where I live and work.
The latest show to pretend it is taking place in New York (when it’s obviously not) is “Alphas” — Syfy’s newest crime-fighters-with-super-powers series.
But, hey — these guys don’t have just any old ordinary superpowers, like the ability to fly or shape-shift — these guys have super-enhanced normal abilities.
The series stars David Strathairn as Dr. Leigh Rosen, a neurologist/shrink who wrangles a group of exceptionally good-looking people with extraordinary abilities into an elite force that finds and fights other Alphas — who, in turn, use their extraordinary ordinary abilities for evil.
Dr. Rosen heads up a group of five Alphas-for-good. First is Cameron Hicks (Warren Christie), a hunk with hyper-kinesis who is a failed ballplayer and the Army’s former top sniper.
Former FBI agent Bill Harken (Malik Yoba) is a hyper-adrenal, which means he has extreme fight-or-flight abilities.
Synesthete Rachel Pirzad (Azita Ghanizada) can hyper-intensify anything. Think permanent PMS — and the ability to trace clues from anywhere to anywhere. Or something.
Gary Bell (Ryan Cartwright) is a transducer/high-
functioning autistic — which means he can pick up electromagnetic frequencies and sees them as images.
Nina Theroux (Laura Mennell) is an “influencer” — meaning she possesses the ability to make anyone do anything by mere telepathic suggestion. But Nina is such a babe, I suspect men would do what she wanted even if she didn’t have these extraordinary traveling-salesman abilities.
On tonight’s premiere, we get to meet all the Alphas one by one and learn how they are trying to form a cohesive working unit under Dr. Rosen’s command.
When the show opens, Hicks is not yet a part of them. He’s working as a grocery store clerk who’s being mentally influenced by an evil Alpha (male — I couldn’t help it), to sharpshoot and kill people.
In fact, he snipes with such extraordinary skill that he can plant himself on the rooftop of one building and shoot into a police station air shaft, where a prisoner is being interrogated inside a room — planting a bullet dead square in the prisoner’s forehead.
“Alphas” is fun, sure, but it has a “been there, done that” feel. Unfortunately, I, too, have a personal ordinary extraordinary ability. The condition is called hyper-BS detector and enables me to detect reheated TV material from 1,000 paces and shoot it down.