Wonder Man S01E04 Review: Five Seconds of Fame

Wonder Man S01E04 Review: Five Seconds of Fame

And... I'm not sure this needed to be a whole episode? The 'Doorman Clause' was brought up in previous episodes, and this episode shows it in full detail. It's a simple episode about DeMarr Davis, a bar doorman working in Hollywood who ends up getting superpowers that allow him to create portals. 

We see his rise from a humble dude that ended up rescuing a club on fire, to a brief movie star, and then to a catchphrase-filled one-note pony struggling to make a living both financially and creatively. He then ends up doing a second movie, and during the filming of the movie his powers end up causing a mishap as his co-star Josh Gad jumps into him and never comes out of the other side. This leads to the Doorman Clause, which prohibits individuals from superpowers from working in movies. 

It's a nice standalone episode and story, and a bit tragic, but... Davis is a bit of a flat character, and the 'ding-dong' joke was a bit stale and they repeated it a fair bit. With us already knowing that some tragedy was going to happen, it also kind of happened a bit abruptly and makes the whole episode feel a bit empty in a way -- and I felt like the episode doesn't quite have enough pathos to really contrast the comedic elements the way the rest of Wonder Man did.

Again, though, without the rest of the fantastic cast of Wonder Man, this episode has the rather unenviable task of keeping my attention while featuring a character whose fate we could basically guess thanks to context clues of previous episodes, and it just feels like an overly-long and oddly placed flashback episode that isn't really necessary in this series. 

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• Doorman, a.k.a. DeMarr Davis, is a minor superhero first appearing in West Coast Avengers. He's a mutant that signed up to join the Great Lakes Avengers, who was a bit of a 'parody' team that rivalled and later worked alongside the two real Avengers teams. Doorman had the power to teleport others through the Darkforce Dimension. 
• Doorman wears a mask similar to his comic-book counterpart, although the rest of his character's superhero getup is a more urban trenchcoat.
• Roxxon, the corrupt oil company featured in the MCU in the Iron Man movies and the Cloak and Dagger show, is mentioned as being the corrupt company behind the faulty products Doorman was promoting.