http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5083928/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1Premiere last night, I'd only seen commercials for it in the last week so I don't think NBC has a lot of faith in this. Ben Queen is the creator and lead writer. His biggest credits are Cars 2 and Drive.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0703078/?ref_=ttfc_fc_wr1The show is set in the DC universe and has rights to DC characters to the point they name some often. (Batman a few times, Superman once. Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, and Flash are also shown as Comics in the opening. ) The premise is that the show follows a Waynetech company that makes products for normal humans to be able to survive in the DC universe. The CEO is played by Alan Tudyk who is Bruce Wayne's cousin, Van Wayne. The company, however, is not located in Gotham but some small city whose name I missed. Van desperately wants to get to the Corporate office in Gotham and "out of this taint of a city."
After the events of last night's show he's decided that the best way to get to Gotham is for the company to fail, at which point he'll be absorbed into corporate. THe rest of the cast would be fired, so their motivation is to succeed and keep the company open. Ostensibly this will be a gimmick of the week that Waynetech has to come up with as the show starts off. Like most office shows it's about the interactions, though.
Vanessa Hudgens plays Emily Locke, a fresh grad who's the 5th boss to be put into the position of leadership over the R&D crew. (The 4th never made it to work. He was crushed on the way there his first day. Locke herself almost gets taken out in the intro as the train she's riding gets thrown across the city.)
The R&D staff are unmotivated and cynical because most of their ideas are too expensive or impractical to produce. Danny Pudy, Ron Funches, and Jennie Pierson make up the central staff here with Pierson being the "I hate you for no real reason" foil to Emily.
Rounding out the central cast is Christina Kirk as Jackie, Van Wayne's secretary. She doesn't have a well defined role after the premiere, but they dropped that she was once as enthusiastic and bubbly as Emily but life has beat her down. Ho Hum.
The show premise has promise, which is why I watched it. However it was really uneven to begin with. You can tell they're trying to find the mix and feel for the show. Things felt really stilted because of it.
They tried throwing some supers in with a woman called the Crimson Fox (Atlin Mitchell) and some guy called the Jack-O-Lantern. Fox is mentioned as being in 5 of the 10 produced episodes but I'm not hopeful there. Since it's a low-budget TV show the effects varied from corny to outright bad. They'd be better off embracing the low budget and finding a style that works rather than trying to find a 'realistic low budget' effect that fails. (The Jack-O-Lantern flying stood out as the worst of the episode, and he was only an few dozen pixels high when shown.)
I'll catch another episode or two, and it's worth finding on demand or TiVo if you're curious, but I wouldn't expect to see the full 10 episode run unless things get better.