Typically, I feel like reviewing pilot episodes of TV series isn’t quite fair. These debut installments often have to cram in an entire series premise and cast of characters in one 30- or 60-minute program, resulting in a program that isn’t always indicative of how a show will eventually play out.
With many series, it takes a few episodes sometimes — even an entire first season — for writers, producers and actors to figure out what the show is. It’s obviously in a show’s best interests to find its identity quickly to keep viewers interested and stave off cancellation from impatient networks. But with the advent of streaming networks getting into scripted, serialized series, there might be more patience with shows than there’s ever been before.
So if it’s not really fair to judge the first few episodes or an entire season of a series based on one episode, how fair can it possibly be to judge the CW Seed’s Vixen, an animated web series based in the same universe as the network’s successful Arrow and The Flash shows, when its episodes are only five minutes long and will make up a total of 30 minutes?
https://youtu.be/C6rSM_0L5pk
Though you can watch Vixen and other CW Seed programming on your computer, the emphasis seems to be on providing shows that you can watch quickly on your mobile devices through the CW Seed app. It’s sort of perfect for something to watch while waiting for a dentist or doctor appointment, a bus or train, your lunch order, or sitting in a drive-thru line.
(If you’re more ambitious and have the time, CW Seed offers every 22-minute episode of Whose Line Is It Anyway?, along with Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and the 1990 version of The Flash. Those last two could presumably be saved for when you have a wait at the DMV, not that either show doesn’t warrant your full attention at home.)
After watching the initial five-minute episode (each one will premiere on Tuesdays), the best thing I can say about Vixen is that it fits very comfortably with Arrow and The Flash. And I’m not just saying that because the show opens with our familiar CW superheroes chasing after the title character on the rooftops of… well, we don’t know where.
Later in the episode, we learn that Mari McCabe — soon to become the newest hero of the CW/DC Comics universe — has returned to her hometown of Detroit, where she’s bailed out of jail by her foster father. But the opening chase could be in Arrow’s Starling City or the Flash’s Central City. I guess we’ll have to keep clicking back to find out!
Anyway, the storytelling and pacing could easily fit into prime-time CW programming. Though the animation hews closely to the anime-type style that WB Animation uses for its straight-to-video DC Comics animated films and figures to be familiar or popular with fans, this could easily be a live-action show. However, the opening episode does take advantage of its animated format to make the action of the rooftop chase much faster, dynamic and high-flying than would be possible on a TV show.
There’s enough here to be intriguing to viewers. We don’t yet know what exactly McCabe’s powers are or how she came into possession of the necklace that makes her Vixen (though she does say it’s a family heirloom in a scene that cleverly works in needed exposition). And we certainly don’t know how she crosses paths with Arrow and the Flash (voiced by Stephen Amell and Grant Gustin, respectively), but are told that the chase takes place three days after she’s bailed out of jail.
Ultimately, Vixen works as an appetizer for those eagerly awaiting the return of Arrow and The Flash to The CW on Oct. 6. And maybe, just maybe, this animated web series also serves as a preliminary attempt at a live-action series, though CW president Mark Pedowitz has said there are no plans for more spinoff shows after DC’s Legends of Tomorrow.
But if the idea is to keep fans appeased during summer hiatus, this appears to accomplish the objective and maybe provides a template for other CW shows to explore. Vixen will probably have us wanting more by the end of its six-episode run.
