Yesterday’s slate of Comic-Con panels saw surprisingly little fanfare given to the debut trailer for SuperMansion, Bryan Cranston’s first starring TV role since Breaking Bad went off the air two years ago. The muted reception might have had something to do with a bias against animated programs, or maybe a willingness to overlook offerings from streaming-only services like the show’s home, Crackle. Or, just possibly, it might have had something to do with people’s discomfort at hearing Cranston scream at length about his inability to maintain an erection.
Produced by Stoopid Buddy Stoodios, the team behind Adult Swim’s Robot Chicken, the stop-motion show stars Cranston as an aging superhero forced to wrestle with an equally decrepit premise: leading a team of washed-up, dysfunctional superheroes. Considering that “superheroes are secretly perverted assholes” is well-trod territory by now—Seth Meyer’s Hulu series The Awesomes is only the latest in a long line of books, movies, and TV shows to take a stab at it—Supermansion’s trailer leans hard on crudity and shock value to make itself stand out: The Captain America parallel doesn’t like Obama! Batman sits on his testicles! Cranston’s character, Titanium Rex, rants about his “boner pills”!
That last bit actually comes within a hair’s breadth of working, thanks to Cranston’s commitment. That might end up being the status quo for the show, given that the announced voice cast includes reliable comic stars like Keegan Michael Key, Jordan Peele, and Nick Kroll, plus established actors like Ron Perlman and Star Trek’s Chris Pine and Anton Yelchin. We’ll have to wait until Supermansion debuts this fall on Crackle to see if the talent on hand can elevate the material, or if they’ll get pulled down by murderous prop comics and a scantily clad female superhero who goes by the name “The Cooch.”