Long before Courtney Cox was navigating the late twenties singleness of Friends or being all angsty in a Counting Crows video, she was in a short lived television drama named Misfits of Science.
Only being on for one season, my memories of this show are pretty sparse. I do remember it though and I know I was pretty disappointed when it got cancelled. It seems that all of the really good shows do.
Thus, it earns a spot in my Vintage TV series. Shows that were from my childhood and cancelled way before their time.
It premiered in 1986 and with only fifteen episodes under its belt, I can't imagine it lasted much into 1986.
Summing up the plot for you youngsters, it is basically Heroes but set in the 80's.
Okay, that isn't entirely accurate. Here is the tagline from IMDB:
The adventures of a team of misfit superheroes who fight crime for a scientific think tank.
The Wiki for the show expands the plot outline a little more:
The show concerned super-powered humans and their madcap adventures. The team is formed by Dr. Billy Hayes, a research scientist at the Humanidyne Institute who specializes in "human anomalies". He works with shrinking Dr. Elvin "El" Lincoln, and together they recruit electrically powered Johnny Bukowski, a rock-and-roll musician, and Gloria Dinallo, a telekinetic teen.
Likely her moderate debut in the Bruce Springsteen video for "Dancing in the dark" put her on the radar of some casting agent for this show.
This was actually a really ambitious show given the level of special effects in the mid eighties. Lucky for you, some of the episodes are on Youtube and I am going to link to one of them at the bottom of this post!
Do you remember this show? As I said, it isn't as vivid as some of the other ones on my list, but I definitely remember it. I have always been a bit of a sci/fi nut, so when primetime television attempts to cover that genre, it doesn't usually escape my attention.
Okay, who am I kidding. The special effects weren't that great and a lot of the show was pure 80's cheese. Check it out for yourself!
If you find yourself searching and bingeing the whole season on Youtube don't blame me! I warned you!
