THE TOMORROW PEOPLE: Like X-Men, But on the CW

Robbie Amell as Stephen Jameson, protagonist of The Tomorrow People. And yes, he’s THAT Stephen Amell’s cousin. It’s distracting.

If you weren’t hanging out on the CW network for the abs Amells last night, let me learn you a few things: The Tomorrow People was first a 1970s children’s TV series by the ITV network in Great Britain, and then it was a children’s TV series in 1992, and the most recently it was brought back a third time between 2001 and 2007. Now it’s over here as a brand new US-based adaptation, and as far as I can tell, it wants to be The Vampire Diaries meets X-Men: First Class, which could be problematic for me as a reviewer because I like neither of those things.

Our protagonist is Stephen Jameson (Robbie Amell), who kicks off the show by telling us all about his life. That’s his school, where bullies steal his anti-psychotic medication and Stephen sneakily gives them laxatives instead, that’s his best friend, that’s his super-tired nurse mom who’s clearly working extra shifts to take care of her kids, that’s his little brother Lucca, that’s the sexy female voice in his head, and that’s him getting ready for bed and apparently preparing for his days of being a sub by strapping himself into his bed. The straps do nothing to prevent him from waking up in between his neighbor and his neighbor’s very cranky husband.

Pro-tip: dude, if you know you’re a practicing somnambulist, wear clothes to bed. Waaaaay less humiliating.

Robbie Amell and Madeleine Mantock

Through some helpful exposition with his best friend Astrid-who-could-be-awesome-but-probably-won’t-be-given-an-opportunity-to-reach-her-full-potential-because-her-name-is-Astrid-and-she’s-a-black-woman-on-a-show-I-watch (Madeleine Mantock), we learn that Stephen has been seeing shrinks, but they’re not doing him much good. You know who’s also having problems? The hospital staff, who are tracking down a hip, trendy young man who just swiped a pass-card to get into the Mental Health department. I have to stop and applaud the show here because usually security guards are portrayed as moronic, but here, they actually seem to be on the ball as Hip, Trendy Young Man (Luke Mitchell) rifles through some files and then, uh, teleports off the roof all the while chatting with a woman named Cara (Peyton List), who scolds him for his shoddy work and calls him John.

John teleports down to the street and gets followed into a subway station, where he opens a can of whoopass on two people in nondescript bad guy clothes. Cool as a cucumber, he strides onto the subway car and is of course attacked by a third guy in a mercifully empty subway car—wait, nope, there’s a homeless dude watching the two fighters teleport in and out and somebody is really going to have to explain to me a few things about this teleportation. For example:

1. Why did John not just teleport to the file and teleport out of there?
2. Why did John not just teleport to the base?
3. Why is John just not teleporting out of the subway car?
4. Teleport, teleport, teleport.
5. This is why you don’t let a sci-fi reader loose on these types of shows.

Mark Pellegrino as Jedikiah Price

At least they tell us why John doesn’t just kill these guys when they introduce our bad guy. You can tell he’s our bad guy because he’s named Jedikiah and he’s played by Mark Pellegrino. Also, he brings in the guy who attacked John in the subway car (we’ll call him Bad Guy X) to a room where Bad Guy X’s powers don’t work. Jed tells Bad Guy X to kill him because it’s kill or be killed and Jed presents a threat to Bad Guy X. X cannot pull the trigger. Jed calmly and effortlessly dispatches him for failing at his prime directive and letting himself be seen teleporting. Of course, he first explains that people like John physically cannot kill. They’ve evolved to the point where they cannot knowingly kill and—

WHOA. WAIT A SECOND. HOLD UP. This is not how evolution and adaptation work. Something is very wrong here. You evolve into a stronger species, which means dominance, which means a mountain lion attacks you, you beat it in the head with a rock. THAT IS HOW NATURE WORKS. SHOW, YOU ARE HURTING MY HEAD. GIVE ME A BETTER EXPLANATION ON THAT SOONER THAN LATER.

Anyway, to get to the point, Cara and John track down Stephen and teleport him in to meet their hip, trendy army of teenagers that lives in, as far as I can tell, the old Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ hangout. It shall be hereby called the Cowabungalow. We have a fun cast of characters: new teenage soldiers, a guy who seems to be the Asian plucky relief that I will be calling ShaveYoMustache (Aaron Yoo) until he listens to me and earns his own name, and John and Cara, who seem to be the leaders of this little faction. They call themselves the Tomorrow People (they didn’t come up with the name) and that humans are “saps” because they are Homo Sapiens. Unlike Stephen and his new klepto soldier buddies, who are, and I quote, Homo Superior, which sounds like a really long Sherlock slashfic a buddy of mine was working on a while ago. That means they have the three Ts: teleportation, telekinesis, and telepathy. And their five-finger discounts are more like no-finger discounts because they can lift—and I mean that both ways—things with their minds.

Luke Mitchell as Aaron Young, Peyton List as Cara Coburn.

They introduce Stephen to Not!JARVIS, a computer system that can do everything for them (go with me here). Not!JARVIS shows Stephen a video of his father, but Stephen doesn’t want anything to do with it and tells them to teleport him the hell out of there. He wakes up able to telekinetically lift his toothbrush. When he tries to show off this power to Astrid in the gym, she tells him that he’s been a real asshole and she doesn’t deserve it. So I like her, though I wish she had more to do. Stephen’s day is only going to get worse when he’s attacked by a bully who’s not real happy about getting laxatives instead of the good drugs. Instead of letting himself get beaten to hell, Stephen uses his telekinetic abilities to hand said bully his ass, going so far as to choke him out before the no-kill instinct kicks in and Stephen passes out.

Okay, hold up. You’re telling me that Stephen can’t kill, right? Like, if he’s genuinely trying to murder somebody, he will short-circuit? Well, you just showed me a “hero” who just tried to straight-up murder a school bully and you want me to root for this guy, why? Having an archetype stand in for a real character will not suffice, writers. You have shown me no reason to support this guy other than maybe his life’s a little difficult. I wonder who’s writing this show. Oh, Greg Berlanti, I like him, never heard of Julie Plec, and…written by PHIL KLEMMER? EVERYTHING IS EXPLAINED.

Stephen gets in trouble for trying to murder the bully and everybody’s mad at him for dealing drugs, even though he technically wasn’t (it’s not dealing if people are stealing them from you), so he stalks home in a huff, where he’s picked up by Jed’s men and held in the room where his powers don’t work. Jed tells him a bit about his mission statement and it’s all villainy and shades of grey, but it’s also not straight up evil.

Jed (Mark Pellegrino) holds down Stephen Jameson (Robbie Amell)

Cara and ShaveYoMustache want to save Stephen, but John hates Jed and everything he stands for so much that he’s not going anywhere near that place. Cara and ShaveYoMustache break into the place and beat up some guards while Jed tries to give Stephen a powers-lobotomy, all the while telling him that Stephen can’t believe everything he’s heard from the two different groups. Stephen’s a little more concerned with losing the ability to teleport because teleportation is amazing as hell and nobody can convince me otherwise. You hear that, Jumper? YOU DID YOUR BEST. YOU LOST.

ShaveYoMustache and Cara get into a bad spot and John rides to the rescue right around the time that Stephen straight up teleports out of the room where his powers aren’t supposed to work. Uh, what? To make things more interesting, to get all of them out of there, Stephen stops time right as Jed is about to shoot John, which means there are more than the three T’s, evidently. Somebody didn’t read the manual right, John.

Our Dream Team in their very artsy clothing.

Other things we learn:

• John and Cara are together. Cue the love triangle with Stephen, I guess.
• In the big “twist,” we find out that Jedikiah is actually Stephen’s uncle. Stephen’s father got the superpowers. Jed got the ability to be an evolutionary biologist, and he won’t ever be as cute as Cosima Niehaus, so he should just give up.
• The full video message from Stephen’s father tells Stephen to trust only himself.
• Stephen doesn’t want to live in the Cowabungalow, which is why he goes to work for Ultra instead. Because those appear to be his only two options. Oh well, it makes it an interesting show. At this point, I hope Stephen is an antihero rather than an unironic hero. I mean, he is willingly working for the people that tried to shoot his new friends.
• I haven’t seen previews, so I don’t know if ShaveYoMustache is going to earn an actual name in my recaps.
• The biggest mystery of this show is whether or not Stephen’s brother Lucca is going to develop powers. And, oh, what happened to Stephen’s father. Because Jed shows Stephen a video of his father breaking into Jed’s office and bursting into flame, but spontaneous human combustion proves nothing.