Review: Three Inches (Syfy Channel)

James Marsters & Noah Reid

What happens when your heart is broken and you're struck by lightning?

For most people, this would signal the start (or the end) of a seriously sucky time in your life.

But, for Walter Spackman (Noah Reid), this is how he obtains his super power: the ability to move any object 3 inches, as long as he's within a certain distance of it. After being contacted by Troy Hamilton (James Marsters, from "Buffy The Vampire Slayer") he's recruited into joining a team of similarly not-all-that-powerful people, including a guy who can talk to bugs, a woman who can alter a person's mood, someone who calls himself "The Human Smell" and who talks about himself in the third person as if he were describing a scene in a novel, a woman who can perfectly impersonate anybody's voice, and (my favorite) a guy who see into the future....about two minutes or so.

The first thing that struck me about this series was how utterly similar it is to "Alphas". It's sort of a tongue-in-cheek, less serious take on the premise of "people with abilities". But where in "Alphas" the heroes (and villains) have some impressive abilities (who wouldn't want to be able to interpret EM radiation in order to eavesdrop on communications, or else hit a target every time?), here we have heroes whose powers are so weak as to be practically useless.

Although one in particular, Tess (played by Stephanie Jacobsen), is a little TOO much like Nina; i.e., Nina can directly influence people to do things while Tess's ability is to "alter moods". And both are played by the hot brunettes on the team (though I'm more partial to Rachel on "Alphas" myself).

Or, at least, that's how it would seem at first.

Antony Del Rio is "The Human Smell"

And that's the second thing that struck me about this series. While not the most serious or intense of the super-powered being shows to come out in the past few years, it as what could be a very flexible premise. Between the powers on the team (and the backup person: a non-powered human codenamed "Mr. Normal" who's just a kick ass spy) there's quite a bit to work with.

And, anyway, how awesome is it to shout "STINK ON!" when going into a fight?

All in all, a cute series. It's a combination of "Alphas" but with the quirkiness (if not the outright humor) of the ill-fated series "Breaking In".  The characters have a pretty good chemistry about them, and Walter's menagerie of friends outside of the team (including his mother, played by SCTV's Andrea Martin) give a lot of fertile ground for character development. And it's there that the series has differentiated itself from those other series: it's keeping the outside world very much a part of the main story.

It's a series I would definitely watch if it's picke dup by Syfy. Though, to date, the series has only had the two hour pilot episode, which aired on 29 December 2011. But there's no announcement about the series being picked up as of yet.

Hopefully someone at Syfy has the ability to tweak and then pick up this series, which would make a great alternative series to shows like "Alphas" when between their seasons.