Superhero Media: Mighty Med

As I pretty much only watch three things on Disney+, being superhero content, Muppet content and Duck Tales, my "suggestions" are pretty homogeneous most of the time. When Mighty Med popped up as a suggestion, I did a quick IMDB check and decided that I would give it a go, even if it wasn't strictly my kind of thing. After stumbling, by accident, into a secret superhero hospital, Oliver and Kaz, two comic loving high school students, are recruited to help out, "Saving the people who save people". As a concept, Mighty Med (also the name of the hospital) is pretty solid, and it works well for the most part, but the programme is a Disney XD tween sitcom at heart, and rarely rises beyond that level of writing and acting. Not that the actors, especially the younger ones, are anything but competent, but the shticky writing and groaner jokes place a limit on how "high" the programme can reach. There is a particular critical mindset that "Disney Child Actors" tend to be of a certain, lower, quality, but I can say that Bradley Steven Perry (Kaz), Jake Short (Oliver) and Paris Berelc (Skylar) do well with the martial they're given and Cozi Zuehlsdorff (Jordan) is a fucking brilliant talent and she deserves much better than her career has given her so far. 

Setting the series in Philadelphia was a stroke of genius for Mighty Med, as the city is plain enough to not be iconic, and tends to be a pretty "dead" area in terms of superhero fiction. So as much as the world of Mighty Med is self-contained (to an extent, we'll come back to that), it could easily be dropped into any number of superhero settings, if you wanted somewhere for your players or characters to be able to go to get patched up. Whilst having two comic book fans working with superheroes sounds like it could be exhausting, Mighty Med doesn't go to the well of obsessive knowledge of continuity being the answer too often, making the times it does surprisingly satisfying. Also makes me wish My Hero Academia used that trope better, but now's not the time to complain about that again. In terms of characters, Might Med does well enough, but there's not many I'd want to adapt across other than Oliver, Kaz and Skylar, with many of the heroes being pretty generic and uninspired. Patton Oswalt, of all people, has a twice recurring role as "The Exterminator", a retired villain, now just "an exterminator", which is funny, but probably not worth watching all 50 episodes for. 

Despite it's flaws, I don't think I wasted my time watching Mighty Med, it's good enough for what it's trying to be and enjoys the occasional moment of transcendence. Without the strong core cast, it's doubtful that it would be as good as it is, but if you've already got Disney+, checking out a couple of episodes is probably worth your time. The characters continue in Lab RATS Elite Force (the follow-on to Lab RATS as well, which enjoys a crossover with Mighty Med), which I may cover at some point, but given that only Berelc is doing much these days, could we maybe get a new series set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe? Hear me out on this one, get back now adult Caz, Oliver and Skylar, do some hand-wavy retconning so that it was always in the MCU, only now they're in college as Medical Students. MCU Scrubs. Though hopefully without the problematic sexism and homophobia that Scrubs had. Do a 10-episode run for Disney+ and see how it goes, it could well have legs if done right. And if you can't work Zuehlsdorff's character back in, give her her own show, she could be the next Anna Kendrick with the right vehicle.