Gold Standard: SyFy Pilots Booster Gold

I thought I was free of that Goddamned channel.

First they let Battlestar Galactica go – and end on a “Be nice to robots” note. Fuck you. If my Aibo won’t learn to fetch me beers on command, he gets a kicking, just like any other real dog or child.

Then they made have to watch Stan Lee bestow the title of “superhero” on some sasquatch calling herself “Fat Momma” (Well, she was still better than Fin Fang Foom… actually, looking again, she might have been Fin Fang Foom, or at least have shopped in the same Lane Bryant), they cancelled Eureka, and stole two hours worth of my pink, blank neurons and replaced them with something called Mansquito.

I was shut of you, SyFy Channel… and then you had to go and do this:

Syfy is looking to bring Booster Gold to life on the small screen.

Okay… don’t make eye contact with the empty SyFy development suit and give away that Booster Gold isn’t a WWE wrestler and let’s see what’s up.

The NBCUniversal cable network has ordered a pilot script for the one-hour drama based on the DC Comics franchise…

The story will center on Booster Gold, a washed-up athlete from the future who travels back to the present in hopes of becoming the greatest super hero of all time. Instead of chasing criminals, however, his main priority is chasing fame and money. But Booster Gold discovers that being a hero takes more than just a megawatt smile, and that the future doesn’t happen without first protecting the present.

On one hand, this news excites me. I am, after all, a child of the 80’s with a prized first-print copy of Giffen’s and DeMatteis’s Justice League #1. Plus, the pre-New 52 Booster Gold comic by Geoff Johns, Dan Jurgens and Giffen and DeMatteis was a fun – and to my mind, criminally underread – run of comics. And the character’s appearance on Smallville proved that he can work on television, even when the show he’s on requires you to call a 34-year-old man “Superboy.”

On the other hand, this pilot is being produced by Greg Berlanti, whose last TV project was No Ordinary Family, which failed to hook in even this inveterate superhero junkie. And it’s being produced for the SyFy Channel. Which means that the smart money is on the pilot showing Booster saving Debbie Gibson from some form of Mecha-Sharktopenis. And perhaps Tiffany.