Pilot Review: Naomi

 Naomi (Tuesdays at 9:00 on The CW)

I'm not sure if I'm no longer the intended audience for The CW's DC adaptations, or if I've simply outgrown them. But whereas 3-4 years ago I was gleefully tuning in to Arrow, The Flash, and Supergirl every week, eagerly anticipating crossover events, the only Arrowverse series I regularly watch is Batwoman. I didn't finish Supergirl's final run of episodes after growing bored with the first half of season six; I gave up on The Flash when Iris got trapped in a mirror, right around the start of the pandemic; and I didn't even make it a full season into the newest addition, Superman & Lois, before realizing I didn't understand or care what was going on in Smallville.

So maybe Naomi isn't for me. Still, it has a lot of elements I love and, in many ways, seems tailor-made for a nostalgic, Millennial viewer like myself. I just wish those elements were in service to a more exciting series.

Beginning with the most obvious voiceover in television history, our leading player Naomi (a very charming Kaci Walfall) tells us, "Every hero has their origin story. This is mine." UGH, WHY, STOP IT. After more than a decade of being hammered over the head with superhero origins across film and TV, I do not need another one, especially one that announces itself as an origin. Anyway, Naomi is a kinda nerdy teen girl from Port Oswego, Oregon where there's a split between the "townies" and the "military brats,"of which Naomi is the latter. Despite her nerdy obsession with the Superman comic books, she's very popular and well-liked, not to mention a nearly-perfect daughter to her adoptive parents (CW vets Barry Watson and Mouzam Makkar). But then weird things start happening, like a seemingly-real stunt in the town square involving a real-life Superman, and Naomi starts to question the world she's inhabiting as she searches for answers.

It's everything you'd expect, except for the most obvious: by pilot's end, we don't know jackshit about Naomi still. What is she? Who is she? That's quite literally the question we are left with in the first episode's final moments (which you've probably seen in the previews, so it's not even a spoiler) as Dee (Alexander Wraith) unfurls a pair of wings. It's a choice to finish your first episode, typically the most-viewed and most-discussed of a new show, without revealing anything about... well, anything. After a full episode, we have no idea who or what our protagonist is or what is happening in her town. We know an event occurred that has everyone talking, but what was it? Why? How? What is its meaning?

Why start a series saying "this is my origin story," and then not tell that story? I understand that it will unravel across the course of this first season, but to go your entire first hour without really doing anything could either be a smart move to get viewers to return next week, or a baffling one that will frustrate enough people to turn them off completely. I'm currently sitting in the latter camp.

There's just not enough going on here to make me want to come back to episode two. Sure, it's nice that Naomi has a more upbeat tone than other shows in the DC universe. It's nice that Naomi is popular and bubbly and sweet. It's great to see another Black lead in a comic book series. The potential teen drama trappings of love triangles (though this one may be pansexual!), exes, learning to drive, etc that made some of my favorite teen soaps so enjoyable are fun.

But imagine having a show like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and not having Buffy know she's the Slayer before the first episode ends. Imagine that whole "Welcome to the Hellmouth" pilot just being Buffy meeting Willow and Xander and Cordelia, going to the Bronze, doing homework, and then a vampire shows up at the very end of the pilot. We know Buffy is the Slayer; it's in the title. In this case, we know Naomi has something to do with superheroes; she told us in the first scene voiceover. So to take so much time to arrive at such an obvious point is frustrating. This new slow-motion format of storytelling has gained popularity of late, particularly in film, so it's not surprising that Naomi, which is written by Oscar nominee Ava DuVernay (Selma, 13th) with some help from Arrow writer Jill Blankenship, follows this trend and slows everything down to a frustrating crawl.

After all, this is a comic book adaptation. Comics are known for being short-form storytelling. Individual issues are about 32 pages, and story arcs tend to cover about 6 issues. Action moves from location to location, panel to panel, with breakneck speed to keep fans turning pages. They, by nature, move quickly. Naomi does not, and its prospects suffer for it. Because for those of us looking for fast, fun escapism, much like we used to find in the pages of comic books, there's little to grasp onto in Naomi.