The Powers of Matthew Star was hastily put together as ABC's answer to NBC's hit-series The Greatest American Hero. They tried to use the same basic formula; buddy crime-fighters, one of whom has super-powers. However, Matthew Star lacks the bumbling comedy of TGAH, not to mention the strong character performances of Katt and Culp, (as well as a young Michael Pere!) and vastly superior writing.
While Louis Gossett Jr. Is always reliable, and manages to be the only thing that makes this show at all watchable, even his acting heroics can't make up for every other dull and cheesy aspect of the show. The plots are very outlandish yet so simple they could be told in a half-hour format, which means they have to pad each episode with plenty of unnecessary side-trips and excursions (usually using Matthew's powers) before they get around to wrapping up the episode by catching the bad guys.
An even more fundamental issue with this show is that it's ostensibly all about Matthew's powers, according to the title, yet whenever Matthew uses his powers it's often to do something he could've done slightly less conveniently without them. As the series trudges along through its first and only season, the powers become more and more of a cheap deus ex machina to fill in various plot holes. By relying on the powers this way, the two leads don't get the opportunity to move the plot along in a way that is entertaining; for example a clever ruse combined with con-man techniques like on Rockford Files, to get into a building, would be far more entertaining than Matthew simply 'astraling' himself there. The powers end up dragging the show down; the one thing that was supposed to make the show interesting turns out to be a stinking albatross of bad special effects and an even worse script. The powers actually make the show more dull than it would be without them.
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