The program’s other lessons include “It’s one thing to laugh in the face of danger, but not when you’re failing to accomplish your goal,” and “If the world is in grave danger, do we just ignore it because you have a headache?” No, we do not.

And then there’s a perennial point of clarification — “Superheroes don’t kill people; they save people” — that seems to determine the action of the show. In the first challenge, last week, contestants were told to change into their costumes in a public park without being seen, and then race to a designated spot. All fine, except that the executive producers Mr. Lee, the estimable co-creator of Spider-Man and the X-Men, and Bruce Nash couldn’t resist a plot twist. Into the path of the speeding superheroes they threw a damsel in distress: a little girl who can’t find her mother.

The girl, presumably an actress, really did seem like a lost child in a park. And the contestants who stopped for her — mostly the women, but not always whom you’d expect — were protected from elimination. The fools who kept running (often the fastest runners, whose eyes were trained on the finish line) had to face Mr. Lee. Nitro G, a comic nerd from Staten Island named Darren Passarello who both hadn’t stopped and had dressed in plain view, didn’t have a prayer. The challenge made a surprisingly sophisticated point about the limits of focus and the moral importance of distraction.

If reality television is to thrive in the outer boroughs of television — channels like Sci Fi — this competition proves that it must leave off trying to find businessmen (“The Apprentice”) and spouses (“The Bachelor” and “The Bachelorette”). Such searches attract only talentless squares. Instead, it should continue to invite amateurs from morally interesting cultural sectors — fashion, comics — to prove themselves in the arenas they care about. That way, you get both surprising characters and a window on a subculture with its own lessons and provocations.

But on “Who Wants to Be a Superhero?” the lesson about saving and not killing people seems chiefly directed at Iron Enforcer, a shirtless, pockmarked contestant from Brooklyn (he gives his real name as Steel Chambers) whose two arms play the roles of Mercy and Judgment. The Judgment arm is a massive machine gun. He seems more menacing than heroic. And on tonight’s episode he essentially seems to admit to juicing, which is disturbing.