Heroics: 2
I'm re-watching the pilot of Heroes and I feel the need to expound.
So in sum: a disgraced professor is killed while researching superhumans (he's "almost tracked down the first one" in Queens*) and his son moves from India to New York to finish his work. Budding heroes include an empath with a politico brother, an invulnerable cheerleader, a geeky teleporter, a painter who paints the future while asleep/drugged out, and an Internet stripper with a doppelganger and a genius son who's very Waltlike, but charming. And apparently there are more on the way.
The empath appears to be the main focus of the show (and the source of a lot of coincidences). I don't sympathize with him much. Love the brother though--and the brother's voice. Man.
Hiro, the geek, easily steals the show by a) acknowledging and b) controlling his powers, and you can argue with me about this, but I'm ready to peg him as the most powerful. He's the projection of the fans, the writers acknowledging how we think we'd act if we suddenly had super powers. Me, I'd quit work and spend all day flying around, maybe using my laser vision to help with construction jobs, clear a little traffic, save some kittens, try to wrangle free ice cream from the local dairy when I use my freezing breath to save their produce when the power goes down. That kind of thing.
I think the relationship between the empath and the politico is completely brilliant, and that's all I'm saying about that.
Claire didn't inspire hatred in me, but I'm only slightly interested in her.
I'm ambivalent on the stripper because--you know, I appreciate trying to get your kid into a better school, but there are smarter ways to go about it. And if you actually watched the show, you know I'm not talking about the stripping. Interested to see how her power plays out and whether her kid is superhuman or just mortally awesome, and I guess she ended up the episode in kind of a pickle, but I have no emotional stake in it right now.
I guess I like the painter. I like the girlfriend. I LOVE the empath/politico's mom. Meh on the cheerleader's mom, but I'm sure the fact that she breeds dogs is a Very Important Element.
There were some logical leaps--who lets a kid just run away from an accident scene?--and it sounds like we'll be able to connect all the main characters within an episode or two. We're practically there already and that includes the one in Japan. The elements it took from Lost are obvious. The thing that gives me hope is that it seems to be moving a lot faster than, say, X-Men or Smallville or something. We have super powers straight off the bat. It implies that *getting super powers* won't be the main plot line, even *learning to use them* might not be the main plot line, but there might be something else to follow in the creepy guy in glasses. (Look how good I am at not spoiling you!) It's like the apocalypse, I don't need an explanation how the world ended, I just want to see burnt-out cities and walking corpses. The tropes for a superhero show are all in place--dispense with them as quickly as possible, and then use them to tell me a new story. Preferrably one that has not been touched upon in the last sixty years of comic books.
*How you can "almost" track down a person you don't know to a particular place is totally beyond me. It just--it just makes no sense. There was a lot of exposition-not-making-sense in the pilot, actually.
So in sum: a disgraced professor is killed while researching superhumans (he's "almost tracked down the first one" in Queens*) and his son moves from India to New York to finish his work. Budding heroes include an empath with a politico brother, an invulnerable cheerleader, a geeky teleporter, a painter who paints the future while asleep/drugged out, and an Internet stripper with a doppelganger and a genius son who's very Waltlike, but charming. And apparently there are more on the way.
The empath appears to be the main focus of the show (and the source of a lot of coincidences). I don't sympathize with him much. Love the brother though--and the brother's voice. Man.
Hiro, the geek, easily steals the show by a) acknowledging and b) controlling his powers, and you can argue with me about this, but I'm ready to peg him as the most powerful. He's the projection of the fans, the writers acknowledging how we think we'd act if we suddenly had super powers. Me, I'd quit work and spend all day flying around, maybe using my laser vision to help with construction jobs, clear a little traffic, save some kittens, try to wrangle free ice cream from the local dairy when I use my freezing breath to save their produce when the power goes down. That kind of thing.
I think the relationship between the empath and the politico is completely brilliant, and that's all I'm saying about that.
Claire didn't inspire hatred in me, but I'm only slightly interested in her.
I'm ambivalent on the stripper because--you know, I appreciate trying to get your kid into a better school, but there are smarter ways to go about it. And if you actually watched the show, you know I'm not talking about the stripping. Interested to see how her power plays out and whether her kid is superhuman or just mortally awesome, and I guess she ended up the episode in kind of a pickle, but I have no emotional stake in it right now.
I guess I like the painter. I like the girlfriend. I LOVE the empath/politico's mom. Meh on the cheerleader's mom, but I'm sure the fact that she breeds dogs is a Very Important Element.
There were some logical leaps--who lets a kid just run away from an accident scene?--and it sounds like we'll be able to connect all the main characters within an episode or two. We're practically there already and that includes the one in Japan. The elements it took from Lost are obvious. The thing that gives me hope is that it seems to be moving a lot faster than, say, X-Men or Smallville or something. We have super powers straight off the bat. It implies that *getting super powers* won't be the main plot line, even *learning to use them* might not be the main plot line, but there might be something else to follow in the creepy guy in glasses. (Look how good I am at not spoiling you!) It's like the apocalypse, I don't need an explanation how the world ended, I just want to see burnt-out cities and walking corpses. The tropes for a superhero show are all in place--dispense with them as quickly as possible, and then use them to tell me a new story. Preferrably one that has not been touched upon in the last sixty years of comic books.
*How you can "almost" track down a person you don't know to a particular place is totally beyond me. It just--it just makes no sense. There was a lot of exposition-not-making-sense in the pilot, actually.