Even More Heroics
I caught the second episode of Heroes on the NBC website, after completely forgetting to watch it on Monday. Honest to gosh, I may never watch television on a television again. First Dexter last week and now this....
So Heroes. I'm really torn about this show. Every time they do something stupid, they intercut it with something awesome, and vice-versa. I guess I should comment on all the plotlines separately.
1. Claire and her evil daddy are so cute. I'm 100% in favor of the evil dad. The way this show is going, he might not even be the bad guy. I couldn't tell whether he was being honest or not when he said he'd continue to protect her from the world. Which made it awesome.
Last week I said to tahmthelame, "Why would they let a kid just run away from an accident scene? Why don't they just go to her school and ask all the cheerleaders about it until one of them breaks?" This week? They took my advice. My phone must have been tapped by a fake exterminator.
2. Who shows up in Mohindir's apartment too. I could not for my life figure out why nobody had just killed him dead yet, until I realized they probably wanted him to track down the...what are we calling these people? The Heroes? I fervently hope that the pixie chick is an agent for the other side, spying on Papa Suresh. Who, by the way, is probably not dead. No corpse, no cred. I have a strong feeling that this show is going to jerk us around a lot in terms of "good guy", "bad guy" camps, so if he is alive, he could be hiding, working for Claire's evil dad, working with the serial killer, or...anything.
There's a message on the machine that records a conversation between Papa S. and some guy named Sylar. Apparently Papa S. found Sylar and...made him a killer? I wish I could believe that Papa S. would ever allow that conversation to stay on his machine. Lazy writers.
One more note on this. Did you notice that the scrolling genome made a pattern on the screen that was immediately paralleled in the swimming pool in the next scene? It's a little familiar, too.
3. The Psicop didn't notice, but that figures, since he's apparently not good enough to move to detective even though he took the test three times. I really liked this guy. He's a donut pusher for sure, but likably earnest. Here we see a crime scene where vic #1 is pinned to a stair banner (and that was cool), vic #2 is frozen solid with his head cut off and brains gone (didn't this happen in the last Hannibal Lecter movie?), and the surviving viclet is hiding in a secret room. That seemed weird to me. There was stuff in front of the hidden door. It's right adjacent to the murder scene, so--did she duck in there as soon as the blood started to fly? Did Sylar put her there? I'd think that the parents hid her there before facing the killer, but the dad was eating breakfast. This show really abuses my suspension of disbelief, and not in the areas it should. Super powers, I'm all over those. But you have to get the real life right.
If I was Clea Duvall, I'd be getting tired of playing characters who get their minds read. That must be why she arrested the Psicop. Aww. Clea, you look better as a brunette.
4. Hiro spots a comic book that tells the story of what he got up to in episode one. "Now they give me the script?" he thinks. No, what he really does is pay the news guy in yen and then take off running. Taking a lesson from Mama Kleptelli, I see. He stops by to see the artist--our drug-addled painter--and finds him at the end of a long trail of blood. He sees a gun on the ground and, incredibly, picks it up. See what I mean about suspension of disbelief? This is a guy who watches a lot of TV, I just can't fathom him being dumb enough to pick up a gun that's laying beside a trail of blood. Unsurprisingly, the police arrive in time to find him. The subsequent interrogation is hilarious. Then we learn simultaneously that:
1) It's November 8,
2) That's five weeks later than Hiro thinks it is (his watch still says October 2),
3) He's been missing since then, and how much do I want a copy of that "Missing" poster?
4) Shark Petrelli won his election in a landslide, and
5) Someone just nuked New York.
Hiro teleports back to the subway where/when he left. That whole section is fascinating because, did that mean he really space-traveled at all, or did he just project his mind to the place that his body would be in five weeks? His watch would vote for teleportation, but missing-Hiro votes for mind projection. For the moment, I will chalk this up to not understanding his power, rather than inconsistency.
It's kind of bold for them to give us the season finale at this point. I'm interested in how it'll pan out. Specifically, I'm almost positive that the nuke will be set off by one of the "good guys" in some kind of misguided effort, possibly to destroy Sylar the serial brainkiller. Someone theorized that he's eating the brains of his victims to gain their skills. Sounds plausible. If that's true, it might even be Sylar finally getting too powerful for himself, who knows. It also means that Isaac Mendez the psychic painter is his very last victim. Good, we know he'll live out the season no matter how many drugs he takes.
5. Peter Petrelli might not, if he keeps jumping off buildings like that. He wakes up to see the Shark retconning that he jumped 25 feet to a fire escape. Mama Kleptelli comes in later to backstory that their father killed himself. Despite the fact that this man just jumped off a roof, he makes it back onto a roof so that he can force a confession of flight out of his brother. And also find out that he can fly too.
Boy, do I not buy that for one minute. Superheroes don't "fly" so much as they apply telekinesis to themselves. If the Shark can do it to himself, he can probably do it to his brother too. Peter, you've been had. And please do not go jumping off anything, expecting to live.
Relatedly, isn't telekinesis about the best thing a politician could have, after telepathy? I see tampered ballots, humiliated opponents, and untraceable theft. I really hope my telekinesis theory is true, and not that they just "soar" without wings or hollow bones or thrust or, you know, any of that stuff that makes flight possible.
6. Niki the stripper watches the videotape of the murder of the mobsters, which goes staticky when it gets to the good part. Cop-out. She also loses four hours in which her doppelganger manages to clean up the crime scene, buy a new car, and load the mafia into the trunk. I can't decide if she has two sides, Jekyll/Hyde, or if there's another entity actively fighting for control of her body. The other entity seems smarter, though, so I say let your bad side show!
So, in sum. Nothing is what it seems, and yet everything seems so predictable. The dialogue is often stupid and often brilliant. There are a couple of characters I adore and a couple I don't care about at all. I really want to love this show, but I'm just not gripped by it. I guess I'll continue to watch halfheartedly until it gets good, or they do something really ridiculous. Both seem equally likely.
I'm missing Lost tonight in favor of a birthday party. I'll catch up digitally sometime this week.
So Heroes. I'm really torn about this show. Every time they do something stupid, they intercut it with something awesome, and vice-versa. I guess I should comment on all the plotlines separately.
1. Claire and her evil daddy are so cute. I'm 100% in favor of the evil dad. The way this show is going, he might not even be the bad guy. I couldn't tell whether he was being honest or not when he said he'd continue to protect her from the world. Which made it awesome.
Last week I said to tahmthelame, "Why would they let a kid just run away from an accident scene? Why don't they just go to her school and ask all the cheerleaders about it until one of them breaks?" This week? They took my advice. My phone must have been tapped by a fake exterminator.
2. Who shows up in Mohindir's apartment too. I could not for my life figure out why nobody had just killed him dead yet, until I realized they probably wanted him to track down the...what are we calling these people? The Heroes? I fervently hope that the pixie chick is an agent for the other side, spying on Papa Suresh. Who, by the way, is probably not dead. No corpse, no cred. I have a strong feeling that this show is going to jerk us around a lot in terms of "good guy", "bad guy" camps, so if he is alive, he could be hiding, working for Claire's evil dad, working with the serial killer, or...anything.
There's a message on the machine that records a conversation between Papa S. and some guy named Sylar. Apparently Papa S. found Sylar and...made him a killer? I wish I could believe that Papa S. would ever allow that conversation to stay on his machine. Lazy writers.
One more note on this. Did you notice that the scrolling genome made a pattern on the screen that was immediately paralleled in the swimming pool in the next scene? It's a little familiar, too.
3. The Psicop didn't notice, but that figures, since he's apparently not good enough to move to detective even though he took the test three times. I really liked this guy. He's a donut pusher for sure, but likably earnest. Here we see a crime scene where vic #1 is pinned to a stair banner (and that was cool), vic #2 is frozen solid with his head cut off and brains gone (didn't this happen in the last Hannibal Lecter movie?), and the surviving viclet is hiding in a secret room. That seemed weird to me. There was stuff in front of the hidden door. It's right adjacent to the murder scene, so--did she duck in there as soon as the blood started to fly? Did Sylar put her there? I'd think that the parents hid her there before facing the killer, but the dad was eating breakfast. This show really abuses my suspension of disbelief, and not in the areas it should. Super powers, I'm all over those. But you have to get the real life right.
If I was Clea Duvall, I'd be getting tired of playing characters who get their minds read. That must be why she arrested the Psicop. Aww. Clea, you look better as a brunette.
4. Hiro spots a comic book that tells the story of what he got up to in episode one. "Now they give me the script?" he thinks. No, what he really does is pay the news guy in yen and then take off running. Taking a lesson from Mama Kleptelli, I see. He stops by to see the artist--our drug-addled painter--and finds him at the end of a long trail of blood. He sees a gun on the ground and, incredibly, picks it up. See what I mean about suspension of disbelief? This is a guy who watches a lot of TV, I just can't fathom him being dumb enough to pick up a gun that's laying beside a trail of blood. Unsurprisingly, the police arrive in time to find him. The subsequent interrogation is hilarious. Then we learn simultaneously that:
1) It's November 8,
2) That's five weeks later than Hiro thinks it is (his watch still says October 2),
3) He's been missing since then, and how much do I want a copy of that "Missing" poster?
4) Shark Petrelli won his election in a landslide, and
5) Someone just nuked New York.
Hiro teleports back to the subway where/when he left. That whole section is fascinating because, did that mean he really space-traveled at all, or did he just project his mind to the place that his body would be in five weeks? His watch would vote for teleportation, but missing-Hiro votes for mind projection. For the moment, I will chalk this up to not understanding his power, rather than inconsistency.
It's kind of bold for them to give us the season finale at this point. I'm interested in how it'll pan out. Specifically, I'm almost positive that the nuke will be set off by one of the "good guys" in some kind of misguided effort, possibly to destroy Sylar the serial brainkiller. Someone theorized that he's eating the brains of his victims to gain their skills. Sounds plausible. If that's true, it might even be Sylar finally getting too powerful for himself, who knows. It also means that Isaac Mendez the psychic painter is his very last victim. Good, we know he'll live out the season no matter how many drugs he takes.
5. Peter Petrelli might not, if he keeps jumping off buildings like that. He wakes up to see the Shark retconning that he jumped 25 feet to a fire escape. Mama Kleptelli comes in later to backstory that their father killed himself. Despite the fact that this man just jumped off a roof, he makes it back onto a roof so that he can force a confession of flight out of his brother. And also find out that he can fly too.
Boy, do I not buy that for one minute. Superheroes don't "fly" so much as they apply telekinesis to themselves. If the Shark can do it to himself, he can probably do it to his brother too. Peter, you've been had. And please do not go jumping off anything, expecting to live.
Relatedly, isn't telekinesis about the best thing a politician could have, after telepathy? I see tampered ballots, humiliated opponents, and untraceable theft. I really hope my telekinesis theory is true, and not that they just "soar" without wings or hollow bones or thrust or, you know, any of that stuff that makes flight possible.
6. Niki the stripper watches the videotape of the murder of the mobsters, which goes staticky when it gets to the good part. Cop-out. She also loses four hours in which her doppelganger manages to clean up the crime scene, buy a new car, and load the mafia into the trunk. I can't decide if she has two sides, Jekyll/Hyde, or if there's another entity actively fighting for control of her body. The other entity seems smarter, though, so I say let your bad side show!
So, in sum. Nothing is what it seems, and yet everything seems so predictable. The dialogue is often stupid and often brilliant. There are a couple of characters I adore and a couple I don't care about at all. I really want to love this show, but I'm just not gripped by it. I guess I'll continue to watch halfheartedly until it gets good, or they do something really ridiculous. Both seem equally likely.
I'm missing Lost tonight in favor of a birthday party. I'll catch up digitally sometime this week.