Heroes

[Slurktan]

I'm "interested" into the reasoning of why Sylar's Dad wasn't brought in by Primatech. I hope the writers have Bennett on the show say, "Well the writers hadn't thought him up yet" when asked that question. It will make far more sense than basically any Heroes plotline.

[AverageGuy]

[quote name='Dagger' post='1715145' date='Mar 10 2009, 11.57']And I am really sick of this flying power being faster-than-light. Nathan and Peter can now fly coast-to-coast in a matter of seconds. It is beyond ridiculous.[/quote]
It's only about 4,000 km between the coasts. At light speed it wouldn't even take a tenth of a second :P

So this was the first Fuller episode. Good time to jump back in?

[Blaine]

I wouldn't call it the first Fuller episode... more the first one that wasn't totally wrapped up by the time he came onboard. My guess is that there was only so much the guy could do to tighten it up.

But I think his influence will be more likely felt in upcoming episodes. Supposedly, he even wrote one of the last few eps of the season.

[Jed o' Tarth]

While I indeed loved this episode, I did have few "huh?" moments.

Nathan could have easily yanked Dinko out the window with him and just let him fall. Or, (as I kept saying during the few 'stunned' seconds) HRG could have shoved Dinko out the window after Nathan flew off. End of problem.

Why is Claire being sent all the 'special' people. She's just a teenage girl (with a bad wig). Suddenly she knows all the ins and outs of relocation?

I had a very Annie Wilkes moment with Sylar. His dad puts him down and they end the scene with Sylar passing out. The begin the scene again with Sylar awake and saying something like, "Don't you know when someone is playing possum?" Come on!

I loved the end (with the exception of Mohinder's stupid voice-over). I am looking foward to some fun torture of Dinko. :D

The previews for next week look like a lot of fun.

[Jerol]

Another beef - a small one but still. Do the writers of this show have any idea what a US Senator is and what they do? And what a Washington DC cop would do if a Senator flashed an ID and then tried to walk to a terrorist with a bomb strapped to him? It's like this show was written by monks in Singapore whose notion of the outside world was shaped by watching Hong Kong knock-offs of the X-Files.

[SquireThomas]

[quote]Another beef - a small one but still. Do the writers of this show have any idea what a US Senator is and what they do? And what a Washington DC cop would do if a Senator flashed an ID and then tried to walk to a terrorist with a bomb strapped to him? It's like this show was written by monks in Singapore whose notion of the outside world was shaped by watching Hong Kong knock-offs of the X-Files.[/quote]

None whatsoever, considering that random asian tech didn't even blink when Danko ordered him to [i]murder[/i] one. Don't people get executed for that kind of thing?

[A Time for Wolves]

[quote name='Solana Tarth' post='1715328' date='Mar 10 2009, 15.56']While I indeed loved this episode, I did have few "huh?" moments.

Nathan could have easily yanked Dinko out the window with him and just let him fall. Or, (as I kept saying during the few 'stunned' seconds) HRG could have shoved Dinko out the window after Nathan flew off. End of problem.

Why is Claire being sent all the 'special' people. She's just a teenage girl (with a bad wig). Suddenly she knows all the ins and outs of relocation?[/quote]

Yeah, this irritated me too, but only a little. I've grown accustomed to the general stupidity of the characters on Heroes and all of their contrived problems and solutions.

With that said, this episode had several badass moments, the biggest of which was Angela Petrelli coolly putting Danko in his place. That scene was one of the most satisfying scenes that have ever been written on this show since Season One. Danko is not an interesting villain, but he is certainly annoying and menacing - I really will enjoy seeing him shut down by someone.

I didn't understand Claire's reasoning for helping Puppet Man. People shouldn't be automatically branded as terrorists because they have abilities, that's true - but they also shouldn't be automatically saved just because they have abilities either. Puppet Man is a crazy, dangerous, amoral psychopath who is [i]not[/i] going make the world a safer place. He's a criminal and he's proven to Claire and her mother(s) that he isn't afraid to kill people, play torturous "games" with them, and in the case of Meredith, come close to violating a woman. There was absolutely no reason to save him. He isn't an innocent man.

Apart from those problems, it was a solid episode by Heroes standards.

Edit: Forgot Sylar and his dad. I knew Sylar would soften and want to talk to him. I thought the cutting the rabbit scene was bizarre. It shouldn't have been such a big deal to have Sylar slit the rabbit's throat either - he's done far, far worse things.

However, the lame meeting took a very interesting turn when the dad tried to steal Sylar's power. I agree, the whistling power is cool. It was interesting to see Sylar in the place of one of his victims, and to see his father show his Sylar-ish personality. It was strange when Sylar somehow defeated his father's power and freed himself, but whatever. I liked his contemptuous last words to his dad before he walked away as well, although then it felt a little anti-climactic.

[Werthead]

My name is Wert and I have been [b]Heroes[/b]-dry for two months. And my life is a happier, sunnier place altogether.

That said, I have noticed that the [url="http://io9.com/5167803/what-comic-book-store-owners-really-think-of-heroes"]Internet roundly disapproves of the latest episode [/url]for adhering to mid-1980s stereotypes of what a comic book store consists of.

[quote]You don't shit where you eat, you don't bite the hand that feeds you, and you don't insult your core constituency.[/quote]

Was it really that bad?

Meanwhile, [i]OK! Magazine[/i] report [url="http://io9.com/5168374/hayden-panettiere-has-an-idea-to-help-fix-heroes"]domestic troubles on the set[/url]. Here's my solution: fire both of them. And half the rest of the cast for the sheer hell of it.

This bit in the comments section is Pure Win:

[quote]Heroes could benefit from a much larger purging than the two of them. I say, kill everyone who's so much as cameoed on the show, and start over fresh with unrelated mutants doing cool things. I imagine that a fun, lighthearted show about likable characters played by competent actors with interesting powers doing interesting things like using those powers and being heroes would only be a boon for the show.[/quote]

[SpaceChampion]

Those of you looking to Bryan Fuller to save Heroes might have mixed feelings about this piece of news:  [url="http://sffmedia.com/tv/science-fiction-tv/318-new-star-trek-tv-show.html"]Fuller wants to helm a new Star Trek TV series[/url].

[AverageGuy]

[quote name='Werthead' post='1717752' date='Mar 12 2009, 17.31']Meanwhile, [i]OK! Magazine[/i] report [url="http://io9.com/5168374/hayden-panettiere-has-an-idea-to-help-fix-heroes"]domestic troubles on the set[/url]. Here's my solution: fire both of them. And half the rest of the cast for the sheer hell of it.[/quote]
This reminds me that I was wondering, in hindsight, who should've gotten eliminated at the end of Season 1. I'd originally been against completely changing the cast because I figured it would be hard for the audience to continually reconnect to new characters, but I think they went too far the other way. IMHO: Peter: dead. Apparently blown up in the season finale, and you don't have to think of ridiculous ways to counter his powers. Sylar: dead. Killed by Hiro, and for the same reason. Bennet and Claire: Gone. In hiding. Because eye candy and badass aside, it would've made sense. Ali Larter and her family: Gone. Their story was over. Which would've left Hiro, Suresh, Nathan Petrelli (as a Congressman), Parkman, the Haitian, Angela Petrelli, and Mr. Sulu. They may not have been the most popular characters, but they all had character reasons for sticking around and dealing with the Company and finding any new heroes who popped up.

[EHK for Darwin]

[quote name='Werthead' post='1717752' date='Mar 12 2009, 16.31']My name is Wert and I have been [b]Heroes[/b]-dry for two months. And my life is a happier, sunnier place altogether.

That said, I have noticed that the [url="http://io9.com/5167803/what-comic-book-store-owners-really-think-of-heroes"]Internet roundly disapproves of the latest episode [/url]for adhering to mid-1980s stereotypes of what a comic book store consists of.[/quote]

The comic store owners are uptight dickwads. It was amusing and only slightly exaggerated. A girl like Hayden working at a comic book store would get stares. Not gawking, drooling ones, but lets not pretend that girls like that show up in places like that every day.


[quote]Was it really that bad?

Meanwhile, [i]OK! Magazine[/i] report [url="http://io9.com/5168374/hayden-panettiere-has-an-idea-to-help-fix-heroes"]domestic troubles on the set[/url]. Here's my solution: fire both of them. And half the rest of the cast for the sheer hell of it.

This bit in the comments section is Pure Win:[/quote]

That's incredibly unprofessional. You've got a job to do, leave your personal life at the door.

[Ser Aardvark]

[quote name='AverageGuy' post='1717801' date='Mar 12 2009, 19.30']This reminds me that I was wondering, in hindsight, who should've gotten eliminated at the end of Season 1. I'd originally been against completely changing the cast because I figured it would be hard for the audience to continually reconnect to new characters, but I think they went too far the other way. IMHO: Peter: dead. Apparently blown up in the season finale, and you don't have to think of ridiculous ways to counter his powers. Sylar: dead. Killed by Hiro, and for the same reason. Bennet and Claire: Gone. In hiding. Because eye candy and badass aside, it would've made sense. Ali Larter and her family: Gone. Their story was over. Which would've left Hiro, Suresh, Nathan Petrelli (as a Congressman), Parkman, the Haitian, Angela Petrelli, and Mr. Sulu. They may not have been the most popular characters, but they all had character reasons for sticking around and dealing with the Company and finding any new heroes who popped up.[/quote]
I had an extended discussion about this a few weeks ago during Happy Hour. I think Heroes could have benefited by modeling its different seasons/volumes after The Wire. Throughout the series you had a core of characters that stayed relatively constant (with the occasional shake up like after Season 3) while each season there were new characters that came on. The end saw most of the new ones left behind but there were some who stayed on and integrated into the plotlines of the following season. Regardless, everyone had a role in the ongoing storyline throughout the season and were rarely completely separate.

From what I understand Kring had something similar in mind originally. It would have been great to see Nathan and Sylar die, Nikki, husband, and son fade away into obscurity and a dead Sylar being replaced with a new villain (or villainous group) in addition to the remains of Primatech gathering up again along with a new 2 or 3 heroes that were immediately put in the shit. Instead, we had that core group not only stay bloated but had uninteresting characters coming on with little to no direction or connection until it became a huge mess. Basically instead of everyone tying into everyone else (as was done so superbly in the first season) we had a half dozen separate storylines that took forever to even hint they were coming together. Dropped storylines and characters began to pile up and the main characters that are left are saddled with so much stupid pasts that it becomes virtually impossible to plausibly write anything for them. A damn shame.

[Ran]

It's unprofessional if true. It's a gossip column, I'd take it with a grain of salt.

And I think Kring's original approach could well have been superior. The fact that the studio balked with the idea that fans were invested in the stories of specific characters, and that they weren't going to like it if they stepped into the background and new characters kept rotating into the foreground, prevented him from doing this. I don't really think people came out of the first season as specific fans of anyone but Hiro, Sylar, and Bennet. You could easily have stepped away from the Pettreli saga and moved on to some new group of evolved humans.

[Ser Aardvark]

[quote name='EHK for a True GOP' post='1717867' date='Mar 12 2009, 20.45']The comic store owners are uptight dickwads. It was amusing and only slightly exaggerated. A girl like Hayden working at a comic book store would get stares. Not gawking, drooling ones, but lets not pretend that girls like that show up in places like that every day.[/quote]
I think it was much more than "slightly" exaggerated and, if Heroes had been a better show, maybe someone who has devoted their life to the comic store would have let it slide. But come on, what if Claire applied for a job at a bank or a law firm? I know quite well that those drooling losers could just as easily have been sleazy married 40+ year old suits. I guess it's just easier to mock your audience which, imo, is supremely stupid.

[EHK for Darwin]

[quote name='Ran' post='1718173' date='Mar 13 2009, 03.00'][b]And I think Kring's original approach could well have been superior.[/b] The fact that the studio balked with the idea that fans were invested in the stories of specific characters, and that they weren't going to like it if they stepped into the background and new characters kept rotating into the foreground, prevented him from doing this. I don't really think people came out of the first season as specific fans of anyone but Hiro, Sylar, and Bennet. You could easily have stepped away from the Pettreli saga and moved on to some new group of evolved humans.[/quote]

I really don't think so. People get invested in their favored characters. Doesn't mean they won't accept a few of them weeded out, but a wholesale cast replacement? Hardly. They did try it halfway in season two. And with MAYBE one exception (Daphne and if you must, Elle, but she utterly blew in season 2) every newly introduced character raised the level of sucktitude to astronomical proportions. People don't want to watch essentially the same origin story over and over. And crafting a character that people like and appreciate is apparently hard enough, how could you hope to manage a whole cast of them each new season? Why would you waste the few successes you've had?

The suits were right on this one. That they weren't able to handle a hybrid of the 'blank slate vs. continuing cast' hardly means that they'd do any better going Kring's way 100%. Do you really think season 2 would've been better with more Wonder Twins and Acrobat girl? It was a bad season, but those were largely the worst parts of it. How would a whole cast of them be an improvement?

[quote]I think it was much more than "slightly" exaggerated and, if Heroes had been a better show, maybe someone who has devoted their life to the comic store would have let it slide. But come on, what if Claire applied for a job at a bank or a law firm? I know quite well that those drooling losers could just as easily have been sleazy married 40+ year old suits. I guess it's just easier to mock your audience which, imo, is supremely stupid.[/quote]

The audience needs to grow a pair than. This reminds me of the Star Trek fans throwing a fit over Shatner's 'Get a Life' SNL performance. Sure that (Shatner) was brilliant and this (Heroes) is anything of the sort, but its the same kind of thing. Lighten up and take the good natured jabs for what they are. Geeks drool over a hot girl is much better than 'But I'm a cheerleader!' and 'The cool kids at school hate me!' which has been her starting point each season before her end of the storyline started kicking in. This isn't great or even really good, but its a massive improvement and at least they have Claire doing something that actually seems within her character's capabilities. (sure she has no experience in fake ID's and crafting new identities, but its more plausible than a girl whose only power is healing fast facing down fireball throwing baddies) For the first time since parts of season 1 Claire is making meaningful contributions to the storyline and not whining incessantly, I will take that. Granted I wouldn't shed a tear if she was removed from the show completely, but if we're stuck with her, this is the first productive use of her character they've had in years.

[Ser Aardvark]

[quote name='EHK for a True GOP' post='1718389' date='Mar 13 2009, 11.22']I really don't think so. People get invested in their favored characters. Doesn't mean they won't accept a few of them weeded out, but a wholesale cast replacement? Hardly. They did try it halfway in season two. And with MAYBE one exception (Daphne and if you must, Elle, but she utterly blew in season 2) every newly introduced character raised the level of sucktitude to astronomical proportions. People don't want to watch essentially the same origin story over and over. And crafting a character that people like and appreciate is apparently hard enough, how could you hope to manage a whole cast of them each new season? Why would you waste the few successes you've had?

The suits were right on this one. That they weren't able to handle a hybrid of the 'blank slate vs. continuing cast' hardly means that they'd do any better going Kring's way 100%. Do you really think season 2 would've been better with more Wonder Twins and Acrobat girl? It was a bad season, but those were largely the worst parts of it. How would a whole cast of them be an improvement?[/quote]
I dunno if cycles of new characters are necessarily a bad thing, as I mentioned The Wire balanced the dichotomy of new and old cast it superbly for five seasons and it was a far more complex show than Heroes. It wasn't just the load of craptastic characters that made Season 2 bad (though that was part of it), we had about four completely separate plots that didn't even come close to connecting until 5 or 6 episodes in, two of the most unconvincing romances on TV, and a huge let down for an epic villain (not to mention the brief appearance of "My Two Superhero Dads"). I think that even if they had cut out some of the shit characters it still would have been awful.

[EHK for Darwin]

[quote name='Ser Aardvark' post='1718438' date='Mar 13 2009, 10.49']I dunno if cycles of new characters are necessarily a bad thing, as I mentioned The Wire balanced the dichotomy of new and old cast it superbly for five seasons and it was a far more complex show than Heroes. It wasn't just the load of craptastic characters that made Season 2 bad (though that was part of it), we had about four completely separate plots that didn't even come close to connecting until 5 or 6 episodes in, two of the most unconvincing romances on TV, and a huge let down for an epic villain (not to mention the brief appearance of "My Two Superhero Dads"). I think that even if they had cut out some of the shit characters it still would have been awful.[/quote]

Sure season 2 had more problems than you could count, but new characters that noone liked or gave a shit about was still a large part of it. Watching their origins was painful. Claire going through the same 'But I'm a cheerleader/daddy trust issues' yet again was irritating. Peter's amnesic rediscovery could almost count as another origin story as well. They all sucked. I couldn't imagine watching that every new season with a largely different cast.

Wire comparisons are a bit of a stretch. 'The most brilliant show in the history of television did it' doesn't really mean much, MUCH lesser shows have a chance in hell of doing the same. The biggest cast departure was without a doubt season 2 on the docks, but even that still had McNulty, Daniels, Herc, etc as well as much of the Barksdale crew in smaller roles. The main cast was there doing what they always do. Its not like they removed all the characters we'd become invested in and most who were minimized returned to their more significant roles in season 3. I get what you're saying, but this is a show that I don't think introduced a single 'miss' character in its 5 season run and still didn't come close to the level of cast replacement that Kring was considering. Also, they sought to tell distinctively new stories each and every season, focusing on something different each time around. Kring's idea seemed more akin to a reboot of the same show with new faces, starting with the mundane 'Wow I don't die when I fall off a bridge' on to the 'Save the world' shit.

[Ser Aardvark]

Well obviously even at its zenith in the first season, Heroes wasn't as rich or deep as The Wire, nor do I expect it to be. My point is, though, that it seems to me that Kring originally had the same thing in mind that Simon did: They wanted to tell a different story each season/volume that still connects in an overall series arc. That being said I think a compromise should have been done: keep roughly half of the original cast as a "core" group (Suresh, HRG, Claire, Hiro/Ando, and possible Peter and/or Parkman 1.0) and have a "revolving door" for new villains and heroes that comes and goes with each volume's arc in a similar manner that Simon did.

[grozeng]

The Bryan Fuller episode is tonight and it's supposedly good.

[Bolton Bastard]

Well we can always hope.

I know I'll still enjoy it, even if I understand it is in no way good.