Still on, and I might not make it through hour two tonight but —
MAMA PETRELLI!
Also: Thank god, Hiro’s not in the distant past anymore.
However: Suresh never saw a freaking comic book?! Do. Not. Experiment. On. Yourself.
Tim Pratt
I liked it, a much better start than last season (or, honestly, season 1, which had awful pacing issues at the start). There were actual EVENTS! Always a plus.
Though I am waiting for Suresh to grow blue fur to go along with the super-agility and science prowess and hanging upside down…
I’m sorry, I thought the whole two hours was abysmal. Even Mama Petrelli’s presence couldn’t save it for me (though I’m glad she finally came out and just handed us the facts about her dreaming power). When the only character who doesn’t bore me is Sylar, something has gone terribly wrong.
Oh, Karen, now I feel like I was being too easy on the show. I was tired. And Fringe was SO bad, perhaps it’s in comparison that it seems better. Though I’m cheered that Tim was sucked in too.
I’m sooooo sick of Sylar. I loved the speedster girl — the effect they used to introduce her is one of the best they’ve done on the show. Future Peter is definitely a pill — and it’s so strange that he’s just stashed his past self away (in Weevil!). Suresh is totally going Goldblum circa The Fly.
The show’s biggest problem seems to be that after the enigmatic “Save the cheerleader, save the world” storyline, it’s always about cities blowing up and yawn. Anyway, I have tentative hopes that they might be improving.
This season is tackling Important Philosophical Questions like, “How do we make love stay?” The answer, apparently, can be found somewhere in Claire’s screw-top cranium.
You know when you’re chewing bubble gum and you blow a bubble that starts out strong but gets bigger than the gum has the substance to maintain and it just kind of billows out into flimsy nothingness filled with air and collapses under its own unsupported weight? I feel like we’re looking at that now.
Though I agree on the speedster f/x, really cool, and she’s got at least some fresh energy. Several of the actors could still be watchable, but the writing is truly dreck. I hate to pan a show, because god knows I’ve found things to love in shows that others love to hate… but I’m really disappointed in what’s happened to this one.
Tim Pratt
I guess I never thought Heroes was that great ANYWAY, so this doesn’t seem like such a tremendous collapse to me — it’s still mostly eye-rollingly silly, but with enough cool bits to keep me watching. The only things I really liked in the first season, even, were Hiro and Horn-Rimmed Glasses guy, and both of them lost most of their charm in season 2. At least Hiro isn’t in feudal Japan anymore! And speedster girl whoo! And Nikki has a power other than throwing-people-hard! I see these as promising improvements. But my expectations were low.
Yeah, that’s pretty much exactly how I feel. (Though I did really, really like bits of the first season.) Low expectations = the only way to watch the current crop of SF shows. (Except for Middleman.)
Tim Pratt
YES. Love the Middleman. Even in the weaker episodes there were always one or two things that took me by surprise or made me laugh out loud, and the best eps were full of both.
I sort of got sucked back in, as well, although I found myself wondering if I had missed some episodes, since no one was where I thought they should be. Although I, too, am thoroughly bored with Sylar, and find myself regretting that he got the chance to noodle about in Claire’s brain.
If nothing else, we had a reunion of sorts between Veronica and Weevil. That made me happy.
Doselle Young
I originally avoided HEROES like the plague for two reasons.
First, from the ad campaign forward it looked like a fairly humorless, uninteresting, you’ve seen it all before unless you’ve never read a comic book take on ‘real’ world heroes and…
Second, it claimed to take place in the real world and still, the entirety of the cast nevertheless looked to be pulled directly from NBC central casting; taking the general comic book premise that ‘good guys’ look ‘good’ and ‘bad guys’ look ‘bad’–thus establishing itself NOT as the real world, at all, but another comic book universe (fine) albeit a drab, humorless, cliche and paranoid one (yawn).
But, you know? Just like the elections, you can’t complain if you don’t vote, so…I rented the DVDs of the first season and watched the entire thing in 24 hours to discover not only was the above true, but…
In the first season it completely back pedals on its premise that ‘ordinary people would get powers’ by quickly becoming a show about the clueless, humorless children of extraordinarily humorless parents (mutants/inhumans/whatevers) discovering that they possess the mitaclorians (sp) necessary for super powers.
This has the side effect of making the show NOT a populist show but essentially an extended dysfunctional family reunion as characters discover time and again that they are related due to obnoxious baroque adoption, etc.
For example: Claire being Nathan’s daughter and, the most recent revelation that, apparently, Sylar is also a Petrelli (as implied by dialogue at the end of last week’s episode) has the unfortunate side effect of meaning that Claire was, in essence, MOLESTED BY HER UNCLE.
Let the ‘ick’ settle in for a moment. (She can no longer feel. She is physically disassociated.)
Also, by concentrating all its attempts at levity or fun in the two of the only consistent persons of color (Hiro and Ando), the show feels a bit unconsciously racist, as well. I know this is something most fans will balk at–after all Hiro’s so cute, right?
So pure. So adorable and…
Yeah. No one else is in the sprawling, overwhelmingly Anglo cast comes close to matching Hiro who–in complete defiance of the show’s overall dour wrist-slitting tone–remains plucky and fannishly funny(ish) throughout.
Its almost as if he’s magically incorruptible. So ‘magically ‘Asian’…
I have no doubt if Hiro were to use his powers to travel to a parallel world where he, too, was white, he would find himself to be as intensely joyless, morally compromised and psychologically unstable as everyone else. Less the magical Asian and more what passes for ‘normal’ in the HEROES universe.
No, other persons of color are not so great, either. Mohinder is an idiot pretty boy, the African American burger flipper ultimately ineffectual, the Latina chick who weeps black oil ( someone call Scully and Mulder) spends an entire season as Sylar’s dupe because, what, people don’t lie in South America?
Other problems?
Season 1’s climax was about as thrilling as watching the time lapse accumulation of dust on a coffee table.
Season 2 was much the same, but less interesting as we’d met most of the not-quite sexy enough for ER / not quite talented enough for HBO/Showtime/FX cast. [Note: Yes, Jessie Lynn Gilsig (Claire’s biological mother) was on Nip/Tuck as the sex addict with Aids] but with a cast this large, someone had to show up eventually.
Three seasons in, I have yet to find anything redeemable about the show. I hate that NO ONE on the show gets to enjoy what they can do at all.
Since when is flying NOT FUN?
They are all so tediously burdened by their abilities that I have found myself repeatedly hoping this world will end…
But it doesn’t.
They just keep swiping Claremont and Byrne’s X-Men #141-142 storyline ‘Days of Future Past’ over and over again.
So, why do I watch?
Because, every once in a while, someone swears its gotten better. That I should give it a chance. Or that there was this really original thing that really, in the end, so wasn’t…
The show fills me with more loathing than any super hero show on film or television (including the later Chris Reeve Superman films, Birds of Prey, M.a.n.t.i.s. and the most recent seasons of Smallville).
I feel like breaking into the writers room with a freeze ray and…
Oh, whatever.
Nevermind. 🙂
Still on, and I might not make it through hour two tonight but —
MAMA PETRELLI!
Also: Thank god, Hiro’s not in the distant past anymore.
However: Suresh never saw a freaking comic book?! Do. Not. Experiment. On. Yourself.
I liked it, a much better start than last season (or, honestly, season 1, which had awful pacing issues at the start). There were actual EVENTS! Always a plus.
Though I am waiting for Suresh to grow blue fur to go along with the super-agility and science prowess and hanging upside down…
I’m sorry, I thought the whole two hours was abysmal. Even Mama Petrelli’s presence couldn’t save it for me (though I’m glad she finally came out and just handed us the facts about her dreaming power). When the only character who doesn’t bore me is Sylar, something has gone terribly wrong.
Oh, Karen, now I feel like I was being too easy on the show. I was tired. And Fringe was SO bad, perhaps it’s in comparison that it seems better. Though I’m cheered that Tim was sucked in too.
I’m sooooo sick of Sylar. I loved the speedster girl — the effect they used to introduce her is one of the best they’ve done on the show. Future Peter is definitely a pill — and it’s so strange that he’s just stashed his past self away (in Weevil!). Suresh is totally going Goldblum circa The Fly.
The show’s biggest problem seems to be that after the enigmatic “Save the cheerleader, save the world” storyline, it’s always about cities blowing up and yawn. Anyway, I have tentative hopes that they might be improving.
This season is tackling Important Philosophical Questions like, “How do we make love stay?” The answer, apparently, can be found somewhere in Claire’s screw-top cranium.
You know when you’re chewing bubble gum and you blow a bubble that starts out strong but gets bigger than the gum has the substance to maintain and it just kind of billows out into flimsy nothingness filled with air and collapses under its own unsupported weight? I feel like we’re looking at that now.
Though I agree on the speedster f/x, really cool, and she’s got at least some fresh energy. Several of the actors could still be watchable, but the writing is truly dreck. I hate to pan a show, because god knows I’ve found things to love in shows that others love to hate… but I’m really disappointed in what’s happened to this one.
I guess I never thought Heroes was that great ANYWAY, so this doesn’t seem like such a tremendous collapse to me — it’s still mostly eye-rollingly silly, but with enough cool bits to keep me watching. The only things I really liked in the first season, even, were Hiro and Horn-Rimmed Glasses guy, and both of them lost most of their charm in season 2. At least Hiro isn’t in feudal Japan anymore! And speedster girl whoo! And Nikki has a power other than throwing-people-hard! I see these as promising improvements. But my expectations were low.
Yeah, that’s pretty much exactly how I feel. (Though I did really, really like bits of the first season.) Low expectations = the only way to watch the current crop of SF shows. (Except for Middleman.)
YES. Love the Middleman. Even in the weaker episodes there were always one or two things that took me by surprise or made me laugh out loud, and the best eps were full of both.
Another current exception that beats all expectations: the (superb) Sarah Connor Chronicles!
I sort of got sucked back in, as well, although I found myself wondering if I had missed some episodes, since no one was where I thought they should be. Although I, too, am thoroughly bored with Sylar, and find myself regretting that he got the chance to noodle about in Claire’s brain.
If nothing else, we had a reunion of sorts between Veronica and Weevil. That made me happy.
I originally avoided HEROES like the plague for two reasons.
First, from the ad campaign forward it looked like a fairly humorless, uninteresting, you’ve seen it all before unless you’ve never read a comic book take on ‘real’ world heroes and…
Second, it claimed to take place in the real world and still, the entirety of the cast nevertheless looked to be pulled directly from NBC central casting; taking the general comic book premise that ‘good guys’ look ‘good’ and ‘bad guys’ look ‘bad’–thus establishing itself NOT as the real world, at all, but another comic book universe (fine) albeit a drab, humorless, cliche and paranoid one (yawn).
But, you know? Just like the elections, you can’t complain if you don’t vote, so…I rented the DVDs of the first season and watched the entire thing in 24 hours to discover not only was the above true, but…
In the first season it completely back pedals on its premise that ‘ordinary people would get powers’ by quickly becoming a show about the clueless, humorless children of extraordinarily humorless parents (mutants/inhumans/whatevers) discovering that they possess the mitaclorians (sp) necessary for super powers.
This has the side effect of making the show NOT a populist show but essentially an extended dysfunctional family reunion as characters discover time and again that they are related due to obnoxious baroque adoption, etc.
For example: Claire being Nathan’s daughter and, the most recent revelation that, apparently, Sylar is also a Petrelli (as implied by dialogue at the end of last week’s episode) has the unfortunate side effect of meaning that Claire was, in essence, MOLESTED BY HER UNCLE.
Let the ‘ick’ settle in for a moment. (She can no longer feel. She is physically disassociated.)
Also, by concentrating all its attempts at levity or fun in the two of the only consistent persons of color (Hiro and Ando), the show feels a bit unconsciously racist, as well. I know this is something most fans will balk at–after all Hiro’s so cute, right?
So pure. So adorable and…
Yeah. No one else is in the sprawling, overwhelmingly Anglo cast comes close to matching Hiro who–in complete defiance of the show’s overall dour wrist-slitting tone–remains plucky and fannishly funny(ish) throughout.
Its almost as if he’s magically incorruptible. So ‘magically ‘Asian’…
I have no doubt if Hiro were to use his powers to travel to a parallel world where he, too, was white, he would find himself to be as intensely joyless, morally compromised and psychologically unstable as everyone else. Less the magical Asian and more what passes for ‘normal’ in the HEROES universe.
No, other persons of color are not so great, either. Mohinder is an idiot pretty boy, the African American burger flipper ultimately ineffectual, the Latina chick who weeps black oil ( someone call Scully and Mulder) spends an entire season as Sylar’s dupe because, what, people don’t lie in South America?
Other problems?
Season 1’s climax was about as thrilling as watching the time lapse accumulation of dust on a coffee table.
Season 2 was much the same, but less interesting as we’d met most of the not-quite sexy enough for ER / not quite talented enough for HBO/Showtime/FX cast. [Note: Yes, Jessie Lynn Gilsig (Claire’s biological mother) was on Nip/Tuck as the sex addict with Aids] but with a cast this large, someone had to show up eventually.
Three seasons in, I have yet to find anything redeemable about the show. I hate that NO ONE on the show gets to enjoy what they can do at all.
Since when is flying NOT FUN?
They are all so tediously burdened by their abilities that I have found myself repeatedly hoping this world will end…
But it doesn’t.
They just keep swiping Claremont and Byrne’s X-Men #141-142 storyline ‘Days of Future Past’ over and over again.
So, why do I watch?
Because, every once in a while, someone swears its gotten better. That I should give it a chance. Or that there was this really original thing that really, in the end, so wasn’t…
The show fills me with more loathing than any super hero show on film or television (including the later Chris Reeve Superman films, Birds of Prey, M.a.n.t.i.s. and the most recent seasons of Smallville).
I feel like breaking into the writers room with a freeze ray and…
Oh, whatever.
Nevermind. 🙂