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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

"Heroes" Series 1 (US and Torrents edition)

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miss wonderstarr

21:16 / 31.01.07

I'd say we've now had two filler episodes, and this one tested my patience, and lost my attention, even more than the last.

The only single thing holding me now is Clare ~ I don't know how she sells it with her pudgy, round, subtly-animated little face, but there's something so complex and real about her. She comes across as a girl whose life has been very simple, and is now going through crazy changes that she's dealing with in her own everyday, grounded way.

The last scene with her and the lady on the phone was really the kicker. It made the other 44 minutes seem worthwhile. That flame-finger thing!

23:12 / 31.01.07

Indeed. By giving her an emotional core that is very, very destructable they've made an indestructable character incredibly interesting in a way that Marvel's Worst Haircut never is.

04:04 / 01.02.07

You are all missing the point.

is the point.

(Taken from an article about his recent run in Equus, oddly enough.)

You would like a sword?

Take THIS sword!

Dr. Ecclestone is naturally going to have been tortured by something that went horribly wrong with some other acolyte and will come to rely on Petrelli to redeem yadda yadda, which is why he seems so gruff at first but is actually Robin Williams in Fisher King.

Sulu's just there to be THE DEVIL, as far as I can tell.

10:39 / 01.02.07

Well, from Claire's mother we know that the heroes' powers are inherited somehow, so it makes sense that Hiro's dad has superpowers (after all, we know that he's a time travelling genius from all his years on the Enterprise). So -- could Hiro be from a long line of heroes stretching back into the era the samurai was kicking ass? Could Hiro's dad be a time traveler who went back in time and was that samurai?

I do want the Hiro's Sword/Dumbo's magic feather thing to end though -- it's pretty tiresome.

11:10 / 01.02.07

yeah.
how come no one else needs a magic katana?
or or tomahawk, or claymore, or foil, or pom poms, or decoder ring, or whatever?

i mean, hiro is the one who fully believes in his power from the get go. it makes no sense that he would lose his ability.
except as a tired ass plot device, of course; like ecclecakes' quick transformation, or telecopper's i'm-pure-salt-of-the-earth-so-i-am exposition.

i wonder how many more of these it will take to make me quit?

ORA ORA ORA ORAAAA!!

12:23 / 01.02.07

Hiro believes in power objects, he reads comics. He knows about green lantern. booster gold. Rip Hunter.

He's psychologically primed for exactly the situation he finds himself in. And he'll probably find that he doesn't need his sword for his powers at the climax of a season, too. It was always only him! So my examples above are kind of stupid, dumbo is better.

...

I'm a bit surprised that people are finding parts of this show tedious (at least, to such an extent - I find it kind of hard to care about the superfamily). I don't watch a lot of tv, so I guess maybe I'm sheltered from the sort of expectations one builds up, but... what are they? Maybe I'm just weird in that I don't care if there's two parallel stories running for an entire season, I don't care if people never meet up, their paths never cross, whatever. But maybe you could tell me why there seems to be such a distaste for it here? Don't you think it'd be more weird if, after five weeks (or whatever) these strangers were all thrown together? That would smack of deus-ex-ing to me. Having things proceed independently seems a bit more real.

Maybe. but like I said I don't watch tv much and I think I might have missed a couple of important mindset forming years, or something.

12:37 / 01.02.07

it's not so much that specific things need to happen.
it just seems that stuff takes aaaaaages to develop, and artificially so.

they don't have to meet up, no.
the fact that they have been suggesting a meet up since the very first episode, tantalising us with the idea of a super team and not delivering is annoying, though. it feels like they have been stringing the audience along, and the storytelling hasnt been good enough to distract from that.

the pace of each episode is comically predictable.
like the 22 minute mark moral in fresh prince or scrubs, the inevitable 'big revelation minute' in heroes is getting really old.

i think an edited down version, once the series is done, reshaping the series to dinghy those moments could be good, but that's just never going to happen.

12:40 / 01.02.07

>>i think an edited down version, once the series is done, reshaping the series to dinghy those moments could be good, but that's just never going to happen.<<

Well, Lost does it. As a refresher course before each new season, they whittle down the previous season, cutting out all the bullshit...and are left with two episodes. Since Heroes has slightly more content than Lost, I guess we'd be left with, what, two and a half episodes?

13:09 / 01.02.07

I feel exactly the same way about the sword thing. At this point it seems completely tacked on and redundant, largely because it makes little sense within the logic of the fictional space. This isn't fucking He-Man.

Just a way to keep treading water, basically

13:15 / 01.02.07

Ah, just seen Frog's post

And he'll probably find that he doesn't need his sword for his powers at the climax of a season, too. It was always only him! So my examples above are kind of stupid, dumbo is better.

I think this is probably true. He's almost certainly just suffering from a crisis of faith post brainy woman.

Toks thanks for responding to latter half of Frog's post. I was about to go into one about how expectation is set up, and which expectations have been set up in Heroes, and the history of American dramas dragging their feet (touched upon upthread, Frogster) and it would have been really boring for all concerned.

Just to say, Heroes is big on forcing stuff - we've already had FATE drag lots of the characters together.

13:17 / 01.02.07

"but... i worked for the guy who owns this building!"

13:20 / 01.02.07

Oooh ooooh

It's not about realism, it's about entertainment. I think storylines that drag excessively fail to entertain me

ORA ORA ORA ORAAAA!!

13:25 / 01.02.07

Yeah, fair enough. I don't get any of the teasers and little of the opening voiceover etc, so I don't really know how the show is presented over there. I was aware that there was some kind of team-up-tease at the beginning, but I didn't know it was a particularly big thing.

It's just started airing here, but I don't have an aerial, so I can't watch it, or how it is presented, just yet.

I guess I'm having a better time of it without the extraneous stuff that the TV medium itself imposes, because I've always been entertained (though ep 5 or 6, I can't remember, was pretty blah) fairly well. Not always in a 'this is riveting story' sort of way (because, well!), but a lot of really great moments, and the bits which aren't great are quite ok.

Anyway, thanks, guys. I hadn't really thought much about the difference the hype would make, I can see how that would be irritating. The 'next week on lost' things always made the next episode kind of lame, too, so I stopped watching them.

And lost. But that's another thread.

14:00 / 01.02.07

It's not just the hype, in fact hype factors into it very little, as far as I'm concerned (I also don't get the teasers, etc...). It's about how the show itself sets up expectations, and how the show intersects with genre expectations, which it seems more than happy to exploit. It's also to do with transparent delaying tactics - when a story is obviously heading in a particular direction but is being held up by something that serves very little function other than to slow progress. Eccleston's character's reaction to thingumy's request for help is exactly the kind of thing I'm thinking of.

miss wonderstarr

14:49 / 01.02.07

I think my problems with it can be boiled down to

-- not enough of any narrative importance happening

and, perhaps consequently,

-- lack of sufficient interest in enough of the characters.

22:47 / 01.02.07

I think my main problems with the show are as follows:

It starts with a big event--a huge explosion!--that's going to happen in five weeks. NYC is going to be destroyed the day after election day. Perhaps this is my fault for reading too much into the timing of the show, running concurrent with an election season, but I expected some sort of resolution of that on or around November 8th. Meanwhile, thirteen episodes and four months later, NYC's STILL going to explode, but November's still weeks away. Yeesh.

The Peter-as-exploding man reveal kinda takes the air out of the bomb threat anyway. If, as his playtime with Claude indicates, Peter can only absorb powers from 10, maybe 15 feet away, this doesn't seem like a huge problem for anybody but himself. If Peter moves back to his mother's house, Manhattan is safe. Maybe she kills him, but that wouldn't really be out of bounds given the past couple of episodes.

And then there's Sylar, who maybe-can maybe-can't use his powers in captivity, who can stop bullets and his heart but not tranquilizers, who lay in wait for HRG even though he knew who and what Claire is.

I don't care much more about super teams than I care about Matt Parkman's marriage. I think if something doesn't actually happen this week, I'll just give up watching; the TV usually gets put back in the closet after the super bowl anyway, and it won't feel nearly as slow if I just catch up before the season finale.

00:53 / 02.02.07

Do you all think Heroes is a good show or a bad show? Are you going to keep watching til the end of this season?

ORA ORA ORA ORAAAA!!

02:04 / 02.02.07

I think it's a good show. I'll keep watching it until I think it isn't a good show, and even then, I'll probably watch all the stuff after I 'stop watching' when it's out on dvd or the internet, sometime later. But in one chunk.

03:02 / 02.02.07

I'm still watching mainly because I'm hooked on Nathan, but damn, even though things happen, the show feels to me like it's paddling in circles. Matt is back to being the down-on-his-luck failure cop. Mohinder has been chasing people on the list for how long now? Claire's back to hurling herself down to the ground. Sylar's on the loose again. I know that things have happened when I list them in my head, but for some reason it _feels_ like not much has actually progressed.

I will also laugh my head off if they show some kind of superpower training montage with Peter and his new pal Obi-Wan O'Bedlam. Inspirational get-pumped music, go!

miss wonderstarr

06:47 / 02.02.07

I think it's currently a bad show in terms of storytelling, with a few good characters and concepts.

miss wonderstarr

06:52 / 02.02.07

Getting strong now
won't be long now
getting strong now

Gonna fly now
flying high now
gonna fly, fly, fly...

duh-duh DAAN!

miss wonderstarr

07:01 / 02.02.07

This is interesting, from TWOP:

Nathan stops at his brother's side, leans over, PAUSES, then lays the longest, sweetest kiss on Peter's cheek that I've ever seen from a heterosexual man IN MY LIFE. Don't care if they're Italian, y'all -- Pasdar's totally fucking with us. A kiss on the forehead? Good. A kiss on the cheek that is about a millimeter from Milo's mouth? Better. And fucking hilarious. Also? He rasps, "I love you, man" before he walks off. Hee. Hee hee hee hee hee. That shit better show up in a series of outtakes on the Heroes DVDs, yo. Like, I want a whole section devoted to the BroYay. I seriously think that Pasdar and Venti sit around their trailers concocting ways to bring more BroYay into their scenes.

Cause I was thinking the same thing, and then ~ nah! couldn't be! But the two brothers seem to have a really quasi-romantic relationship.

09:38 / 02.02.07

It's Guy Love. No need to hide. No need to keep it locked away inside

16:28 / 02.02.07

I think it's a good show until I read this thread. Which I should think about not doing, considering how few TV shows I'm capable of enjoying anymore....

Kali, Queen of Kitteh

16:40 / 02.02.07

I'm glad someone else picked up on the very cosy relationship between Nathan and Peter. I thought it was just my hormones working overtime and seeing what I wanted to see.

miss wonderstarr

19:16 / 02.02.07

I've also read a significant amount of Livejournal twincest slash about Niki and Jessica. I think it's now an actual subgenre.

Kali, Queen of Kitteh

15:10 / 03.02.07

That's nowhere near as hot as Nathan and Peter.

ORA ORA ORA ORAAAA!!

11:58 / 06.02.07

I feel, and I am treading very carefully around spoilers by staying miles away from the actual content of the show, that a satisfactory amount of things happened in this episode.

But because my satisfactometer appears to be miscalibrated, what did you all think? Or should it go in the other thread?

12:14 / 06.02.07

I'll talk in broad strokes; the episode has aired, after all, and is available in its entirety on NBC.com, so if anybody hasn't seen it yet it's hir own damned fault.

It's really a show about family, isn't it? About the ways they hold us back and the ways they empower us, the gifts and the miseries they hand on to us.

Last night was mostly about the two characters whose powers are on the fritz; and there was a lot of talk about "distractions" (i.e., attachments) and strategies for dealing with them as they relate to the exercise of power. What was interesting is that the wrong people were getting the advice.

Hiro's arc found him being advised to reengage with his family—advice that he ultimately rejected; he ultimately becomes empowered by severing his ties, in a a sense. In a broader sense, Hiro seems to need a certain detachment to make his powers work; note that it only started going flukey after his attachment to Charlie, and the sense of failure that it ingrained in him.

Peter, on the other hand, is advised to cut himself off from his family and loved ones—"these things that hold you back"—but in the end, his attachment, his empathy, is the very source of his power. Makes perfect sense: there's a reason he became a nurse—his compassion was always what made him special.

What's gonna save us all? Love is gonna save us all. Yeah.

14:08 / 06.02.07

Another note: Making Hiro a scion of wealth and privilege is an interesting move; if he's no longer quite the audience-identification character that he once was, he's now channeling another pulp-hero archetype—the globe-trotting millionaire playboy.

At the very least, it explains how he can afford to take an unlimited vacation to go gallivanting across the US eating waffles.

Elijah, Freelance Rabbi

17:48 / 06.02.07

Good call Re: Hiro's money, Jack. I started wondering about that after the first new episode post holiday, so it is nice they cleared it up.

I think there was, again, a lot of set up in this episode for things that will be a big deal soon.

Anyone else notice the editing fuck up in the "previously on Heroes" bit? The showed Bennet in the cell with Sylar leaving, a scene that was not part of last weeks episode (or at least not the download of it I watched just prior to the new one).

I think the show could be back on track, and it seems like things will start happening shortly, or at least I hope so.

21:20 / 06.02.07

O' course, the big reveal at the end of the show was an "all in the family, why don't we talk any more" moment, too.

06:46 / 07.02.07

No Mohinder=Bonus points

miss wonderstarr

14:50 / 10.02.07

Yes, I enjoyed that one a lot. Big Claire scenes always carry a satisfying emotional punch, and I liked the stuff with Peter and the invisible man too. Ecclestone seems to have a subtly different style of acting to the rest of the cast that makes his dialogue almost sound as though it was written by a rogue scripter ~ more surprising and alive, somehow. The third sub-plot about Hiro was neat, self-contained, echoing the others as has been noted. I dug Bennett's kick-ass entrance with the two-handed grip on his gun, more than I expected to.

12:44 / 11.02.07

Heh, I don't know if anyone else noticed this but, in the scene where Hiro's father and sister are leaving, the camera follows his sister as she goes round the back of the car to get in the door at the other side briefly showing the license plate...

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