[Lucky]

And because Sylar uses his powers only marginally more effectively than Peter.

And because Sylar seems to have lost the powers he stole before he got the virus... except for telekinesis... which makes no sense but it doesn't seem like the writers have any idea why it would so they never bothered.

[Stu]

Okay, what?! Claire is a catalyst for people to get powers, if they've been subjected to the formula? So how does that explain Nathan being able to fly before he even met her? The writers also once again display a confusing comprehension of what is Claire being smart, having her be a smartass and throwing herself out of a window as the sum total of her "plan".
The use of 9th Wonders again also bugged me, since we know from season one the last issue Isaac ever finished was the one depicting them stopping Sylar from blowing up New York.
I liked the Elle/Sylar stuff and the Angela dream prison bits also repeated the feeling from last week that it was a bit different than usual, in direction/tone.

[Deleted]

Very very hit-or-miss for me last night.

Hit:
-Elle/Sylar stuff. Intense. Passionate. Well-acted.
-Inside Mama Petrelli's head.
-Peter being a "hero" without his powers.

Miss:
-Claire. Everything about her. Except her ass.
-Hiro/Ando. I'm a HUGE fan of time-travel arcs in stories. But as big a fan as I am of time-travel arcs, I equally LOATHE amnesia arcs. Blah. Hopefully Seth Green and Breckin Meyer showing up will give that arc some relevance.

[Stu]

I also don't get Daphne suddenly loving Parkman now. Based on what? He's the out of shape sap who has to have the show write non-physically demanding plots for him where he just goes round straining his head as he reads people's minds!

[Lucky]

I'm glad I'm not the one pointing out all those annoying things for once so Dev can insult me. Suffice it to say I consider the answer to every question you asked to be "The Heroes writers are hacks who don't even try."

I just can't get into the Elle/Sylar stuff. Its not an objection to it in a vacuum. It was well acted and solid enough. I just don't buy the characters. They're so wildly different than the ones that were introduced and used prior to this season that it just screams hack to me. They were both psychotic sociopaths who killed without any remorse. Sylar for 2 years, Elle for 1. Then S3 comes and the writers decide they want to redeem them so they just use their time tricks to write in how they totally aren't to blame for their behavior and can be totally forgiven and shown to be good people. But I can't shake Elle running around Ireland killing innocents with no remorse and a childlike joy, Sylar savagely killing people for 2 seasons without any hint that he was fighting great guilt and a gnawing hunger, or that the two of them interacted in S2 without any hint of their past relationship, Sylar blaming Elle for what he's become, or any romantic feelings. Its just so tacked on and "Because we want it that way" it feels like I'm watching a show written by Vince McMahon. I'm not supposed to ask questions or remember the show's past. I'm just supposed to play along with whatever they feed me.

[Deleted]

Lucky, I have to disagree with one small point there. I thought Sylar's "hunger" was well-portrayed in the first 2 chapters. We all assumed it was uncontrollable, though. But we are seeing (as with other characters like Parkman and Hiro) that the powered people can gain more control of their powers if they try.

Other than that, yeah stuff is fishy. Here's hoping they get a lot more concrete with the "Fugitives" arc.

[Stu]

I think there's a little wiggle room for Elle though DUE to her having mental problems because of her father's experiments, and her personality in the flashback might be due to some treatment or medication she's on on something, and after that, presented with the choice of working with the Company and Following Orders, or getting thrown out on the street, she starts accepting stuff like that more, and she starts acting up again as a result of the guilt. OR she goes off of said treatment becuase she knows she wouldn't feel so guilty in such a state?
Though that's still all stuff that'd needed to be written in and explained. It wouldn't have been too hard to show though. Just have moments of her pill-popping while working Sylar, then afterwards when she's upset about it, throw the bottle away. The audience could fill in the rest. The company had meds to deal with Nikki's split personality, so why not Elle's problems?

[Lucky]

Gator, I think they showed his "hunger" fine in S1 but it wasn't shown as this uncontrollable thing that tortured him. Quite the contrary, he was shown as very sadistic and enjoyed himself. He was motivated by an inferiority complex and frustration. He did show remorse to his mother but that was after finding out he was going to blow NY up. The sheer scope of it threw him for a loop, and even with that he was able to get over murdering his mother pretty easily and went back to the sadistic and evil fuck he was. And in S2 he remained that sadistic and evil fuck with absolutely ZERO signs of humanity or remorse.

But now? Oh, he tried to kill himself after that first murder. He was so distraught. And even though he was overwhelmed my guilt he still impersonated the dead guy and went off with Suresh to murder more people. Including Suresh despite Suresh not having a power thus the hunger not having anything to do with that. But the whole time he was doing this he was going home to cry about it as sweet Elle tried to help him. But that didn't work so he started hunting down children to kill. But he was probably crying in his hotel room.

Its just ass backwards. This story of villains redeeming themselves is solid enough. But Heroes doesn't want to do the work. They don't want to deal with the consequences of what they've written. Its so much easier to go back in time and write the character more sympathetic so then you have a built in excuse for their actions, even if you only wrote it 2 years later. They took what could have been a compelling theme that told good character development and instead just went back and changed the start of the story. Instead of Sylar and Elle trying to be better people we're just being told that they were better people all along. We just didn't see those parts of them because the camera was on another person or something.

And could Elle's drastic personality shifts be the result of medication? Yeah, maybe. But this is more of what Heroes likes to do to be lazy. They count on us filling in plot holes because we're desperate to validate the story. But if you read their commentaries and blogs a common sentiment by them to questions like this is "Yeah, we saw that problem but we did it anyway." They're content just leaving gaping holes.

But hey, ratings have been tanking and the writers got fired and I can't help but think these last couple of episodes are a real good case for why they'd be fired. I can easily see people watching these and saying "Wow, you not only suck but you're not even trying. You're fired." So at least the good news is that this is a case where the writers aren't correct when they assume we'll just eat whatever they shovel at us.


EDIT: The comics are canon, right? I'd just like to point out that they have Elle enrolled in Claire's school and watching her for the company at the start of S1. She's her S2 sociopath self and she and Bennett are as hostile as they were in S2. But now we know that just days/weeks earlier she was crying over Sylar and begging Bennett not to make her do these things. Now, I know I shouldn't expect the show to stay consistent with the comic, even if THEY are the ones who say they should be. But it just occurred to me as I was trying to think of Elle's timeline.

[Stu]

I guess the comics are canon, but I'd bet the plots aren't dictated by Kring or anything. He probably just tells them to make sure whatever they write doesn't step on the show's toes for the most part. Otherwise, I think more of what we see in the comics would be referenced. Not once in the show have they mentioned S1's wi-fi girl's body dying, but her mind living on in digital form. When you think of how usefull she'd be to Noah, it's weird.

[Stu]

It's not the show's quality that's the cause of the ratings problems, it's technology!

a very flawed way of telling stories on network television right now, because of the advent of the DVR and online streaming. The engine that drove [serialized TV] was you had to be in front of the TV [when it aired]. Now you can watch it when you want, where you want, how you want to watch it, and almost all of those ways are superior to watching it on air. So [watching it] on air is related to the saps and the dips**s who can't figure out how to watch it in a superior way.

Of course!! How could we have been so blind?

[ALL CAPS]

Longest. Eclipse. EVER.

Seriously, I'm a hair's breath away from giving up on this retarded fucking show. It's SO mindless that I can't take much more.

[Deleted]

For the second straight week, NBC ran the show long and my DVR cut off the end. Did I miss anything important?

[Demko]

Sylar and Elle start making out. HRG has them in his sights (literally, he's got a sniper rifle outside the house), and they cut to 'To Be Continued'.

[Deleted]

Sniper rifle works for me!

Anybody else think that this eclipse period will be the time when Peter gets his scar?

[Stu]

-So the moon has stopped following a set path? The last eclipse was meant to be the first in a hundred years at least....
-"Hey, wasn't there an eclipse the day you first flew?" NO! IT WAS AT FUCKING NIGHT! THIS WAS SHOWN ONLY TWO EPISODES AGO, AND IF THE ECLIPSE HAPPENED THEN TOO, IT WOULD HAVE BEEN MENTIONED!
-"Don't worry, we got plenty of Red Hulks for everybody" ARGGGHHHH! PIMP SOME NON-LOEB, NON-MARVEL COMICS FOR A CHANGE!
-Again, who's continuing 9th Wonders if Isaac's dead?
-Hooray for Bennett giving Claire some shit for how she's been behaving, though his training technique seems ineffective to me.
-It was funny seeing everyone pull their trademark poses without powers working, making them look like right tits, especially Parkman, who should get that reaction more from people.
-The Haitian and his evil brother seems like it could liven things up, and it was nice to see Pete and Nathan argue like that
-Not only did they welsh on killing Mohinder, but they also hinted Maya's gonna return. Urgh.
-Yeah, I'm more on board with Lucky's views on the characterisation of Elle
-Great cliffhanger, though.
-Horee Clap.

[chrisisadad4308]

Nov 26, 2008 17:51:38 GMT -5 Stu said:

-Again, who's continuing 9th Wonders if Isaac's dead?

That would be an interesting little thing they could have pursued, if they hadn't given that power to 50 other people over the course of this season.

[Stu]

What annoys me a bit about it is that everybody who has the power draws like Tim Sale. It would be a cool thing for me to see a credit for "Special Guest Artist", with different pencillers for each character with the power.

[Demko]

OK, so they explained the 9th Wonder thing, and it totally makes sense, because I don't remember them specifically saying that Hiro was living out the MOST RECENT 9th Wonder comics.

Also, *MY* DVR cut out this time around. I'm currently staring at the final freeze frame of Claire and Hiro (how have they not met in 2 1/2 seasons?) staring through the window. What in the blue fuck do they see? What happens?

[ALL CAPS]

You know how this season's subtitle was "Villains"? I know what they should call next season. "Heroes: Beyond Gay". All of the characters turn gay and forge new and improbable relationships with each other that only last for two episodes and then move on to other relationships that go BEYOND gay. Clair will fall in love with her mother. Nathan and Peter have a flying fraternal homobaby. Hiro sucks off Isaac... and yes, he's still dead. Sylar has a torrid affair with Mr. Muggles and then steals his power of being terminally ADORABLE! All of this leads to an eclipse which travels backwards in time to create a vortex of time-coincidence-plot-device-retconvenience where we find out that the mastermind of the whole phenomenon is a TV executive throwing darts at a chart of McDonald's nutritional information.

Would make as much fucking sense as this retarded show.

[Stu]

Dec 1, 2008 22:34:56 GMT -5 Demko said:

Also, *MY* DVR cut out this time around. I'm currently staring at the final freeze frame of Claire and Hiro (how have they not met in 2 1/2 seasons?) staring through the window. What in the blue fuck do they see? What happens?

Hiro just shows her how Kaito Nakamura gave baby Claire to HRG to keep. I dunno why this would be so shocking to her, I thought she already knew? Or was she just reacting to the realisation that she was back in time?
Pluses and negatives for me with this ep:
+Some nice power usage with Nathan Supermanning Samedi into the truck
-Eclipse saving Claire and Sylar rendering their "deaths" pointless
+Nathan thinking he can change Pinehearst from the inside is a decent explanation for him being a villain in the future
-If Pete hadn't already told him he'd seen this in the future and how bad an idea it was
+Nice explanation of the 9th Wonders thing and use of it to show the tragic parts of Hiro's story, although they should stop having characters READING the pages before saying what's written in them, as it just makes their believing the book predicting the future a bit stupid looking
-Gee, thanks Heroes for once again trivialising comic book readers' maturity and the overall worth of the medium that Heroes gets most of it's inspiration from.

[ALL CAPS]

I actually kinda liked this weeks episode. It seemed pretty focused. I do have one question though...

How did Arthur Patrelli go back in time to get the catalyst from Hiro? If it was present Arthur, why'd he take Hiro's powers? I'd presume, in order to leave him in the past. However if he took Hiro's powers in the present (when he took his memory), so that he had the ability to use them to travel back, why'd Hiro still have them at all? Every other instance of Arthur taking powers has come with the victim of the thievery being left powerless. Now, if it was past Arthur, why'd he wait all that time to reveal that he's stolen the catalyst 16 years in the past?

I just don't get why the hell he was there. Not to mention the fact that he actually knew exactly when AND where to be, even if he COULD time travel. This show is so sloppy in its explanations.

I'm still waiting to find out how future Peter put present Peter inside another person's body at the beginning of this season. I'm not holding my breath.

[Deleted]

Dec 8, 2008 23:36:55 GMT -5 ALL CAPS said:

I actually kinda liked this weeks episode. It seemed pretty focused.

Ditto.

Well, since I'm the huge time-travel loving geek around here, I'll try to explain the thoughts I had on all the mumbo-jumbo. I may have a few minor details confused, but we'll figure those out as we go. For the sake of clarity, I will refer to the main storyline as "the present":

-Arthur takes Peter's powers (earlier this season), including his time-travel power.

-Arthur took Hiro's memory out in Africa. This rendered Hiro in a state of amnesia, but he still had his powers.

-Hiro and Claire travel to "the past" to figure out all the catalyst shit.

-Now one of the interesting parts about this type of time-travel is that it happens essentially instantaneously. Arthur (still with time-travel abilities) could have decided to bounce from point-to-point-to-point in "the past" until he found the right moment in time to take the catalyst.

I'm sure I'm missing a step or 2 in there, but you get the gist of it. Just how I interpreted it all.

It was nice to see a different side of Zachary Quinto's acting abilities, but I was really really happy to see psychopath Sylar return.

The Haitian is a fucking badass. That is all.

[ALL CAPS]

Two points:

1) Psychopath Sylar never should have left.

2) With the amount of power stealing going on, this show needs a reset button AND quick. People should be worrying about the characters and plot, not who's got whose powers and why. I'm glad Arthur is dead, that solves part of the problem... at least until he regenerates in the next episode.

[Deleted]

Well, if they want us to believe Arthur is really dead, then technically Sylar is the only "power stealer" left.

And if you're going to have a power stealer on the show, having him be your main villain is probably the best way to go. Although I do sometimes miss bad-ass Peter.

[ALL CAPS]

I liked just Peter and Sylar having the power-stealing bits. Originally, it looked like they were building to a big showdown, which we sorta got in season one but was muddied by AtomicBombMan. The three ways they've varied the power-stealer ability were pretty interesting:

1) Peter - takes powers by proximity, but has to figure out how to use them through trial and error or instinct. Who knows how many powers he might have picked up without even knowing it?

2) Sylar - takes powers through touch, but pokes around in the brain to figure out how to make them work. Has shown the ability to do it in other ways, but is a crazy fuck, so he'd rather scalp people. This method has the drawback of killing the subject.

3) Arthur - takes powers through touch and in turn, removes them from their host. This is the most powerful and problematic from a story standpoint because it not only makes him ultra-badass, but it eliminates threats. I hope they keep him gone for good because the Peter/Sylar story had much more potential before daddy got involved.