Monday, November 10, 2008

Thoughts on HEROES, Season 3, Chapter 8 - Villains

Back after two weeks... can this show regain the momentum it was starting to build?



8:01 - And... recap. What makes people good and evil? Hiro taking the Magical Mystery Tour and seeing the past while drugged out of his gourd.

8:02 - Apparently Mr. Petrelli absorbed a telepath at some point.

8:03 - Okay. So Meredith and Flint are relatives - and there's Thompson. Apparently that's how Meredith got caught up in the Company... but how does that put her in Odessa, in hiding, where Claire found her?

8:05 - And Elle met Sylar just after he killed for the first time and stopped him from killing himself?

8:06 - Oh hell... Twilight ads? Ick. For those of you somehow not familiar with Twilight at this point, all you need to know is that it is written for emotional 14-year-old girls and that it violates the Eddie Izzard Vampire Truism (i.e. If Sunlight Doesn't Hurt Your Vampires, Then Your Story Is Bullshit)

8:09 - Annnd they finally reconcile the "Forgive me Father For I have Sinned" graffiti that didn't jibe with what we saw in Sylar's apartment in Season One. Too bad this kinder, gentler Elle doesn't jibe with what we saw of her in Season Two.

8:10 - "Cute Meet". Hee Hee. So... wait... Sylar's power is transferring powers... or so they think? Maybe Mr. Petrelli and Sylar have the same power only refined...?

8:11 - "Pie." Hee Hee.

8:12 - So Meredith became a Company Agent, which explains a lot... to say nothing about why she might wind up in hiding later so close to Claire... tying up a lot of loose ends now.

8:14 - And the Nathan flying flashback.... we've seen this. I guess it HAS been about a full year now, hasn't it? Six Months ago... to Four Months gone... which means that most of the Season Three has taken two months. That fits.

8:15 - "Time to choose a side." Nice fit of a line.

8:16 - It just occurred to me - Hiro has NO idea who most of these people in the vision are... The Petrellis, sure. Sylar, yes. But Elle, Bennet and Meredith are totally Greek to him.

8:19 - So what could drive Mom and Dad apart? Oh, how about one trying to kill their children?

8:21 - Oooh - metallic skin! Nice.

8:22 - What I'd give to have Kristen Bell at my door offering me pie. Indeed, imagine the fortune you could make on a business that delivered nice, hot pie to you door in the hands of a perky blonde? Must investigate further.

8:25 - "Yeah, I got tackled by some invisible man..." No, it's not Claude. He was long-gone by this point. The Company MUST have some other invisible man working for them.

8:26 - Oh BOOO! So now it turns out that Bennet was indirectly responsible for pushing Sylar over the edge. One more forced sympathy point for Sylar and yet another Heel-Turn for the original show Heel as they try and switch Bennet from being the Bad Ass Normal everyone loves to being an honest to goodness Villain. Gag me.

8:28 - Am I weird? Am I the only one who likes Bennet better than Sylar and wants to see the man rocking the Horned Rimmed Glasses take down the supposedly most powerful character on the show?

8:29 - And... yeah. Turns out he was going to kill his son to protect his empire.

8:33 - Something disturbed Hiro... another dream-walker? Angela, maybe?

8:37 - Hmmm... I wonder if THAT is the train that caught on fire and derailed which Claire ran into in the first episode?

8:38 - Heh. Cool. The healer can reverse telepathic manipulation. But why is Lindermann doing this to help Angela when Mr. Petrelli is doing all this to cover his ass? Guilt? Man, what is this... give all the bad guys a moment of decency night?

8:39 - Okay, they are STILL running with the idea that Claire is 14? I thought they finally decided she was 16-17? Still, this kinda works. If you go with her being a newborn when the Company found her and almost 1 year old, she could be 15 on the verge of 16 and able to drive when her family moved to California. Yes, I know I am thinking way too hard about this.

8:40 - Okay and now Thompson - one of the more unrepentant bad guys from Season One - is letting Meredith run in a moment of weakness. Laaaaame.

8:41 - Can I call it or what? Claire in fiery train.

8:46 - So his power is BREAKING things telekinetically? Or just making things break?

8:47 - Yes. Yes, you fool... you ate the poisoned soup!

8:48 - Yeah... I REALLY believe he's going to let the lightning girl go and keep the breaking things guy.

8:49 - "He actually exposes the brain..." Yeah. Fascinating. Aren't you the guy who is usually gung-ho about - you know - stopping the assholes who abuse their powers?! Noah was never this much of a mindless drone before.

8:50 - And... wait, in Season One, didn't Noah outright say they had NO IDEA how Sylar was doing what he was doing and the only thing that he showed signs of having was telekinesis?

8:54 - And here is how the death got faked...

8:55 - And Elle is being uncharacteristically compassionate for a alleged diagnosed sociopath here.

8:56 - And there we go - how he wound up paralyzed and near dead.

8:57 - Wait... when did Hiro find out who Flint was?

8:58 - And - oh hell - they killed African Issac? And... how did he get there? And - oh yeah - take out the only other person with powers who might be able to stop him...

8:59 - And... the eclipse means something now? Oh hell... *face palms*



The Final Verdict: Well, they explained things well enough... but a lot of characters are WAY out of character here. And I really don't like the mystic angle that's being implied by The Eclipse somehow being involved in super-powers in a non-symbolic manner in the preview.

9 comments:

  1. Yeah. I was just thinking this read like the kind of comic Marvel published before they stopped giving a damn about continuity.

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  2. Robert Conrad is eviler than all other evils EVER. EVILEST TO THE MOST MAX!
    *sigh*
    At least its probably only another month or so of episodes before the end of the Loeb era. Maybe in the next half-season the show will be better. Especially since it looks likely "Pushing Daisies" will be over and their head writer will join "Heroes"...

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  3. I am going to stop watching the show and just read your recaps...this is Susan who used to live in TX and worked at APL, btw.

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  4. "Indeed, imagine the fortune you could make on a business that delivered nice, hot pie to you door in the hands of a perky blonde? Must investigate further."
    Works on Pushing Daisies.

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  5. No Bennet is to me the ultimate father to protect his kids. So I still want to see him basically take down Sylar for poking his fingers in Claire's brain. And you know being evil.
    Oh and too me Pie is the ultimate woo a man food so that was the most brilliant thing ever.
    My problem here was mostly with Elle though, because she's all cuddly and balanced.

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  6. I must confess I have not seen that.

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  7. Wow. I was actually going to write you tonight! Weird. :)

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  8. Oh, she was one of MANY problems.
    In retrospect, I think Bennet and Thompson were flipped in the script to give Eric Roberts more screen time. Think about it - there's no reason for Thompson to give a damn about The Company taking some baby named Claire... but not only would Bennet give a damn, he'd be smart enough to put 2 and 2 together and he would TOTALLY let someone escape from The Company. This is just after he helped Claude escape, you might remember. And it would also explain how he was able to find Meredith again later - he could have been keeping tabs on her the whole time.
    Thompson being partnered with Elle makes a lot more sense as he's the one who would give the party line about "being a good agent and not asking questions" - not Bennet.
    Not to mention that just sitting and watching Sylar to see if he starts killing again doesn't really jibe with the timeline we are given, considering when Mohinder's dad must have been killed compared to when Mohinder arrived in the US and Bennet got into his cab.

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  9. THEN YOU ARE PART OF THE PROBLEM!
    Seriously, it's the best thing on network TV right now.

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