Heroes Yammer

Let's hope for better footing this week as:

Lizards. Matt seeks allies against the new Hero killer. Claire encounters a student with powers. Maya and Alejandro enter Mexico and find their powers more of a hindrance then a help. Suresh tries to locate the Haitian. Hiro works to contain the damage caused by his journey into the past. Peter falls in with Irish gangsters who taunt him with a box which contains his past. Kensei's power will be revealed.

Thoughts on Chuck welcome, too, since we'll likely watch that. (And, yes, The Office more than delivered. Best show ever. Poor Sprinkles.)

Comments

[Dave Schwartz]

"Chuck" just makes me smile. Adam Baldwin chasing down a shoplifter! Tony Todd! "Lost" shout-out! On the negative side, the "who can Chuck trust" story felt kind of rote, but I guess they had to get it out of the way.

"Heroes" was a little better this week, though it's not really holding my interest well. Favorite moment was Mama Petrelli screaming at Detective Grunberg to get out of her head.

Is the dog a superhero too?

[Fred]

I could do without some of the spoiler-heavy coming-soon clips they're showing. And I also haven't been blown away by it yet. But "Heroes" clearly seems to have an idea of where it's headed, so I haven't given up on it.

"Chuck" is cute.

[Karen]

The thing I'm noticing about Heroes is how the storylines run along separate lines, almost as though different people were writing for each character. This can be really effective -- I like, for example, that Hiro's story has such a different tone and flavor from Claire's, which is different from Peter's, and so on. They're each moving in their own worlds but they all have something in common, something that connects them. When this works, it works well. But sometimes it just feels like uneven pacing. The twins trying to get to Mexico -- we spent a lot of screen time over two episodes showing an amount of story that should have taken up about five minutes, and that drags down the show overall.

I think someone posted here last time about how Hiro's story can go in two predictable ways, neither of which is ideal (he becomes Takezo, he inspires the white guy to become Takezo and save them all). It looks like maybe they're riding a slightly more interesting line between those two possibilities; in any case, it's fun to watch. (Oh! I just realized why that actor looks so familiar -- he's Sark! Nice.)

I was very glad the twist with the Haitian and Mohinder turned out the way it did. And yes, Mama Petrelli's mind-shout was great. Matt really is kind of dumb, huh? Likeable, but... considering he can read minds, his interrogation technique leaves a lot to be desired. Have we ever found out what kind of power Mrs. Petrelli's got?

[Gwenda]

I remember reading somewhere last season that there actually are certain writers assigned to each storyline, so I bet they're still doing that. (Speaking of which -- and this is _not_ a complaint -- but considering how much time was spent on Niki/Jessica last season, I can't believe we're not even seeing her until next ep.)

So far the virus and the targeting of the elders doesn't have the potency of last season's mystery surrounding who Linderman was, but maybe it will pick up. Very good to see the Haitian return--and to see Mrs. Noah being involved in things and not an automaton. The love interest for Claire reminds me So Much of Jonathan from Midnighters I can hardly stand it.

Not loving the brother and sister storyline yet. And I'm very concerned that we've already got two repeating powers going on. I really wish that Takezo's power wasn't the same as Claire's.

Chuck started to bore me this week, because it felt like we'd already established some of this stuff last week and were just repeating. I'm hoping it will get better when they settle into a routine of playing out different cases (and not into playing out who do I trust, the blonde or Jayne? every week), but, yeah, I like the goofiness.

[Pete]

Yeah, the repeating power thing is lame. It seems to be a failure of the imagination, which is particularly inexcusable in a show like this one. Imagine if they tried to pull that shit in an actual comic. The coolest thing about new characters is new powers! Another flyboy and healer is bo-ring.

The more I watch Heroes the more I wonder if I willed my way into thinking, for a large part of last season, that the writing was decent simply because I was so excited by the possibilities implicit to a well-funded network show about superheroes. It could have been so cool!

I don't know. Last night was better, and I haven't given up yet. But right now, it seems that the great hope is The Bionic Woman. The writing in the premiere seemed appropriately nuanced and fun and clever. But I wasn't sober when I saw it. Variable will meet control tomorrow night.

[Karen]

About the repeating power thing, what I'm wondering about Takezo is whether he's the granddaddy starting point of all their powers, or something close to it? In which case he might contain the seeds of all the other characters' abilities, which then got passed down through generations in latent form until they cropped up in this generation thanks to some action on the part of the Mrs. Petrelli generation?

[Gwenda]

Interesting thought. I read somewhere (EW?) in an interview with Mr. Creator a flip comment about how maybe there are a finite number of possible powers that repeat... which I hope they never explicitly state if true, because why box yourself in like that? I want to see new powers, and not the plague/sineater thing I'm still not sure I get with the twins either!

But I am curious to see how Takezo's arc plays out.

We liked The Bionic Woman too -- the question is whether the lead can up her wattage to stand up against Sackhoff. I hope so. (Although why they cast gay-basher Burke, I'll never understand.)

[Abigail]

Last week I said that Hiro was being kept in a holding pattern, repeating a story whose end we already know. This week it seems that the same is being done to Peter. This was a justifiable approach last season - Hiro was too far ahead, in terms of his attitude, of the other characters, and needed to be held back. Persisting in this approach, and extending it to Peter, in the second season, however, is more problematic. What I'd like to see now is these characters moving forward, but the only one doing that is Bennet. I'm not thrilled with the way the show is shifting its narrative weight onto his shoulders - I think he works better as a chaotic neutral than a protagonist.

I've been trying to work out the logic (ha) of when powers appear. From his reaction it seems that Kensei wasn't aware of his healing abilities until just now - in other words, just after the 1671 eclipse. But in the first season, we see that most of the characters' powers appear six months before the 2006 eclipse, and that's not even talking about people like Meredith, the first generation supers, and all the people the company has been hunting down over the years (decades? Centuries?).

I probably shouldn't be giving this too much thought. Or any thought.

[Pete]

ack- forget what I said about Bionic Women. Without even counting the obvious continuity issues-- did I miss an episode somehow?-- the writing seems to have nose-dived. Oh well.