HEROES 3x08 "Villains" Discuss and Grade

[Morpheus 02]

LitmusDragon wrote:

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I still like this show, but it's gotten really silly now. When Elle showed up in the Sylar flashback I literally groaned aloud.

Then you'd REALLY groan at the online novels...Elle is a student at Claire's school!

[Professor Zoom]

Morpheus 02 wrote:

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Then you'd REALLY grown at the online novels...Elle is a student at Claire's school!

What, is the population of the Heroes Universe like 20 people or something?

[Aragorn]

You didn't know? Sylar built R2-D2 and Nathan fought beside African Isaac during the Clone Wars!

[Luminus]

Temis the Vorta wrote:

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Excellent! Just the kind the stuff I watch Heroes for.

More than anything this was Angela's origin story. Seeing the reason she emerged as the Black Widow was exhilirating and gives all new depth to her. Also makes me really doubt Arthur's story about Gabriel. Angela either saved Gabriel's life and hid him away, or was protecting him from the evil fate Arthur had planned for him.

Gabriel's story was pretty enlightening, too. After reviewing the S1 DVDs not long ago, I was struck by the disconnect between the Sylar who scrawled FORGIVE ME a hundred times on the walls of his secret room and the remorseless Sylar who emerged not very long afterwards.

I figured it was just one of those discrepencies that crop up in complex serialized shows and it would never be reconciled. It was a small detail, not something that really required and answer.

But now we know the connecting bridge was Elle and Noah's manipulations. Wow. And they remembered to have Sylar actually say "forgive me" early in the episode to tell us which mental state he was starting with, and foreshadowing where he would be going. Now that's attention to detail that I can appreciate.

There's no retconning here. The writers are bending over backwards to explain the FORGIVE ME room, providing an explanation for a small detail I never even expected them to bother returning to. There has never been any statement that Sylar was in control of his behavior. On the contrary, there were continual hints from the first that he was not in control and that he was behaving like an addict.

I saw all the hints from the start, which is why I know for certain they were there for everyone to see. People liked the notion of Sylar being simplistically evil so they didn't catch the hints, but that's not the fault of the writers or producers and certainly doesn't constitute a "retcon." You just didn't want to see it. Well too bad because the writers aren't responsible for the audience's wishful thinking.

And this isn't sugarcoating, either. If Sylar has the ability to resist the hunger, then he is responsible for his behavior. If he were simply insane, and evil in a simplistic manner, then he'd be off the hook. The writers are putting him on the hook, not pardoning him at all.

And if he were simplistically evil, why would he ever change his behavior? The only way for him to be redeemed is for there to be another part to him to return to. A simplistic lunatic only has a straight-jacket in his future. The writers are pursuing this story in the only way that makes any sense, unless they wanted to just kill Sylar around about now, because to keep him a simplistic villain this long would become tedious. Rather than kill off a character, they're thinking of a more creative option. Good for them. They kill enough characters as it is, and if they killed Sylar, everyone would be bitching about how unimaginative they are.

I am 100% certain that will be revealed in an upcoming episode. Do you want them to tell the whole story in one hour and then have nothing left over? We got some big massive hints in this episode about the likelihood of Arthur's story about Angela being correct, namely, it probably isn't one little bit. Why not relish this slow reveal way of storytelling? The biggest problem so far this season has been that the story is far too rushed. I am very happy to see them finally slowing down to a reasonable pace and letting the characters re-take the focus of the story, versus a lot of frantic, insane rushing around.

Precisely. Sylar was a killer and knew it before Elle and Noah entered the picture. He was trying to control himself and Elle just pushed him over the edge. Why does this mean somehow Elle and Noah are responsible for his behavior at all? If they had never shown up, maybe he'd gone off the rails on his own anyway.

And that was Elle, not Daphne, who provided lunch. But Elle was also the reason Sylar tried to get rid of the hit list temporarily. Because having any sort of human connection makes him feel "special" and therefore stronger to resist the hunger. This also synchs up with his behavior towards Mohinder when he was pretending to be Zane - he was still killing people but started to act like having a "friend" might change his attitude - and totally synchs with his behavior after he found his Petrelli family, which is like what he experienced with Elle and then Mohinder, except in far more complete a fashion because they represent the "important, special" family he'd always longed for - which he told Chandra about in "Six Months Ago" - and because Angela accepts him for what he is, which no one else has ever done.

This all synchs up to a very impressive extent, and far more neatly than in the vast majority of TV shows I watch. Most don't even attempt anything near this level of connectedness and complexity. The main problem here is that the producers know the details of their own show far better than the audience remembers.

I'll give them that as a freebie since we only saw Elle for half a season as a less-than-major character. We saw one side of her and now they're fleshing out the rest. A good, solid, complicated character should take at least one full season for us to get a handle on. Beyond that, any details they want to add must have been foreshadowed earlier, like they've done very diligently with Sylar, regardless of whether people have noticed or been blocking out details they don't want to see.

Wow, well said!

[cyph]

Luminus wrote:

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Wow, well said!

+1

[HappyDayRiot]

LutherSloan wrote:

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I also have to agree that Elle was TOTALLY out of character. She was not the same demented person we saw last season.

We still have a billion unanswered questions, including:
-How did Maury Parkman escape the 'mental prison' his son put him in in Season 2?
-Why did Arthur Petrelli create Pinehurst in the first place?
-How did all of the different villains start working for him? We only know how a few of them were contacted.
-What is Arthur's ultimate goal?

My issues exactly.

[Kryton]

Maury's got 30 years psi experience over Matt...I think he can easily break the novice's mental prison.

[LutherSloan]

Kryton wrote:

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Maury's got 30 years psi experience over Matt...I think he can easily break the novice's mental prison.

Probably, but that doesn't deserve a throwaway line or something?

[Seven of Five]

I think Maury Parkman will be back - why bother going to the trouble of having him back, without having him confront his son after season 2? Might be giving the writers a bit too much credit, but they set up in Maury's death episode that Matt, his son, with exactly the same powers (as said by Matt himself) could fake his death.

I really enjoyed this week's episode at face value, because I like flashback episodes and I like pretty much all of the characters that were featured heavily this week. Inserting Elle into Sylar's timeline doesn't really make sense, however, and neither does making HRG and Elle the ones who 'created' Sylar in the first place.

The Petrelli storyline was far and away the best bit - Ma Patrelli has always been someone who grabbed my attention, and now she has a little more substance. Christine Rose is brilliant in the role! I was expecting some sort of referral of giving birth to Sylar, or trying to drown him as per last episode. The lack of any mention just left me even more suspicious than I already was at that particular plot twist.

[cyph]

HappyDayRiot wrote:

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My issues exactly.

bleh. I wasn't expecting all those questions to be answered by this episode. I'm sure it'll come in time...

[Dream]

Morpheus 02 wrote:

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Then you'd REALLY groan at the online novels...Elle is a student at Claire's school!

That's ACTING student to you.

[Professor Zoom]

cyph wrote:

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bleh. I wasn't expecting all those questions to be answered by this episode. I'm sure it'll come in time...

Though, you have to admit, more than half way through this volume, it might be nice to know what the Bad Guy's, Arthur's, goals are.

And this flash back would have been quite the perfect thing, to, you know, explain what's HAPPENING in Season three, rather than what HAPPENED in Season one.

[Temis the Vorta]

Elle wasn't out of character. We've only seen her as a recurring character for half a season so far. It's reasonable to give the writers a year's worth of episodes to fully reveal all facets of a complex character. Elle is both a psycho and someone with a better nature that emerges under certain conditions. Ditto for Sylar.

People are complex and multi-faceted, so this comes as no surprise to me. I'd object only if they'd gone on for two or three seasons with no indication of another side to these characters, but that hasn't been the case. With Sylar, they were dropping big hints left and right from the first. Now they're fleshing out Elle. Fleshing out one-dimensional characters is a sign of good writing. Would you prefer lousy writing instead? TV abounds with boring, one-dimensional characters so if that's what you want, you've got plenty of options. Try CBS.

-Why did Arthur Petrelli create Pinehurst in the first place?
-How did all of the different villains start working for him? We only know how a few of them were contacted.
-What is Arthur's ultimate goal?

Arthur's motive behind creating Pinehearst is probably tied up with his overarching goal - Pinehearst is a means to an end. This is a big thing, so I wouldn't expect that to be revealed till the end of this season, and even then it may only be a partial explanation.

We'll probably get hints along the way. Arthur's baldfaced statement that he considers himself superior to the common herd (and probably also superior to fellow metahumans) is a big hint that his goal some kind of megalomaniac desire to reshape the whole world along the lines he thinks best, possibly with metahumans as a kind of master-race ruling class?

As for how he recruited his current gang, I don't really care. This isn't the sort of question whose answer interests me. What difference would it make? With the exception of Daphne, they're boring. Just another example of why Heroes should bank heavily on rotating in new characters. They work out maybe 25% of the time.

Why do people want every single answer delivered to them immediately? The point of a serialized show is that the answers are revealed over time, and as we get the answers, new questions emerge. It can (and should) take years to answer everything - however many years the show runs for. When we have all the answers, the show ends. Who wants to watch a show when there's nothing more to learn?

This is like a replay about all the crabbing over Lost. If you don't have the patience for serialized shows, then don't watch them. Jeezus.

[Professor Zoom]

Temis the Vorta wrote:

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Why do people want every single answer delivered to them immediately?

I don't need EVERY single answer immediately. In fact, I don't need answers to some things...like "Why did Sylar go out and kill people?" "Because HRG and Elle pushed him over the edge!" Dumb answer.

HOWEVER, some questions, like Papa Petrelli's ultimate goal SHOULD be answered, because it simply raises the stakes of the story for the characters. It raises the stakes for the audience.

If his goal is to secure the world for super powered people, ok, great, now we know what's at stake. And what the heroes need to stop.

But, if his goal is fuzzy, it creates a fuzzy story.

Look back at Season one...they had to stop a nuclear explosion in New York City...that's what was at stake...we didn't know how, or who, but we got clues...

(And yes...we know the world "might" be destroyed in Season three, but, now it's just a dumb cliche. We know who the bad guy is, why can't we know his goal?)

This is like a replay about all the crabbing over Lost. If you don't have the patience for serialized shows, then don't watch them. Jeezus.

There's a difference between a well crafted serialized show and a poor one. And Lost for a while WAS a poorly crafted show...because they didn't know they shape of their series, ie, how many episodes...so it lost it's focus. And the audience lost it's patience with filler and wandering.

And that's what's happening here. And there's no excuse. They know how many episodes are going to be in this volume. THEY CHOSE to do it this way, and it's been wandering from the beginning of the season.

So, yes, some of us ARE impatient...but it's not about wanting now now now, it's about wanting a GREAT story with GREAT characters, like we HAD.

[Ruaidhri]

Finally saw the episode, and the first thing that came to mind was:

It's a small world after all/it's a small world after all
It's a small world after all/it's a small, small world

I don't mind when plot points are connected together (the first season did this pretty well), but some of these things just seem so contrived. I am enjoying the season, but I've shaken my head a few times too.