Elle: Another example of failed Heroes potential

[Joe Washington]

When I watch episodes like the Eclipse Part 1 & 2 or the one when Sylar and Elle meet prior to Sylar becoming Sylar, I find myself pissed at the writers' decision to kill such a deliciously twisted character like Elle which resulted in the destruction of her and Sylar's demented romance. I would have loved to see how much their relationship would have developed if Sylar hadn't kill Elle for whatever reason the writers pulled out of their butts. I just find it unsettling that the writers seem to be positioning Claire to be some kind of replacement love interest for Sylar and am at loss with their poor attempt to do the same thing with Lydia, the woman with the tatoos.

I could just imagine Sylar and Elle having a wonderful time slaughtering Danko's men in Fugitives or Elle going to drastic bloody measures to free her Sylar from his Nathan brainwashing in Redemption.

What other possibilities Elle's continued existence would created if it wasn't one of Heroes' many bad calls? How dark and twisted would the writers have made Sylar and Elle's relationship if they had the same balls the writers of Dexter have?

 

[ring]

Another example of failed Heroes potential

Rightly said...what they are doing they themselves don't know...

 

[MichaelDornFan]

I liked Elle and Daphne... more than most of the original characters. So naturally they had to be killed off!

 

[Mr Light]

Yeah Elle was a great character, but it was obvious from the get-go that Kristen Bell was a burgeoning movie star and they were lucky to get her for as many episodes as they did. I also loved Daphne a lot, and Bob.

 

[DevilEyes]

I found it particularly annoying that the writers are so determined to pretend that Elle never existed. OK, so they can't get Bell to guest star, but they could have mentioned her more than once (and that one time it was by Danko). Surely murdering the woman he supposedly loved should be an important event in Sylar's life?! They had many opportunities to address that, with all the focus on Sylar and his psychology, especially when Sylar found out that his father had killed his mother in exactly the same way. But instead, it seems the writers think that continuity sucks and just want to sweep everything that happened in volumes 2 and 3 under the carpet.

 

[Luckyflux]

I totally forgot about all the episodes with Elle and her dad Mr Midas (was his name Bob?). There have been awesome characters over the years that I would have loved to see more of. None more so than Eric Roberts' character, and Linderman. I wish both had stayed and had more to do than just a few episodes.

HRG as a badass was a great character. Future Peter (with scar) was great. Heck even Future Hiro was awesome. Candace, the fat girl Illusionist, was great during her run.

Alas poor Heroes, you are like a son that never lives up to his potential... I still love you, but I recognize that you could have been so much more...

 

[Temis the Vorta]

or Elle going to drastic bloody measures to free her Sylar from his Nathan brainwashing in Redemption.

Yeah darnit, that does sound good. But Kristen Bell didn't want to stay with the show. Still, they could have had her flee for her life once she realized hot bf was not someone you wanna hang with long-term.

How dark and twisted would the writers have made Sylar and Elle's relationship if they had the same balls the writers of Dexter have?

Well "balls" is a function of being on NBC vs Showtime, so I won't fault them too much for that. But how about if they had a tenth of the Dexter writers' talent and ability to craft a coherent ongoing story?

 

[Agenda]

I barely know what you guys are talking about, but why would the producers be dumb enough to cast someone as a love interest when they knew she'd only be around for a few episodes?

 

[Temis the Vorta]

A love interest can be a short-term love interest. In fact, that's the best kind since long-term love interests on TV either become boring or require strained writing to keep the dramatic tension going (eg, Chuck).

Elle and Sylar do the Bonnie & Clyde routine for a while, which ends when even Elle has to admit, Sylar is more Charles Manson than Clyde Barrow. Then she flees, preferably with the implication that she is pregnant, so we can wonder a) will she ever be on the show again and b) is there really going to be a Baby Noah in this timeline, too? The writers can have a and/or b come to pass, or not, depending on Kristin Bell's schedule. Either way is fine. That's the kind of open-ended plotline that isn't hurt by remaining open-ended forever.

 

[Obiwanshinobi]

I've always thought Adam Monroe was kind of a wasted character too and more menacing than Samuel is. If you guys could rank who was the most badass evil villain to grace Heroes besides Sylar, who would have you chose?

Arthur? Danko? Evil Nathan, well maybe not Nathan, Adam Munroe? Samuel?

 

[Janus VI]

I have to agree about Adam being wasted. In fact the whole previous generation founders of the company seemed pretty wasted especially when most of those founders seemed pretty interesting on there own.

I would have liked to have seen more of Monica too she had one of the most plausible abilities which I thought was cool.

Sigh. Heroes why do you torture us so?

 

[Forbin]

I barely know what you guys are talking about, but why would the producers be dumb enough to cast someone as a love interest when they knew she'd only be around for a few episodes?

I don't know if you saw a lot of TV between, say, 1960 and the birth of ensemble casts and serialized plots in the Hill Street/St Elsewhere era, but MOST love interests in network series TV were only one-episode things. Heck, if Little Joe Cartwright fell in love in act one, you could bet the farm she'd be dead from a stray bullet by the closing titles.

 

[23skidoo]

I think the Elle storyline worked well. No one expected Kirsten Bell to hang around for long (she's in movies now, not TV), and her relationship with Sylar had a Bonnie & Clyde aspect to it that I appreciated. And there is no way out for a Bonnie & Clyde relationship that doesn't end in one or both partners in a pine box. I thought it was one of the best storylines of that season, and the way it ended helped cement Sylar as a true villain, after leading us to believe he'd been emmasculated for several episodes.

Alex

 

[Hunter X]

I barely know what you guys are talking about, but why would the producers be dumb enough to cast someone as a love interest when they knew she'd only be around for a few episodes?

I don't think anyone has mentioned yet that Elle wasn't cast to be Sylar's love interest anyways. She was brought on in season 2 just as a complicated villain character (or was she really evil??!!?!?!) It was only in season 3, the season where the writers were clearly just throwing wacky plots at the viewers to see if anything stuck, that they paired up Sylar and Elle.

 

[Joe Washington]

Thank god someone pointed that out.

I wish they had killed Elle later rather than sooner like, if they had the guts to truly follow the Five Years Gone route, Elle dying after Sylar became President. That way, before Sylar had someone he can love, who was a partner and companion in his twist deeds. But now without her, Sylar no longer has a connection to his humanity and throws himself completely into his obsession of becoming the single most powerful metahuman on Earth.

Also Elle dying at the hands of someone like Pete would intensity the animosity between Peter and Sylar.

 

[Obiwanshinobi]

kind of wish they had gone with the 5 Years Gone route and have that be the general story arc of the series because 4 seasons in and i still don't really know what the overall end game, all these characters are really working towards. Volume after volume its been somewhat self contained save the world catastrophe's that these people have to prevent. It's actually kind have been formulaic and predictable.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

kind of wish they had gone with the 5 Years Gone route and have that be the general story arc

I thought it was so "obvious" that that as their intent, that I'm flabbergasted they didn't just do it. It would be a terrific organizing principle - a horrific future that seems predestined to come to pass in some form or another.

Stop NYC from blowing up, and you just set the whole world on the path to destruction. Avert that, and what happens next - the whole universe blows up? Nathan's career might take off, positioning him to become President, but doesn't that just increase the odds that it will turn out to be Sylar instead? Every seemingly positive step they take carries with it the potential to make things worse.

Hiro and Ando can inform the other characters of what they saw. (Did they ever do that?) Everyone's initial assumptions that future threats can be averted as long as you know about them, and that time travel has the potential to be a positive factor in all this, are slowly whittled away as they realize the cosmos seems to have a destructive will of its own.

Here's a thought: perhaps Sylar's insanity derives from his ability to tap into the "mind of the cosmos," which, terrifyingly, is an evil, destructive thing. Sylar is just the canary in the coal mine. The cosmos is the Dark Side of the Force but there doesn't appear to be any Light Side, other than the far weaker force of the human spirit. It's puny humans vs. a universe that is out to get them.

Yet what can they do, just give up? Not only do they have superpowers but they've also been blessed or cursed with the knowledge of the looming catastrophe that no one else can see coming. They can't just return to their mundane lives and wait for disaster. That will keep all the characters together, since they have no reasonable alternative, and make it easier to craft coherent plotlines in which they all have a role.

This might be hard to pull off without it all devolving into metaphysical mystical hooey, but it's not impossible. Lost has done something along those lines.

Also Elle dying at the hands of someone like Pete would intensity the animosity between Peter and Sylar.

WOW! Awesome idea. Yeah, I can see how our Eye-talian Boy Scout could get maneuvered into having to kill a loose cannon like Elle, regardless of any qualms (and no copping out by having it be any kind of "accident").

And only after Peter kills her does he find out she was pregnant.

 

[Mr Light]

They were never gonna go the "5 Years Gone" route. Are they really gonna have pretty boy Peter Petrelli wearing this huge ugly scar for the rest of the series?

 

[Temis the Vorta]

They were never gonna go the "5 Years Gone" route. Are they really gonna have pretty boy Peter Petrelli wearing this huge ugly scar for the rest of the series?

Oh I never thought they'd do that (if only for the unnecessary burden on the makeup dept, if not the disappointed fangirls). But since the idea I posed was "the future can be changed - but you probably still won't like it," there's no reason any of it needs to happen exactly the way we saw in 5YG.

 

[DevilEyes]

I barely know what you guys are talking about, but why would the producers be dumb enough to cast someone as a love interest when they knew she'd only be around for a few episodes?

I don't think anyone has mentioned yet that Elle wasn't cast to be Sylar's love interest anyways. She was brought on in season 2 just as a complicated villain character (or was she??!!?!?!) It was only in season 3, the season where the writers were clearly just throwing wacky plots as the viewers to see if anything stuck, that they paired up Sylar and Elle.

Pairing up Elle and Sylar was a pretty obvious route to go, rather than a wacky plot - since Kristen Bell and Zachary Quinto are old friends in real life, have lots of chemistry on and off screen, and she expressed a desire to work with him; not to mention that both their characters were super-powered sociopaths with bad parents that they wanted to please (or rather, one bad parent they want to please and one dead/missing parent). It was certainly a lot more interesting than pairing him up with Maya or Claire or whatever idiotic idea the writers got. But the idea of Sylelle had a lot more potential than what the writers did with it - since they crammed it all in some 4 or 5 episodes and made it so rushed and full of lame dialogue. It was mostly the actors who helped sell it.

They were never gonna go the "5 Years Gone" route. Are they really gonna have pretty boy Peter Petrelli wearing this huge ugly scar for the rest of the series?

Oh I never thought they'd do that (if only for the unnecessary burden on the makeup dept, if not the disappointed fangirls).

I thought that Peter had never looked hotter than as a scarred, intense Future Peter (particularly in 5 Years Gone)... That was the only time IMO when he approached the Sylar level of hotness