HEROES 3x09 "It's Coming" Discuss and Grade
- Thread starter Dream
- Start date
You might be surprised.
They should have named her Light.
He went back to live on a certain space station...
BRAVO!
Thespeckledkiwi
Vice Admiral
I have to ask: do all the women on this show have to be bitchy, emo women?
Yes. Claire, Maya, Tracy, Peter, all of them.
Thespeckledkiwi
Vice Admiral
Tracy isn't as bad as Claire, Elle, Maya...whoever. GAH! My head about exploded between Elle and Sylar.
This bugs me too. I have the exact opposite problem with Lost, where the extras are pointless and completely unnecessary to the plot. On Heroes, we rarely if ever see other people than the "Heroes," and if we do, they do absolutely nothing, such as when that whole crowd just stood around after FuturePeter shot Nathan.
Aside from that long-standing issue, I actually really enjoyed this episode. It was the first time I've been fully taken in by a Heroes episode in a while. I really don't think they'll ever be able to top the first season, but I'm hoping what they're doing now this goes somewhere interesting.
yeah I hate that they dont mention anything about Nathan's family!
Not even a comment from him about how his boys are doing or whether he visits them or not. And are they ever going to explain how he came back from the dead? I think the writers at this point totally forgot about that.
Poor Nathan! Isn't anyone going to tell him Gabriel is his brother? He's going to be SO ANGRY when he finally finds out and nobody bothered to even mention it. 
OooOoooOoooorrrr....I dunno, I'll give it an average. I'm really torn because there were very good and very bad elements all jumbled up in this one.
Very Good:
I'll give em credit for making most of the stories strongly character based, with character interactions that worked pretty well or very well.
Gabriel and Elle - wow, that's gotta be some of the most intense stuff they've done so far. They've sold me on these two as a very frakked up but oddly sympathetic couple.
Peter and Claire - nice to see them teaming up, and demonstrating the writers' attempts to give them worthwhile character arcs. Peter actually was forced to do something semi-smart because he has no super powers (tho I'd like to see him without training wheels next - no conveniently placed broken gas main). Claire also has a character arc that is much better than sulky teen - trying to be a hero and protect her favorite uncle (awww) despite having a power that is frustratingly hard to use on offense.
Matt and Daphne - when Matt immediately remembered to kick Peter's butt and then scan his brain, I just about stood up and cheered. Thank you Matt for remembering what powers you have and putting them to use when the occasion calls for it. Peter, take notes. Well, okay, take notes for when your powers inevitably return.
Matt also came off pretty heroically in using his "disappearing into another's mind" power - it never occured to me before, but this must be a scary risk every time he does it, especially when the subject is another metahuman with mind powers. Who knows, Angela could trap him in her mind forever.
Bad:
Hiro and Ando, merrily spinning their wheels. It's obvious now, there's no point to these guys and the writers don't know what to do with them. Kill them or write them out of the show.
Tracy scheming to betray Nathan. Snore.
Very Bad:
Gabriel turns into a taller version of Peter. Okay, I'm sorry but after putting a lot of effort into defending these writers in the way they jerked the character around this way and that, I have to draw the line. They have snapped the thread of Sylar/Gabriel's character logic. He isn't after murder or power or brains, he's after knowledge. He's driven by a need to use his "seeing" power to understand how powers work. Learning is what feeds the hunger, for a time. Actually having and using the powers is useful only as things that help him crack open more brains.
Gabriel has a power that is the intellectual analogue to Peter's emotion-based power. That creates a nice symmetry, especially with them being brothers. Two sides of the same coin. For them to be the same side of the coin is far less interesting.
And there's the problem of character logic. The "seeing"-feeds-the-hunger explanation holds up best in the context of everything they've done. To lose it causes the character to lose what makes him unique. Simply having Elle's power should do him no good - he didn't see her brain and understand it. The hunger should still be unsatisifed.
The "empathy" excuse is implausible and unoriginal. A more clever way to come up with a non-homocidal way he could satisfy the hunger: feed him a mutant with X-Ray vision! Geeze! Cmon writers, think!
But even then, that wouldn't solve the other problem, which is that if Sylar/Gabriel no longer has homocidal impulses to contain, that takes away a lot of what makes the character unique and interesting. Some other internal tension would have to take its place, and I'm not sure what that would be.
Tim Kring et al need to sit themselves down and really THINK about this character and what drives him, and more importantly, what makes him worth watching as a character, so that they don't make dimwitted mistakes like this again. (This is actually the second big flub; the first was last season, when they depicted the hunger as something that persists even when his powers are gone, which is a contradiction to how he's been portrayed this season.) And retcon (or re-retcon) this empathy nonsense, fast. Gabe thinks having Elle's power satisfied the hunger but then it hits him like a runaway freight train and he realizes there's just no substitute for braaaains...
Mohinder. Ugh. Worst character assassination since Red-Eye Dukat. In fact, this may top even that atrocity. I'll say more in the thread devoted to saving poor Mo. He needs it.
See? This stupid story does have a point!
But he's getting more butch, didya notice? Nice move with the broken gas main (after running away and letting his teenaged niece face down the vicious killers on her own).
Anyway Pushing Daisies has been cancelled. Help us, Bryan Fuller, you're our only hope!
OooOoooOoooorrrr....I dunno, I'll give it an average. I'm really torn because there were very good and very bad elements all jumbled up in this one.
Very Good:
I'll give em credit for making most of the stories strongly character based, with character interactions that worked pretty well or very well.
Gabriel and Elle - wow, that's gotta be some of the most intense stuff they've done so far. They've sold me on these two as a very frakked up but oddly sympathetic couple.
Peter and Claire - nice to see them teaming up, and demonstrating the writers' attempts to give them worthwhile character arcs. Peter actually was forced to do something semi-smart because he has no super powers (tho I'd like to see him without training wheels next - no conveniently placed broken gas main). Claire also has a character arc that is much better than sulky teen - trying to be a hero and protect her favorite uncle (awww) despite having a power that is frustratingly hard to use on offense.
Matt and Daphne - when Matt immediately remembered to kick Peter's butt and then scan his brain, I just about stood up and cheered. Thank you Matt for remembering what powers you have and putting them to use when the occasion calls for it. Peter, take notes. Well, okay, take notes for when your powers inevitably return.
Matt also came off pretty heroically in using his "disappearing into another's mind" power - it never occured to me before, but this must be a scary risk every time he does it, especially when the subject is another metahuman with mind powers. Who knows, Angela could trap him in her mind forever.
Bad:
Hiro and Ando, merrily spinning their wheels. It's obvious now, there's no point to these guys and the writers don't know what to do with them. Kill them or write them out of the show.
Tracy scheming to betray Nathan. Snore.
Very Bad:
Gabriel turns into a taller version of Peter. Okay, I'm sorry but after putting a lot of effort into defending these writers in the way they jerked the character around this way and that, I have to draw the line. They have snapped the thread of Sylar/Gabriel's character logic. He isn't after murder or power or brains, he's after knowledge. He's driven by a need to use his "seeing" power to understand how powers work. Learning is what feeds the hunger, for a time. Actually having and using the powers is useful only as things that help him crack open more brains.
Gabriel has a power that is the intellectual analogue to Peter's emotion-based power. That creates a nice symmetry, especially with them being brothers. Two sides of the same coin. For them to be the same side of the coin is far less interesting.
And there's the problem of character logic. The "seeing"-feeds-the-hunger explanation holds up best in the context of everything they've done. To lose it causes the character to lose what makes him unique. Simply having Elle's power should do him no good - he didn't see her brain and understand it. The hunger should still be unsatisifed.
The "empathy" excuse is implausible and unoriginal. A more clever way to come up with a non-homocidal way he could satisfy the hunger: feed him a mutant with X-Ray vision! Geeze! Cmon writers, think!
But even then, that wouldn't solve the other problem, which is that if Sylar/Gabriel no longer has homocidal impulses to contain, that takes away a lot of what makes the character unique and interesting. Some other internal tension would have to take its place, and I'm not sure what that would be.
Tim Kring et al need to sit themselves down and really THINK about this character and what drives him, and more importantly, what makes him worth watching as a character, so that they don't make dimwitted mistakes like this again. (This is actually the second big flub; the first was last season, when they depicted the hunger as something that persists even when his powers are gone, which is a contradiction to how he's been portrayed this season.) And retcon (or re-retcon) this empathy nonsense, fast. Gabe thinks having Elle's power satisfied the hunger but then it hits him like a runaway freight train and he realizes there's just no substitute for braaaains...
Mohinder. Ugh. Worst character assassination since Red-Eye Dukat. In fact, this may top even that atrocity. I'll say more in the thread devoted to saving poor Mo. He needs it.
Oh right, I forgot. File that under Bad. Arthur is a megalomaniac who considers himself superior to other metahumans, let alone the billions of mundanes. Why would he bother to give those slobs powers?
He's hot. Her dad was a jerk. And shes a loon just like him. I pretty much buy it, more than I buy some of the cockamaimie stuff this show throws at us.
And three hundred years later, their descendant, Amanda Grayson, gives birth to a certain half-Vulcan who will, in fact, save the galaxy!
See? This stupid story does have a point!
But he's getting more butch, didya notice? Nice move with the broken gas main (after running away and letting his teenaged niece face down the vicious killers on her own).
Anyway Pushing Daisies has been cancelled. Help us, Bryan Fuller, you're our only hope!
Last edited:
when that happened the first thing I thought was "what? why now!?"
Its like she suddenly became Jessica.Welcome to the club. Finally.
Thespeckledkiwi
Vice Admiral
Sooo apparently the guy that throws blue fireballs is Claire's inbred uncle right?
But he's getting more butch, didya notice? Nice move with the broken gas main (after running away and letting his teenaged niece face down the vicious killers on her own).
At this point, killing him off is the only way. Perhaps he could be killed off and then his body stuffed in to Claire's refridgerator. Oh, and he should be raped first.
'tis what happens to female sidekick characters, apparently.
Yeah. It's a VERY small Universe.
A shame Matt didn't catch the fact that he was actually ABLE to mind-read Peter instead of getting the power feedback loop they've both gotten every OTHER time they tried it. In fact, I'm not sure (were I Matt) that I'd even bother trying at first, based on the headache it gave him previously.
Similar threads
- Sticky
- Poll
