HEROES 3x09 "It's Coming" Discuss and Grade

[stj]

Well, they could make Gabriel's mental illness cyclic. Every three months, the meds aren't enough. Or their effect is erratic. Season two dropped the implications of the snowglobe scene. It's just hard to get back to that guy.

Gabriel isn't self-absorbed enough to have Peter's power. I've noticed that a lot of characters' powers are ironic contrasts to essential aspects of their characters. Peter, as I said, is incredibly self-absorbed. So, when he meets someone with a power, it becomes all about him! Consciously of course, he wants to be good, but he has very little sense of other people, which is the ironic contrast with his empathy power.

Claire is physically invulnerable, but (in the first season version) at least, physical invulnerability is completely useless to the emotional vulnerability entailed by having a sort of Nazi killer for a father, even if he loves you.

Nathan, the good son locked into a career path of world conquest by Mommy and Daddy, has the power of flight, useless to him. He was wound up and set on the rails to the top from the beginning. Of course, he's not really a major character.

Gabriel had the power to understand how things work, but he couldn't understand himself. (I toyed with him accidentally curing himself when he was injured at the end of season one.)

Nikki had superstrength but weak character.

Hiro had to grown up power to change the world (aka spacetime continuum) but was a child. And still is, sadly. They can't let him grow up, because 1.) they don't like grown up and 2.) he is the wrong color to be the Big Hero, I fear.

Matt, also not really a major character, has the power to read minds, but he's not too smart. Yes, odd as it seems, being not too bright is part of Matt's characterization, not Peter's. The writers gave Angela a shout out so they know they've missed a beat. But so it goes.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Well, they could make Gabriel's mental illness cyclic.

That would be a pretty ludicrous way of explaining away sloppy writing, adding yet another previously unknown factor to a character who already is too complicated for his own good. Hopefully a cure that clumsy might not be necessary.

I have a hunch that Bryan Fuller was the producer in S1 who kept an eye on character logic. Since he's left, it's gone increasingly off the rails, like there isn't anyone reading the scripts to make sure the various writers are actually writing the same characters from week to week. It's the Insaneway problem all over again.

So now that Pushing Daisies is cancelled, I wonder if there's a re-retcon in Gabe's future as Bryan Fuller comes on the show, realizes just what a catastrophic mess he's inherited, and after he picks his jaw up off the floor, starts to work on cleaning up the mess and the first item of business is to give Gabriel back the element that he's been missing, namely the sense that even if this guy is behaving himself at any given moment, he could go off the rails at any time.

Until this season, the implication about Sylar is that from the moment his powers "activated" when he met Brian, he has been a runaway locomotive, ceaselessly driven by the hunger. (In theory, this should have stopped when he lost his powers in S2 but since that didn't happen, it should be evidence that the hunger is so overwhelming that he'll follow its dictates out of nothing more than force of habit.) He's never had a reason to do anything but give in to the hunger; but just because he has a reason now doesn't mean it should be as easy as it appears, judging from the way Gabriel has been acting.

Zachary Quinto is definitely a good enough actor to do what Michael C. Hall does on Dexter: continually play a character on two levels. One level is the ordinary guy on the surface. The other is the wound-up spring inside him ready to snap. The audience sees the second level because we know it's there and the actor is good enough to convey it to just the right degree of subtlety. But there has to be a producer, writer, director, someone telling the actor that's what he's supposed to be doing. That's what I don't think has been happening.

Quinto hasn't been playing Gabriel on two levels, which makes it seem like the character we used to know has just vanished. But this storyline doesn't mean he has to be gone; he could still be present and the whole storyline where Gabe is trying to behave himself would still work.

Gabriel had the power to understand how things work, but he couldn't understand himself.

Gabriel has been demonstrating a fair amount of self-awareness and self-examination, moreso than most characters on this show, so I don't think this contrast holds up. If he were some lunkheaded type, like Flint, it would work better. But he wouldn't be as interesting a character that way.

I just don't buy the idea that simply obtaining anyone's powers would satisfy the hunger. What he needs is to actually use the seeing power to comprehend the new power - the power itself is what causes the hunger and using the seeing power is what quells the hunger for a bit. Using the new power is irrelevant, it shouldn't have any impact on the hunger. Otherwise, why did Sylar kill Brian originally? He had no powers except the original seeing power when he did that, so the seeing power is what created the hunger.

Tracy scheming to betray Nathan. Snore.

when that happened the first thing I thought was "what? why now!?" Its like she suddenly became Jessica.

And she was so much more interesting when he was a reasonable, decent person.

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.

Welcome to the club. Finally.

Ah, next week they'll do something I like and then I'll jump back across the line.

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.

Good point, but either Matt was so infuriated that he didn't remember he shouldn't try or he realized that the fact that Peter hadn't batted him across the room using TK was a clue that he had lost his powers.

Going back to the "what is the internal tension" for Gabriel/Sylar if he's not a homocidal maniac, I noticed that he changed both Claire and Elle's powers when he stole them but left them alive. Maybe he always changes his victims' powers, it's just that it's never been evident until now. He seemed to intensify Claire's healing ability to the point where she cannot feel pain, but reduced Elle's electrical power so that it wasn't hurting her anymore. So what's the logic here? Is it a roll of the dice? Can Gabriel actually alter powers as he pleases, and is that the ultimate use that the "seeing" power can be put to, once he learns how to control it?

If that's where the writers are going with this, then that's pretty good stuff so I hereby rescind all my crabbiness and insults. Hah! Until next time...

 

[SalvorHardin]

This show is getting worse and worse with each new episode...

The only thing worth mentioning this time is Hiro's line about Cap, Hulk and Spider-Man.

Anyone know how Heroes is doing in the ratings ? Is there going to be a season 4 or is it too early yet for such things ?

 

[Temis the Vorta]

My guess is that there will be an S4, because NBC is doing so terribly that Heroes is actually its second-best-performing scripted show (The Office is #1). What is NBC going to do, cancel everything?

NBC has not shown any ability to come up with shows that it could use to replace Heroes (or more to the point, replace weak shows further down the list, like Knight Rider and My Name is Earl). It has Kings for mid-season but that concept seems so oddball that I'm not sanguine about its chances. Even if it were a success, that doesn't threaten Heroes, which is far enough up the pecking order. In fact if Kings could become a successful lead-out for Heroes, it would help Heroes; the concepts seem pretty compatible.

Also, it's hard to assess the degree to which product placements, paid downloads, DVD sales and international sales of the show factor into the mix. For Heroes, such things are more of a factor than they are for the average show, but how much they matter vs. Nielsens is unknown.

Heroes' lead-in Chuck is stable (tho the ratings are lower). With those two being among the few shows at NBC that are working out at all, NBC would be loathe to break up that pair.

Another big wild card factor is Trek XI. Heroes turning into The Sylar Show is no doubt due in part to the popularity of the character but also to the fact that Zachary Quinto could very well rocket to international stardom this spring when that little movie he's in comes out. That could give Heroes' ratings a big boost, and by next spring I think it's gonna need it. The PR boost might bump the ratings up enough to make an S4 and even an S5 viable.

Working against Heroes: it's an expensive show. But fixing the things that are wrong with it - too many characters, too many plotlines, too little focus on basics like just having characters interact in a scene with some strong dialogue - could reduce the number of expensive factors and put more focus on the inexpensive things, like having two characters in a room and just pointing the camera at them. Good acting and good writing are the ways you make a good show on the cheap.

Heroes ratings. The demo number, not total viewers, is what counts. Heroes still has a good demo.

How Heroes stacks up vs. other NBC shows (which is the relevant part; don't worry how it stacks up vs the other networks).

Another factor is that Heroes has an unusually high % of DVR viewing (nearly 40%). This helps a show that has a lot of product placement, which Heroes does, because DVR viewers can't zap in-show ads. But advertisers won't pay extra for DVR viewings for anything but in-show ads, so the impact is limited.