Re: Heroes: "Orientation" and "Jump, Push, Fall" 9/21 - Grade & Discus
I'm not feeling very generous today so this one gets an Average.
This show is increasingly frustratingly schitzo - a cross between potentially fascinating and teeth-grindingly uninteresting plotlines.
Fascinating:
Sylar tries to hang onto his Nathan persona while simultaneously taking over Matt's brain (nifty trick, tho I think it's Matt's projection of Sylar into his own mind that is taking over his brain since even Sylar cannot be two places at once). Matt has always had the most corrupting power, so it's high time he started getting corrupted. I'm not sure if the scene in the interrogation room was supposed to be hysterically funny, but I thought it was funnier than most intentional comedy I've seen lately, and this all bodes well for more wonderful insanity.
Samuel and his merry band of blatant
Carnivale ripoffs. Love the notion of a bunch of mutants who are far from being "eeevil" but simply have an agenda that puts them into dangerous conflict with Our Heroes. Robert Knepper definitely delivers, not that I ever had any doubts.
Peter comes up with a way to make sense of his horrifyingly out-of-control life. Of course, being Peter, it's a stupid idea, but at least he's trying. He's obviously suffering from PTSD - and it's nice to see realistic emotional fallout for one of these characters - and is coping by retreating to behavior that he assumes is unassailably "good" - martyring himself in the service of others and jettisoning everything from his life that could possibly hurt him.
In short, he's still the emotionally stunted, self-dramatizing coward he's always been, but I'll cut him some slack because this time, he's not being stupid in an obvious way (on the surface, he seems extremely self-sacrificing and brave, which is crucial to his shaky self-esteem) and he just doesn't realize what the hell he's doing. Noah trying to talk some sense into him was the best scene in both episodes (not that it did any good; stubborn is still obviously part of Peter's DNA.)
And before this sounds like I'm slamming the poor guy, he remains my favorite character on the show, especially if he a) doesn't cut off his lovely hair ever again and b) keeps wearing the sexy paramedic uniform.
Meh:
Claire goes to college. Not as bad as the grating high school scenes, tho, so I can hang in there for now. So, new roomie is a stalker who pushed Trajectory Girl out the window, but not hard enough that it would look like anything but suicide, right?
Kill These Characters Already, Please.
Hiro - the writers haven't known what to do with this guy since S1. It's not nice for them to tease us with his terminal illness stuff that we know damn well will turn out to be another cop-out. The time travel BS with Ando and Kimiko was lazy, lazy writing. If those two had been together since they were teenagers, they'd be married by now or at the very least, in a relationship solid enough that Ando wouldn't just go galavanting to New York with his buddy at the drop of a hat. There should be plenty of repercussions for the timeline, yet everything else seems unchanged.
Tracey - the writers don't have a clue who this character is. She goes from murderous psycho to calmly sharing clam chowder with Noah in the blink of an eye.
WTF?!?
Did they fire Mohinder?
Question:
Uh, isn't it a bad idea to have a Twelve-Step program at work and have your boss attend the meetings so he can get a good look at just what a total psycho you are? Whatever happened to anonymity? At least Matt took a page from the Dexter Morgan playbook and didn't tell everyone what his addiction is, precisely.
Oh well. The potentially fascinating stuff is more than enough to keep me watching. After all, I can always fast-forward Hiro and Tracey if they get too boring to tolerate.
The ratings are pretty much on par with where the show left off last season. And what never gets reported is international revenues.
Heroes is the most pirated show on the planet, and the other top pirated shows are also the big viewership drawers, which implies that the regular viewership is also still large. Add in large increases for time-shifting, paid downloads and DVD sales, and it's hard to say just where
Heroes sits, revenue-wise.
Also, with the blatant product placements, the studio should be able to charge Guitar Hero for all the pirated viewing, too.
(That may explain why
Heroes is so blatant about product placement.)
Suppose you were told that you were a duplicate. You have self awareness as "you" and several decades of memory, so are you really a duplicate of another person? Are you somehow "you", but in another body? Does it matter?
It doesn't matter to me, but it does matter to the person I'm a copy of, if someone tries to tell her that it's okay if they kill her because hey, I'm alive, so what's your problem?
The metaphysics of this are less interesting to me - and too hard to force into a plotline - than how Peter and Claire react. I could see Peter for instance reacting a bit like Angela after the shock wears off - hey, he's
a Nathan if not
the Nathan.
Claire, tho - total squick.
But a duplicate wouldn't be treated the same by loved ones.
Depends on how emotionally needy they are. Angela and Peter are both very needy people.
Unless its Sylar himself who decides he wants to be Nathan, which to me would be the worst outcome in all this.
That would be the most ludicrous twist that's happened to the poor guy yet - his whole schitck is wanting to be special and individual. That's why what's happened to him is poetic justice, his worst fears come true.
Now if Nathan-Sylar develops an individual sense of identity and a will to live - and why wouldn't he? -
he might resist a re-take-over by Sylar-Sylar. But that wouldn't really be Sylar making that decision. Nathan-Sylar is a new character, neither Nathan
nor Sylar.
