Heroes: The rest
So having blown through the rest of Season One of Heroes, I’d have to say it totally lived up to the hype and then some. And for that matter, count me in as being on the “good finale” side as well. The major complaint about the finale seems to be the lack of Peter-Sylar smackdown, but these aren’t seasoned superheroes like the Justice League out there throwing around their powers — it’s a show about ordinary people dealing with the extraordinary, and in real life your first instinct is still going to be throwing old-fashioned punches at a guy instead of going invisible and phasing your fist through his head. The Five Years Later episode was probably my favorite, followed closely by Company Man of course, but it was so refreshing throughout to have a show where someone was actually paying attention to continuity and paying stuff off from earlier in the season and such. Consider me a convert, and now I’m anxiously awaiting season two, although luckily Sasktel is installing a PVR on Wednesday and thus I won’t have to choose between this and 24 on Monday nights now.
Hate to hijack this thread (Heroes does rule, though), but is it just me or is it perhaps not the best timing for this, given the latest Chris Benoit news?
http://www.wwe.com/shows/raw/articles/5046390/chairclassics07
It’s certainly not suprising given the way Vince & co. have been flagrantly thumbing their noses at the media and congress. However, I believe this is probably just another faux pax by WWE.com.
Now that you’ve seen the rest, perhaps you can explain:
why the Haitian didn’t just stop Ted from blowing up by canceling his power instead of sending Claire in.
why the Haitian didn’t turn off invisible-dude’s power and instead needed thermo-vision goggles.
why Peter didn’t just fly up into the atmosphere himself rather than making his brother sacrifice himself.
why no one at the scene after the battle seemed to notice that Syler had crawled to a manhole, pulled the lid off, and slipped in.
I could go on. The show is fun, but the complete disdain for continuity in favor of “cool stuff” or even just “we need the plot to go this way” keeps Heroes from being awesome, IMO. Far from it. Here’s hoping that now that the show is a bonafide hit that they’ll give a bit more attention to the little details, but the creator’s track record doesn’t really inspire confidence in me.
why the Haitian didn’t just stop Ted from blowing up by canceling his power instead of sending Claire in.
– No real explanation, other then the fact that maybe there has to be some type of proximity, Ted was too far gone to be able to stop him, or maybe he wanted Claire to reveal her powers to Thompson. We really don’t know enough about the Haitian yet, his powers don’t seem to mesh together.. mind wiping and power nullification.
why the Haitian didn’t turn off invisible-dude’s power and instead needed thermo-vision goggles.
– Same thing as some of the reasons above.. could be as simple as he needs to at least know/see where the person is as well.
why Peter didn’t just fly up into the atmosphere himself rather than making his brother sacrifice himself.
– I think this one is pretty simple, Peter hasn’t ever during the show used two powers at once. I don’t think he’s strong enough yet as he’s still learning how to control his powers.
why no one at the scene after the battle seemed to notice that Syler had crawled to a manhole, pulled the lid off, and slipped in.
– Supervillain 101, the mysterious death. Everyone thinks he’s dead and leaves him there. He could have also escaped while they were distracted.. They were all focusing on Peter and Nathan and they all watched them fly away and blow up. Sylar had more then enough time to get away.
I think the show is spot on so far.. just like in comic books you have to use plot elements and gloss over some things. What fun is it to have a character, like the Haitian, do everything?
The Haitian dude’s power negating powers seem to be iffy at best. Throughout the series, he only seems to be able to negate powers if he knows what they are and when they are being used. On top of that, he’s a loose cannon since he was on Ma Patrelli’s payroll, so anything he does has to be questioned. Maybe he truly didn’t want Claude to be caught.
Why didn’t Haitian dude stop Radioactive Caveman’s powers? Once again, the Haitian’s power negating has never been truly explained. Since his main power deals with memories, maybe he can only negate mental powers. I’m sure we’ll learn more about it this season. If you mean why did they send Claire in after Ted went nuclear, it could just be that Haitian have to be close to his subject to negate the power and being that close to radiation would put him at risk or even kill him.
As for why Peter didn’t fly up himself: we’ve never seen Sylar or Peter use more than one power at once. If they used multiple powers during a sequence, it’s always been real quick one after the other. In a video game sense, much like the MMO City of Heroes, if either of them could use any power at the same time, they become a “tankmage” and are truly unstoppable to the point of the other characters being obsolete. They need a limitation and I think 1 power at a time is that limitation.
And a reply to Scott’s initial post: Peter went back to fist fighting because I believe he realized Nikki had superstrength and he he took it himself. That’s why he said, “I can handle it from here.”
Granted, this was explained in one of the episode commentaries, so it’s bad on the writers for not making this clear….but evidently the Haitian can only block mental abilities, not physical ones (hence why he didn’t stop Nathan from flying away earlier in the season).
And I totally noticed the “why didn’t Peter just fly away” thing as well. Tim Kring answered this in TV Guide or Entertainment Weekly (again, shame on the writers for not making this clear on the SHOW), and he said that Peter was so overwhelmed by the radioactive powers that he couldn’t use his other abilities. Of course, this doesn’t make much sense since they already established that he’d be able to heal from the explosion.
So, yes, there are some plotholes (or, at the very least, the show can do a better job of clarifying or offering explanations), but I find it very engaging with great characters, so I just cut my losses.
I think some of the abilities are passive, in that they don’t need to conciously activate them. Sylar’s super-hearing seemed to be like that as well. Peter’s healing also has kicked in automatically like a reflex. He had done it before with his flying as well.
Hate to go off topic, but not sure if there will be a No Surrender thread. So judging by the updates I’m reading, it seems to be a pretty good PPV, as of this writing Joe v Christian & Angle v Abyss hasn’t happened yet, and the BIG announcement(s). Anyway my point was going to be PUH-LEEZE tell me given the finish of the Tag Title match they’re not planning on “The Ancient One” Sting vs. Angle at their marquee show of the year!!!
And yes I AM biased towards one certain other performer in TNA who should’ve been champ at any time in the last 2 years. I know the drama is in the chase, but dammit it’s time!!!
We’ll return to the regularly scheduled Heroes thread in a moment, but there’s something I have to get out of the way regarding TNA: I agree with samoaray25. TNA is running a huge risk in not pulling the trigger on Samoa Joe. Any decent wrestling promoter realizes that, yes, there is money to be made by having the face chase the heel. However, there comes a moment in time when it becomes obvious that the promotion is forced to give the face the duke over the heel if the fans haven’t already stopped caring already. Tommy Dreamer vs. Raven in ECW circa the mid 90’s is a great example of this. While it made for great drama watching Dreamer try in vain to pin Raven. ECW was backed into a corner due to the departure of Raven in ‘97. Thus, when Tommy finally pinned him, it wasn’t nearly as exciting as it could have been. The fans knew it was going to end this way if only because it had to. This is evident by the hastily-rushed angle immediately afterwords involving Van Dam, Sabu, and Lawler. The fans’collective patience is growing thin with TNA vis-a-vis Samoa Joe.