Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[öde]

Fuuuck youuuuu.

I'm enjoying season 3, actually, but it's gonna have to be really good to meet my expectations.

[Jackie Blue]

Oh don't get me wrong, I've loved every episode of S3 so far EXCEPT the latest one.

It's just that if a cancellation causes all the plots to remain unresolved, I will honestly only ever watch a few episodes from S1.

[Chesire Cat]

Well fuck, for a show with a long overreaching story arc.  Shitcanning the man halfway though seems... imprudent at best.  I hope whatever happens Heroes ends ok.  After all, even Lost got back on track (so I keep hearing, I havent watched since halfway through Season 2).  Then again, I just hope these shows last until Battlestar Galactica resumes.  Then I have what 10 weeks of respite and a movie to look forward to.  After that I guess Ill cross that bridge when I get there.

[0bsessions]

The decision to let them go was not made until the finale to the third volume was written in its entirety. They'll have a clean break midseason where 'Villains' will end leading into Volume four, which is known as 'Fugitives.'

[öde]

I hope that 4 isn't going to be as obvious as the title suggests.

[Jackie Blue]

From what I understand, Jeph Loeb is a completely fucking horrible comic book hack, so letting him go is probably a good idea.

As long as it doesn't get cancelled, I have tentative high hopes for Fugitives.

[0bsessions]

Loeb is...an odd one. He has absolutely zero middle road. He will either knock it completely out of the park (The Long Halloween, Daredevil: Yellow) or submit a complete and utter pile of shit (Hulk, Ultimates 3). It really depends upon who he's working with it seems. Pretty much everything he's worked on with Tim Sale involved has been gold, though.

[Jackie Blue]

I heard that there's a dialogue in one of Loeb's comics that goes:

Ultron, to Wasp: I consider you my mother.
Yellowjacket: Well then I guess that makes me the MOTHERFUCKER!

*facepalm*

[Chesire Cat]

I just LOLed, out loud, at a coffee shop. 

[0bsessions]

Give me five minutes...

ETA:




These are from the aforementioned utter pile of shit Ultimates 3.

[0bsessions]

Snap, just under five minutes. I am good.

[Scandanavian War Machine]

wow that is awful

[axerton]

Are all comic book layouts that damn confusing these days, or is that just another reason for that one's shittyness?

[Tom]

No, somewhat.

[0bsessions]

The layout of that one is just abysmal. Most comics still tend to follow the left to right, top to bottom method with a splash page here and there.

[KickThatBathProf]

Wait wait.  Remind me again why they hired him in the first place.

[axerton]

Clever episode, I liked the way they worked stuff from the first season into the episode, made it feel more authentic.

But it begs the question - what exactly did hiro learn from his spirit walk? Flint and Meridith are siblings and sylar once had a soft spot for Elle at some point in the past? apart from that and the fact that Flint is a bit of a simpleton there doesn't appear to be that much that will actually be useful in present day.

The fact that Arthur already had the mind reading/altering power changes a few things, I suppose it means that in Scarface Peter's timeline even with Morrie locked up on level 5 it might have been possible for Arthur to get Adam's/Clair's power which counters the argument I made last time for it not being him who brought powers to the people.

One thing that doesn't make much sense is why sylar decided to kill himself then? I mean this is after he worked with Mohinder's father - finding the location of an unknown number of supers and presumably killing them - then killing Mohinder's father - so why would his first kill come back to haunt him then.

With Arthur going around amongst our heroes and depowering all the major arse kickers it would seem that we are heading toward sylar being the only hope for Teem Good and I'm guessing that Arthu'rs power also is able to give away his own powers not just take other peoples, so therefor if sylar kills him and does his thing he'll be able to return all the powers to their rightful owners thus restoring the status quo - I suppose if this were to happen it would also be a possible way for the "the virus wiped sylar clean" excuse to be true, and for sylar to have future painting and nuclear like he did in the future.

Oh and for anyone keeping score on the number of level 5 inmates still at large 2 more were recaptured in the latest comic. Which means that with the death of The German, the guy peter was possessing, the black hole guy, Morrie, and the recapture of the puppet master, that leaves 5 of the 12 original escapees still free (Flint, Nox, Noise the postal worker from the webisodes and two as yet unknown.)

[Jackie Blue]

I thought it was a good episode, it was awesome to see Eric Roberts in action again, but there was definitely too much noise and not enough signal.  Basically the only worthwhile info it gave Hiro is that Arthur is alive, which he proceeded to find out 2 minutes after waking up anyhow.

It's good to have definitive proof that Peter has always had Linderman's power, though, which explains how he brought Nathan back to life (though it's a safe bet he never figured out he had that power and only used it unconciously).  Also, Elle was just great, she's definitely a far more sympathetic character than Claire, who I have grown to hate.  Hayden's acting seems to have gotten worse with every season, it's just so awful to watch now.

[0bsessions]

I think you're both looking too much into the dreamwalk. Even aside from finding out about Arthur, even seeing him right after would've accounted for jack all had he not been on the spirit walk. If not for the entire sequence, Arthur would've just been "Bad guy who knocked off African Isaac's head" rather than having any legitimate background on him. It's basically just an excuse for a flashback episode, which often results in some of the best this show has to offer, with this episode being no exception, in my opinion.

I don't think Sylar was just suddenly starting to regret his first kill. He clearly mentions a couple times that he's done some bad things, never isolating it to one instance. He's likely just focusing on the first one as that's where his spiral really began. My only real complaints about his scenes were the fact he's encountered Elle repeatedly yet never makes any mention of having met her before and he never exhibited Trevor's powers. I think we would've been better off if Trevor had cryokinesis (As it was never made clear where that power popped up). It also would've made for a nice bookend were Angela to confront Sylar in the past with the Haitian in tow, wiping out his encounter with the company.

[Jackie Blue]

My only real complaints about his scenes were the fact he's encountered Elle repeatedly yet never makes any mention of having met her before

When he encounters her in episode 2 of this season he says something like "You're as responsible for me as anyone... maybe moreso."

[0bsessions]

Really? I must've missed that.

[CamusCanDo]

...he never exhibited Trevor's powers. I think we would've been better off if Trevor had cryokinesis (As it was never made clear where that power popped up).

I had assumed he had taken it from Molly's father in season 1, since he was frozen and had his skull/brain removed. Actually, no. IIRC the whole scene was that the father was frozen solid while eating breakfast, which would imply Sylar freezing before removing the brain.

Shit. Where did he get cryokinesis from, possibly from one of the names off his list? And what powers did Molly's father have.

[axerton]

I always assume Molly's father didn't actually have a power sylar just went in there assuming it was him with the power cut off the guys head only to realise it wasn't him but his daughter.

I'll agree that the flashback episodes do tend to be good episodes, even if they are a little cheesy and often filled with poetic coincidence - c'mon Clair running into a fire that just happened to be started by her mother?

One thing that occurred to me was the timeline seems a little off, as I'm pretty sure most of the stuff that happened to sylar and Nathan/Peter was set six months before the show began (yet they were calling it "One year ago") but by cameoing Mohinder and Clair they also set it within the first few episodes of the series.

Oh and if it turns out that Elle's power fuckup is due to unrequited love for Sylar I think I may barf.

[Lines]

Damn, I liked African Isaac. (Partly because Hiro called him African Isaac.)

[Jackie Blue]

Also, Flint is hilariously dumb.

AH'MA BE'UN AY-GENT, SIS!

The fanservice reference to "an invisible man tackled me in the alley" is WAY off the timeline, since Claude had been away from the Company presumably for roughly 16 years, since they thought he "died" in Company Man.  Unless they have another Invisible Man, or Claude will return and they were secretly using him to get to Peter, which would be really stretching the retconning.

The timeline for this episode, though, wasn't all "one year ago", it started with "one and a half years ago" didn't it?

[0bsessions]

Eighteen months, to be precise, but yes.

Claude's abrupt departure IS a continuity error. It wasn't sixteen years ago, though. It was approximately seven years before Company Man took place, which would peg it in the neighborhood of eight years ago.

Note, however, that they never explicitly named the agent in question, and it's just as easy to assume it was another unnamed agent, there's allegedly multiple unnamed ones and West and Adam have long since established that multiple characters have the same powers. According to the online comics, Claude is presently in London, where he encountered Claire in between her firing from Primatech and her breaking into the Bennett house.

[Coffee_Kaioken]

Arthur's really starting to annoy the hell out of me, though. Right after Hiro finished dreaming, BOOM. That's just too cruel.

And he had to freaking kill the African Isaac! I'm getting worried. Arthur's getting way too strong.

...wait, we still have the Hatian! He may do something.

[KvP]

Continuity error! The way that Mohinder was included in this episode didn't even make sense. Didn't he come to the US after his father was killed by Sylar (who is not even evil yet in this episode)? Funny. Sci-Fi nerds pay attention to this junk, Heroes writers.

I haven't seen such a steep and spectacular TV flameout since Twin Peaks.

[Jackie Blue]

Nah, Sylar's suicide attempt was clearly after he killed Papa Suresh.  No timeline error there.

[0bsessions]

Yeah, he had all of Chandra's research stuff all over his apartment. There weren't any major flubs that can't be easily explained away, off the top of my head.

[Aimless]

Really loving this season... flashback delivered, as always I've been getting tired of Peter, Claire and Hiro, so it's nice to have eps where they aren't too prominent (also nice to see a return to the old Peter, who was a cool and engaging character). It's cool that they're exploring Sylar's character from so many different angles, too

Out of curiosity... if Peter were to get slashed across the face without having a healing power, would the scar be removed when he regains his power???

EDIT: Wow, Bennett was a real sod

[Boro_Bandito]

EDIT: Wow, Bennett was is a real sod

Fixed. I used to have a soft spot for his character, but I swear to God this season they've been douching him up and turning him into such an asshole, "ends justify the means NO MATTER WHAT" type of character. True, this may not be that big of a change, but it usually wasn't this bad. I also find it interesting that he seems to believe that once you've killed someone, your soul is absolutely irredeemable. Sylar, well okay it'd be hard to forgive Sylar, but forcing the guy who created wormholes to kill someone else just because he did it once before by accident, and immediately coming to the conclusion that "Well he's done it before, of course I won't have any trouble getting him to do it again." And now that we've seen what he did to Sylar, well, that seems downright evil. In no way was it helping to protect Claire, it was blindly following orders and enjoying it. Douchebag.

[Jackie Blue]

I ran across some pictures of filming for Fugitives and well... holy crap.  See for yourself especially if you are a Sylar fan: (they're not really spoiler-iffic in my opinion):

http://www.heroes-france.com/news_1226510049.htm

[CamusCanDo]

Man, what the fuck is going on there

Also

Zachary Quinto,

[dozyrozy]

OMG, I love Zachary Quinto. I may have said this before, but I always knew he was misunderstood!

And because I don't have enough to do in my life... I've just started watching the first series again. I watched it in a bit of a rush last time so there's bits of it I'd forgotten and now it's brilliant to see how things are all fitting in, especially after that flashback episode. I wish I had it on DVD, but I have found a brilliant website that has all of them with good quality, it's stopping me getting enough sleep though...

[Jackie Blue]

Man, what the fuck is going on there

Clearly Sylar has absorbed Jack Bauer's abilities.

[0bsessions]

“The Sylar-Elle-HRG storyline from ‘Villains,’ the last scene of that particular arc, where HRG got into the Mohinder-driven cab and it went into the scene from ‘Genesis.’ According to the timeline you established in ‘Six Months Ago,’ Mohinder didn't show up until after his father was killed by Sylar, right before he went off on his cross-country collection campaign. At that point, Sylar, according to all indications, was already a mass-murderer and that's why Chandra stopped helping him. Yet the aforementioned scene seemingly takes place the same day Sylar kills Trevor Zeitlan, long after he should have been gone from NY or months before Mohinder arrived in town. And it was pretty clear his guilt was just over Brian Davis.”

We can tell you that when we broke the story – that scene between Elle and H.R.G. – was supposed to be at a Sylar-esque crime scene months or weeks after the entire story took place – and they were talking about the monster they’ve unleashed. Sometimes, things happen from script through production and editorial where ideas become too clever and through-lines aren’t tracked. Just so you know – it infuriated us as well.

Vardel pointed out an interesting theory they’d read online; that because it was a vision quest, the events Hiro saw may have merged and appeared out of order. Did someone get a Heroes no-prize?

Vardel, expect your no-prize in the mail. Marvel used to send a blank envelope. To be extra sneaky, we’re going to make ours look exactly like your phone bill. Exactly. But to avoid confusion, we’re going to take your real phone bill and destroy it.

For the uninitiated, a No-Prize is an idea Marvel Comics came up with back in the sixties. Basically, it was a made up "prize" that didn't actually exist, which they would award to folks who spotted continuity errors and presented plausible solutions to them. So, basically, the explanations for the vast amount of continuity errors in last week's episode are:

Real life: That's not how it was written and, yeah, the writers were pretty pissed off about it.
Canonically: Since it was a spirit vision, as opposed to a legitimate flashback, we can assume Hiro wasn't seeing things exactly as they happened, but vaguely jumbled.

[axerton]

Currently too tired to form an opinion on It's Coming - but when did Nathan find out it was Future Peter who shot him?

and c'mon Issac has been dead for over a year can we stop falling back on his paintings easy solutions and anyway that issue of ninth wonders doesn't even fit in the cannon it is stated clearly that the last book of ninth wonders Issac ever drew was the unfinshed one where Hiro stabbed Sylar, and mohinder said in 5 years gone that everything he ever painted came true (with the exception in that timeline of Hiro stabbing Sylar) and in that timeline it's pretty obvious that Arthur never woke up.

Apart from that and again the ridiculous number of times the title of the eppisode was crowbarred in I thought it was pretty good especially ten year old hero learning to control his powers.

[Jackie Blue]

Episode was a big "meh" for me.  Hiro reverting to age 10 is filler, pure and simple.  Hayden continues her arc toward the inevitable "worst actress ever/eventually "accidentally" releases sex tape to regain spotlight" paradigm.  Arthur still doesn't make a damn bit of sense and Roberts is still phoning it in.

On the plus side, the Matt mind-fighting was good, except the out-of-nowhere Daphne being in love with him thing - I mean, they've known each other all of a couple days?

And, god help me, I enjoyed the Sylar/Elle angle.  Maybe it's just because they're both hot.

[0bsessions]

Currently too tired to form an opinion on It's Coming - but when did Nathan find out it was Future Peter who shot him?

Way back. As I recall, Future Peter approached Nathan in the church and confessed to him.

[Muppet King]

Episode was a big "meh" for me.  Hiro reverting to age 10 is filler, pure and simple.  Hayden continues her arc toward the inevitable "worst actress ever/eventually "accidentally" releases sex tape to regain spotlight" paradigm.  Arthur still doesn't make a damn bit of sense and Roberts is still phoning it in.

On the plus side, the Matt mind-fighting was good, except the out-of-nowhere Daphne being in love with him thing - I mean, they've known each other all of a couple days?

And, god help me, I enjoyed the Sylar/Elle angle.  Maybe it's just because they're both hot.

Ugh Claire and Peter in the same scene is nigh unwatchable now.

As for the Sylar/Elle angle....I liked it as well, but mostly because Quinto is one of the best actors on the show and Elle isn't incredibly bad like some of the actors.

[KvP]

Tim Kring reveals his true colors... the colors of a penis.

[Scandanavian War Machine]

what a moron

[KvP]

Yeah, it's one of those things... Like, he laments how new tech, DVRs specifically, but also DVDs, for making it harder for serialized shows to work. That's... Jesus, that's stupid. DVDs especially. I wonder what made The Sopranos, a rich show that had exceptionally long story arcs, so successful and acclaimed? Hmmm.... Oh right, DVDs. Advancing technology made following a novelistic, long-form story on TV less of a heroic (pun!) task than it would have been otherwise. The first commenter in that AV Club article makes a good point - Heroes is a comic book show, and how many comic readers do you know buy every issue as it comes out? Compare that with how many wait for the trade paperback. If there's a problem, it's not the format.

But then, Tim Kring doesn't read comic books, so it's understandable.

[Alex C]

Like, he laments new tech, DVRs specifically, but also DVDs, for making it harder for serialized shows to work.

You have got to be fucking kidding me.


I mean, really, it used to be that OVAs were the only serialized programs I ever watched, and that was precisely because you could only really aquire them on DVD or VHS in the first place. You couldn't help but watch such things at your own pace.

[0bsessions]

I dunno. The dude who wrote the article reeks of troll and it looked more to me like Kring was saying that the problem DVR is causing is with the ratings, not the quality of the show itself. Not once in that statement does he say anything about the quality. And yes, it's widely accepted that DVR does affect ratings in a negative light, especially on serialized series.

It looks to me like a bitchy journalist took something way the fuck wrong and now a couple of you are falling for the "let's pile on the producer" bandwagon that so often follows when one idiot misinterprets an interview.

[KvP]

I thought it was established long ago that Tim Kring is something of an ass?

And having read the AV Club for a number of years, I can tell you that they only really turned on Heroes this season, mostly because of bad characterization (specifically, letting the story influencing the actions of the characters instead of the actions of the characters influencing the story) It's a tough love thing. I mentioned Twin Peaks before, and it's kind of the same deal - strong first season followed by progressively diminishing returns. People really like the first season of Heroes. I remember the first season finale, getting online and seeing how anticlimactic everyone thought it was. It didn't get any better after that. The Time blog is a different story, he's saying "fuck this show", which is his right, but the actual significant response is the AV Club's.
 
The thrust of Kring's statement is this -
"[Serialized storytelling] is a very flawed way of telling stories on network television right now, because of the advent of the DVR and online streaming."
Which isn't saying that it's harder to make a TV show in general because of those things - it is, definitely, because Nielsen can't track alternative means of viewing and advertising is a thornier issue with them (issues that the article addresses, actually). Kring is saying that The service that DVRs and online services provide, which is the ability to watch any show at any time, have specifically harmed shows with serial elements, which is an incredibly dissonant notion. If anything, DVRs have made serialized shows more viable than they were before. J J Abrams made his name through DVRs with Lost, and the tiny little details in that show that you could only sniff out with the pause function provided by a DVR, along with ARGs online, built the buzz that gave it its formidable cult (he's doing it once again with Fringe, which is constantly referencing past episodes, encouraging DVR hunts)

Kring is seeing the forest for the trees here. Yes, DVRs have lowered ratings all over television. But he seems to have this idea that the muddy storytelling he specializes in would be just as viable if that tech didn't exist, which is hard to imagine. If you're going to make dedicated viewership a requirement for your show you'd think you wouldn't want to have it such that if you miss a showing time, there isn't a way to catch up (aside from having the episode's events told to you, and fuck that) There's never been a better time to institute a season-long story arc in your show.

It's pretty obvious that I've given up on this show myself, and I might as well explain that. I lost interest when Sylar became "good". The stretch was too great for me, and it reminded me of the cartoons I used to watch as a kid, when I thought it was so badass when the hero and the villain teamed up to fight a greater villain. Part of my inner child still finds that appealing, but now that I'm 22, if you're going to have a psycho serial killer, I'm not going to accept that essentially what it takes to make that guy a troubled hero is the revelation that... he... has a real mother, with a super birth canal? And this makes him reconsider his life of murder and power theft? Really he just solemnly says "I'm trying to be good" and furrows his brow and that's his character development. I knew at that point that there were no real rules for how these characters could act. A lot of fiction writers run into problems when they put their characters in situations that they have trouble writing out, because "the character wouldn't do that". The writers of this show don't seem to meet any such resistance. More to the point it was the Hannibal effect. Sylar, a mysterious, badass character, gets explained away with pop psychology, and he finds out that all he really needs to give up his psychopathy is the knowledge that somebody wuvs him.

[0bsessions]

Kring is seeing the forest for the trees here. Yes, DVRs have lowered ratings all over television. But he seems to have this idea that the muddy storytelling he specializes in would be just as viable if that tech didn't exist, which is hard to imagine. If you're going to make dedicated viewership a requirement for your show you'd think you wouldn't want to have it such that if you miss a showing time, there isn't a way to catch up (aside from having the episode's events told to you, and fuck that) There's never been a better time to institute a season-long story arc in your show.

From a business standpoint, you're completely mistaken, John.

In terms of the viewer, yes, DVR is much better because you don't want to miss an episode of serialized storytelling and that's the point. Before DVR, you either watched a shitty VHS or you made sure your ass was on the couch when a show you love is on. The networks are in a terrible position on this matter, which is why some of the biggest shows, like Law and Order and CSI, are by and large a done in one affair. With serialized TV, someone's more likely to set their Tivo just in case they can't get around to watching. DVRing a show basically kills the advertising dollars. The aforementioned Sopranos comparison is completely moot because that's a cable TV show and gets is money through DVD sales and channel subscription, not advertising.

Shit, this is why the entire fucking strike happened. Writers were upset that they weren't getting proper residuals from the DVD and online viewing, which was seriously cutting into profits.

Suffice to say, whether or not you think he'[s an ass: Kring is right.

[KvP]

Dunno, I imagine Lost has considerable DVD sales. Possibly such that if the DVDs weren't on the market Lost wouldn't have lasted as long as it has.

[Alex C]

Eh, yeah, I don't think it's really a purely black and white issue after actually checking out the statements myself. DVRs are useful from a pure storytelling POV, but they are indeed a big part of why the business model needs a real overhaul.

Anyway, I often find myself alone in many of my opinions on these issues, since I'm one of the people who believes the Writer's Strike was a bad idea (and a poorly handled one at that) and that pushing the issue during a time of transition just gave the networks a fair bit of leverage. A shit ton of money was lost, people were out of work, and I don't think they cut a long enough deal for it to all have been worthwhile.