Friday, May 25, 2007

Heroic ending

I’d planned on buying the Season 1 DVD set of Heroes as soon as it hit the market (currently, it's set to release in August). But our household economy has seen a few bumps lately, and there's no money for things like that at the moment, and I think I’m glad. It will probably be best to let Season 1 meld and simmer in imperfect memory until it becomes a garish but somewhat vague mythology, a lengthy flashback of a classic origin sequence in a comic that came out before I was born and that is now so valuable I’ve never managed to actually read it.

This way, I’ll pretty much know how the team that will inevitably come together in Season 2 got its start, and who the characters are, and what their interrelationships are like, but if I never go back and actually watch the old episodes again, the healing hand of time may well spare me the pain of re-experiencing all the goddam idiotic plot flaws, which exist by the bushel basketful.

If Nikki becomes just a superstrong asskicker with no mean, amoral killer of a split personality that she needs to manifest to tap into her powers, though, she’s going to be a VERY boring character.

Peter should be dead, simply because he’s way too powerful. Had he not been around, the writers might have given us a climactic battle in which all the other heroes had to somehow work cooperatively to mesh their powers in some way that would overcome the far more puissant Sylar. As it was, they all showed up, and Sylar glared at them, and they all wilted like dandelions. It was depressing, and pretty stupid, too.

And, I’m sorry, Sylar is too good a villain to lose. He shouldn’t be in every story, no. But he’s integral to the origin of The Inevitable Superteam, and should be their Recurring Arch Enemy, and whenever he does show up, he should scare the living shit out everybody.

Linderman should come back, too, but we should shouldn’t know about it until the end of the second season, when he’s revealed as the secret mastermind behind The Inevitable Superteam.

If Peter is dead, Nathan could come back, which would be cool; of all the regular characters, he's the one who has undergone the most interesting arc this season. Which is another reason Peter SHOULD be dead; otherwise, all the other ‘Heroes’ are pretty much redundant. Especially a guy whose only power is flight.

6 comments:

  1. Anonymous10:56 AM

    And, I’m sorry, Sylar is too good a villain to lose. He shouldn’t be in every story, no. But he’s integral to the origin of The Inevitable Superteam, and should be their Recurring Arch Enemy, and whenever he does show up, he should scare the living shit out everybody.

    I like Sylar as a villian too, but I'm afraid I'd prefer him dead. The finale already set up a new, scary arch-enemy - the guy who scares the little girl (Walker?) because when she thinks about him "he can see me".

    I say this partly because Sylar's death would have been a satisfactory ending to the first season, but also because HE WAS STABBED THROUGH THE HEART WITH A F**CKING SAMURAI SWORD. He doesn't have Claire's healing ability - he should be dead. He's obviously not, but I think that's a cheat on the part of the show's writers.

    And I meant to comment on this in your earlier thread, but I really need to point this out:

    * Hiro's confrontation with Nathan is as good a set up as I've ever seen for Nathan to have a last minute change of heart leading to a heroic redemption of himself.

    You, sir, are a genius. I literally laughed out loud at the end of the show when Nathan showed up a Kirby Plaza. My wife shot me a "what the Hell?" look as a result. Well called, Bunnyman.

    If Nikki becomes just a superstrong asskicker with no mean, amoral killer of a split personality that she needs to manifest to tap into her powers, though, she’s going to be a VERY boring character.

    Agreed. And it's not as if she was all that interesting before.

    Speaking of boring characters, what the hell happened to Claire? She was one of the most interesting characters in the show for awhile, and then by the end she's this goddamn wallflower.

    The scene where she's being escorted out of the garage by Nathan and her grandmother, as if she's being forced to go with them.
    Why, exactly, should she be afraid of either of these bozos? SHE CAN'T BE HURT. She could just refuse to go with them, run away, whatever. What are they gonna do to her? Gah. She turned into a total wimp by the end of the season - hopefully they fix that next season.

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  2. I say this partly because Sylar's death would have been a satisfactory ending to the first season, but also because HE WAS STABBED THROUGH THE HEART WITH A F**CKING SAMURAI SWORD. He doesn't have Claire's healing ability - he should be dead. He's obviously not, but I think that's a cheat on the part of the show's writers.

    First, you can fucking well say 'fucking' in my fucking comment threads, Scott. As you see. ;)

    Beyond that, (a) the telepathic cop emptied an entire clip into Sylar in the first episode. Sylar went down, then, very much like Michael Myers in HALLOWEEN, sat back up again a minute later. He may not have Claire's healing factor, but he's got SOMEthing. (b) Good villains never die. That's a tradition in superhero comics that I wouldn't mind seeing translated to the TV show.

    You, sir, are a genius. I literally laughed out loud at the end of the show when Nathan showed up a Kirby Plaza. My wife shot me a "what the Hell?" look as a result. Well called, Bunnyman.

    I'm not a genius. I'm the equivalent of an amateur guitarist who has practiced his hobby for thirty years to date, who once spent five years apprenticing under... well, not Carlos Santana or Eddie Van Halen, no, but, maybe under someone who aspired to the heights of Buck Dharma, at his best. I appreciate your compliment, of course, but bear in mind that to someone who knows anything about story structure, Nathan having a moment of heroic redemption at the climax of the series was about as difficult to predict as the chord sequence in "Let It Be".

    But thanks, anyway.

    Speaking of boring characters, what the hell happened to Claire? She was one of the most interesting characters in the show for awhile, and then by the end she's this goddamn wallflower.

    The scene where she's being escorted out of the garage by Nathan and her grandmother, as if she's being forced to go with them.
    Why, exactly, should she be afraid of either of these bozos? SHE CAN'T BE HURT. She could just refuse to go with them, run away, whatever. What are they gonna do to her? Gah. She turned into a total wimp by the end of the season - hopefully they fix that next season.


    Claire can be picked up by stronger people and carried. However, in this case, she isn't being physically intimidated; she's being emotionally dominated to the point of bullying by her natural parent and grandparent, whose authority she resents but on a deep emotional level completely acknowledges. Claire has always had a very hard time defying authority; she's still a young woman very much finding her own place and her own voice. I think that's one reason she responded so warmly to Peter; unlike nearly every other adult man in her experience, he treated her as an equal, not as a subordinate.

    However, Claire allows herself to be treated as a subordinate by most adults, especially men in parental roles. She's been indoctrinated in that behavior since infancy, for obvious reasons, by her extremely dominant, not at all nice father. Claire's dad (Noah?) certainly loves her, but we must remember that he's an amoral creep, and he would never give a second thought to how badly he has stunted his daughter's emotional and spiritual development by basically exercising total control over her for her entire life.

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  3. Given how obvious it has become in recent weeks that Kring regularly visits this site for ideas and plot developments, I'm simply going to smile and nod at everything The Bunnyman has written, because it basically has to be true.

    DUDE, he's been doing this stuff on the amateur level for like, THIRTY FRICKIN' YEARS, plus, he jammed with Buck FREAKING Dharma, dude!!

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  4. Oh, and just in case, no, the above was intended to be completely and utterly free of any trace of sarcasm.

    Bunnyman says it, Kring does it. Every frickin' time.

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  5. DUDE, he's been doing this stuff on the amateur level for like, THIRTY FRICKIN' YEARS, plus, he jammed with Buck FREAKING Dharma, dude!!

    What I said was, I was mentored for five years by the writer's equivalent (comic book writer's equivalent, anyway) of Buck Dharma. I'm not sure I ever 'jammed' with Buck Dharma, which would seem to connotate some kind of improv creative session... although I suppose that's as good a way to describe an RPG session as any, and I had many RPG sessions with 'Buck'.

    I also collaborated with 'Buck' on several creative projects... so many, in fact, that just off the top of my head I can't really remember them all... maybe that counts, too. And I ghost wrote a few of his MARVEL UNIVERSE entries when he was up against deadline, too. And typed several of his early scripts for him.

    I... yeah, okay, I guess I 'jammed' with him on a couple of occasions.

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  6. Ok, see, YOUR super-power is predicting Heroes plotlines... MY super-power is nailing my descriptive analagous imagery.

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