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Nerd Alert!
May 22, 2007 How to Stop an Exploding Man I have to say I'm disappointed that we still didn't get the big Sylar vs. Peter superpowered throwdown they've teased us with all season. When they showed Fire vs. Cold in the future episode and didn't show the actual fight to us, I figured it was because they were saving it for the Showdown in Kirby Park. Instead all we get were a few jump cut edited punches and then Hiro running Sylar through. Weak! Is there not enough money in the Heroes production budget to do an all out Sylar vs. Peter fight? May 21, 2007 Gave myself a mini Heroes marathon of the last two episodes to prep for the big finale tonight. Hiro is apparently the greatest student of swordsmanship ever since he can become a master swordsman in one afternoon. Duncan and Connor MacLeod both should be ashamed of their immortal selves for how long it took them to become adept swordsmen compared to the moon-faced Japanese kid who can stop time. February 7, 2007
Distractions The most distracting thing about Heroes (besides Claire Bennet = jail for me) is how bad it still is most of the time. I know my Heroes naysaying isn't popular but I have to say my nays. Well, that has been depicted as part of his abilities since they introduced his character, but if you want me to no-prize it out for you, here goes. Dr. Who's ability is a sort of super camoflage that prevents him from being detected by normal humans. It affects both their ability to see and hear him. Hell, let's go the whole nine yards and presume that it also exerts a mild mental effect on the people around him, preventing them from thinking too hard about what's going on. We've already had a girl regenerate from her own autopsy, so I don't find this that hard to buy into. And my retort: You know, I will buy that explanation. That actually works for me. But it would be much better if Heroes explains it rather than fans coming up with their own answers. For instance, and this has been annoying me for months, Nathan Petrelli. He can fly. And he can fly at incredibly fast speeds as we saw when he escaped from HRG and the Haitian in Vegas. Well, it's not enough to just say, "Well, he can fly" and then have Mohinder distract you with five minutes of droning soliloquy that means nothing. So much would have to go into Nathan being able to fly. What is his bone structure like for him to be able to withstand velocities? How does he breathe in the thinning air of high altitudes? How does he see over distances and navigate so he knows where he's going? (Anyone who has been in a plane and looked out the window knows that the world looks very different from the skies that it does on the ground.) What is his source of propulsion? Is he actually telekinetic? Hell, how didn't his pajama bottoms rip or tear right off while he was zooming across the sky? (I know, I know, same reason Bruce Banner's pants don't rip when he becomes the Hulk.) If Nathan is physically different as he has to be for his body to support flight, how hasn't it been discovered? He must have had medical exams. He's a public figure after all. November 28, 2006 I've complained about Heroes a lot over the last ten weeks but I'll change my tune if every episode from here on in is like this week's. I thought "Six Months Ago" was real good. The secret origin of the Man They Call Sylar was well done. I liked how he resembles Clark Kent more than a little and the fact that he is/was a watchmaker, a cool homage to the origin of Dr. Manhattan in Watchmen. I liked the story of how ne'er-do-well Eden fell under the sway of Horned Rimmed Glasses, whom I think should be the centerpiece of the show. I liked the secret origin of how Nathan's wife ended up in a wheelchair. Locke: My story didn't go down quite like that. What a shame Mohinder's dad is dead as I think he's much more compelling than Mohinder himself. I liked the untold secret origin of how Claire became a cheerleader. And I liked the Hiro's tragic inability to save the cute redhead waitress no matter how much time traveling he did. Good stuff all around. November 22, 2006 Rob: Have you seen Heroes? Finally, did you know there's already a Heroes Wiki ? I didn't. October 17, 2006 Better. Much better. Things are moving along. Pairing up the characters was a shot in the arm. I liked Nathan and Nikki's liaison in Vegas. Peter and Mohinder were a lot more tolerable when they talked to each other. The reveal that Peter's power seems to be like Rogue (Marvel) or The Parasite (DC) was interesting. And I liked some of the dialogue this week: when Peter and Mohinder discussed being lesser versions of previous models (their fathers.) Watching this episode, I was sort of like the Emperor watching Luke fight Vader: "Good. Good." October 3, 2006 Monday Night Roar A week ago, I wrote about Heroes. I wasn't complimentary but I was nicer than I could have been. Since the pilot debuted, I've been monitoring opinion on the Internet and I'm astounded at the amount of positive feedback. I must not be seeing the same show called Heroes that airs 9pm Mondays on NBC that the Heroes worshippers are getting. Maybe my DVR is receiving some alternate universe feed. The show called Heroes I've seen so far is pretty bad. Now that episode two has aired, things haven't improved any. This week, Hiro stumbles upon the tortured artist killed by the serial killer. Hiro finds the artist by seeing his name in the comic book. What?! Show me any comic book creator in real life who publishes his name, address, and a picture of himself in the back page of his comic book! Who the hell would do that? No comic book creator wants comic book nerds showing up at their door. But Hiro does, and when he finds the murder scene and a gun lying on the ground, he picks the gun up?!?! Hiro may be Japanese but what kind of an idiot stumbles upon the scene of a murder and then immediately puts his prints on the potential murder weapon? Retarded. Most retarded of all is Niki Sanders: what's going on there makes no sense. So her murderous mirror self possess her and does stuff she can't remember? Fine, whatever, but why does Niki bring her son with her in the middle of the night to bury the bodies of the mobsters in the trunk. Sure, the kid is asleep but what if he wakes up and sees his mom digging a shallow grave? And doesn't anyone smell the corpses in the trunk or is the trunk of a Cadillac odor-proof?It's just stupid and lacking any logic. The whole Niki storyline is stupid. The only decent plotline so far besides Hiro teleporting was Claire Bennet and her evil stepfather -- until her friend with the camcorder suddenly tells her the tape he made disappeared. Then we find Evil Stepfather has it. So the Evil Stepfather somehow learned about and then took the time and effort to locate where the teenage boy hid the tape and procured it? That's the kind of nonsense logic we find in Smallville, where a billionaire like Lionel Luthor spends his days dropping by Smallville High School and threatening 17 year old Chloe Sullivan in the school newspaper room. Stuff like that doesn't make sense. It's hard to care about any of these characters when they behave like idiots. Great Krypton, is this one badly acted show! Just about all of the actors are terrible. Greg Grunberg, Adrian Pasdar, and Hayden Panettiere are not bad actors (and Panettiere is sure as hell not bad looking; she's the hottest piece of forbidden jail bait on network TV) but they sure are being badly directed. Just last episode, Claire Bennet had a Southern accent: "Ah walked through fahr and didn't get burned." This week, no accent. Her father doesn't have one, neither do her friends. The Indian was probably the worst actor on the show until his title was stolen by the neighbor who showed up to hang out with him in his dead dad's apartment. And by all the stars in Orion's belt, is the voice over narration by the professor from India horrible! He prattles on and on Charles Xavier-style (but without Xavier's style) about "genetic evolution" and "God" and whatever else, asking all these rhetorical questions that have no direct correlation with the action in the episodes. Tim Kring, the creator and writer, has no idea how to write science fiction. He sucks at it. He doesn't have any idea that in science fiction, the first thing you do is establish the rules. In The Terminator, Kyle Reese explains how time travel works so the audience knows they can only go backwards and not forwards. He explains what the Terminator is so we know its abilities and limits. In Star Wars Obi-Wan Kenobi sits Luke Skywalker down and explains how the Force works, what it is, what a lightsaber is, etc. Instead of the rhetorical garbage the Indian narrates in his voice over, Kring could instead use this device to explain the rules of how the Heroes' powers work so we're not scratching our heads wondering what's up with evil mirror stripper or how someone can fly (or levitate) with no visible means of propulsion. But no, Kring doesn't do that. Why? Because Heroes has to be mysterious -- it has to be like Lost. This show is so desperate to be Lost. Kring sure studied his Lost DVDs, took copious notes, and did as much as he could to monkey-see-monkey-do what makes Lost work. And he's crap at it. I'm really disappointed with Heroes so far. The basic concept has such potential but it's being heroically screwed up. September 26, 2006
Heroes of the Hour Yesterday morning, Reuters ran an article with the headline: "NBC has hit on its hands with 'Heroes.'" That's a pretty clairvoyant bit of "news reporting" considering Heroes hadn't actually aired on television yet. There's already spin out there trying to turn Heroes into the next big thing, the next Lost. Heroes would certainly not exist were it not for Lost. I've seen the pilot for Heroes twice now, once on my laptop weeks ago and again on NBC HD via my DVR. I'm here to say: Heroes is okay. It's not bad. It could be pretty good eventually but it's nowhere near there yet. Heroes is sure as hell no Lost. The pilot for Heroes is not even close to being as nail-bitingly suspensful, compelling, fascinating, riveting, well-acted, well-written, or well directed as the pilot for Lost was. Still, there's enough raw material that could turn Heroes into a good sci-fi mythology show in time. Unfortunately, there's an equal abundance of negatives that could send the Heroes into the "complete series" DVD rest home for failed Lost ripoffs currently harboring Invasion, Threshold, and Surface. The one hour pilot is rumored to actually have been a two hour pilot cut in half by NBC. NBC actually seems to be doing more than its share to fuck up Heroes. The guy doing the spooky whispery voice over during the promos is fucking annoying, and even worse are his promises that "extraordinary" things are going to happen. Yeah, why don't you let me and the rest of the audience be the judge of that, pal. Cutting the pilot in half meant that not all of the main characters were introduced in the first episode. The promos tell us already that Greg Grunberg, the cop, has telepathy. And that it's "extraordinary." As for that black guy in the picture above, don't know who the hell he is. I guess we'll meet him next week. And I bet he'll be "extraordinary." We meet all the other Heroes in episode one (or Volume One as the rotten title crawl calls it) but I wouldn't want to be stuck on a mysterious island with more than a couple of them. That couple of characters, the highlights of this show so far, are Hayden Panettiere as Claire Bennet, an unbreakable Texas cheerleader, and Masi Oka as Hiro Nakamura, a nerdy Japanese office drone who can teleport. Oka is the stand in for all the nerds watching this show: He watches Star Trek, reads X-Men comics (a way too obvious and pandering nod to the source material this show is aggressively swiping its concepts from), and wants to have superpowers. Hiro annoys the shit out of his more practical best friend with his rants about being able to bend the space-time continuum. And his friend has a point: how does teleporting earn him money and get him laid? (Answer: become a Villain). Hiro won't shut the fuck up about wanting to be "special" and there's a cool scene where he manages to teleport from a Tokyo subway into the middle of Times Square and joyously freaks. Panettiere is the exact opposite; her Wolverine-esque ability to heal from any mortal injury bums her out for some reason. But at least both characters are interested in their powers and are trying to figure out how they work. Claire Bennet throws herself off of high places and gruesomely mangles her hot little cheerleader body in various ways to test how much she can heal herself. Claire is also the first Hero who does something heroic, selflessly rushing into a flaming overturned train in her cheerleader costume to save a man about to burn to death. That makes sense; traditionally superheroes start out young, when they are still idealistic. Panettiere reminds me of Sarah Michelle Gellar ten years ago. She has potential to portray a really good teenage female superhero if the writers let her. And that's the main problem with Heroes so far, the writing. Also, the acting, but first the writing. It's pretty lousy. Show creator Tim Kring penned the pilot and he's out of his depth writing sci-fi. Clunky exposition and crap dialogue abound, with a headache-inducing number of times being "special" is referenced by various characters. It's almost "extraordinary" how lousy the dialogue is. The Indian genetics professor-turned cabdriver/narrator, let's call him Sayid #2, is the biggest offender. He bookends the show with nonsensical voice over narration and prattles on about "the next step in genetic evolution" already being here. Whatever. Patrick Stewart can make all that "evolution" mumbo-jumbo speechifying sound almost plausible, or at least less implausible, but Sayid #2 ain't no Charles Xavier. A stripper who doesn't actually strip (Ali Larter, who could stand to gain ten pounds and try on another whip cream bikini, as Niki Sanders) having an Incredible Hulk alter ego she can see in the mirror that kills her enemies isn't the next step in genetic evolutionary anything. That's just nonsense from dumb asses who've skimmed a couple of bad comic books trying to sound smart and profound. The good news is Heroes does have good writers sitting in their writers room, like Jeph Loeb (Lost) and Bryan Fuller (Wonderfalls, Dead Like Me). This show should turn out okay if Kring backs off and lets them to their thing. The acting ain't great all around. Besides Panettiere and Oka, only Adrian Pasdar distinguises himself as Nathan Petrelli, an oily candidate for senator who it turns out is the man who can fly his younger brother has been dreaming about. Everyone else, Nathan's whiny younger brother, the tormented artist who sees the Heroes's futures and paints them, the tortured artist's girlfriend, Niki Sanders's black son, and Sayid #2, all in their own way blow. There are a couple of scenes with Claire Bennet's dog-breeding adoptive mother that are so badly conceived and performed they'd be practically unwatchable were it not for Panettiere being so watchable. Meanwhile, it looks like Claire Bennet's adoptive father is evil and has some nefarious plans in mind for the fledgling Heroes. The evil father might himself have teleportation powers that would make Hiro jealous; he got in a New York taxi cab driven by Sayid #2 sometime late in the day but somehow made it home to Odessa, Texas by dinner time. Sayid #2 came to New York to discover who killed his own father, yet when Evil Mr. Bennet started making cryptic comments from the backseat of the taxi cab, Sayid #2's response is to hit the breaks, bolt out of the cab, and run like hell instead of confront his mysterious passenger with the questions he traveled halfway around the world to find answers to. Retarded. I might have dropped Heroes already just from the disappointing aspects of the pilot, but I'm just not wired that way, damn it. People discovering superpowers and maybe using them to fight some unforseen, apocalyptic evil isn't something I can readily turn my back on. I'm on board. I want to see where this is going. I'm hoping it's somewhere half as "extraordinary" as the promos keep hyping. There's a foreboding eclipse coming, which could bring badness. If Eclipso shows up, that would be super sweet. Maybe the Heroes should draw some plans, mine some metals, and build themselves a watchtower on the moon.
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