Tuesday, November 06, 2007

Heroes

HEROES: I've spent a good deal of blog space making fun of Heroes this season. The show seemed to have no direction. Too much fluff. Two love stories. A buncha new characters. Inconsistencies. Hiro acting like a dufus.

That all changed, last night. In short, a flawless episode. This must be why I got hooked in the first place. If you'd have told me there could be an episode this awesome without Sylar, I'd have laughed in your face. Laughed hard.

First thing ...I feel bad for Peter. He's got all these powers, but he doesn't know how to use them, who he is, or what he's supposed to do. My family had this neighbor when I was a kid that had a remote controlled helicopter. He could fly it from his porch and ever-so-gently pick up his paper at the foot of his driveway and bring it back to the front door. He thought it was a real hoot to fly and drop a water balloon onto things. I thought, "someday I'm gonna get me one of those and do cool stuff like that." Finally, "someday" came. I couldn't wait to master the art of remote controlled helicoptering and do all sorts of stuff like my neighbor. To save time, let me just say my hopes and dreams never came true. I've included an illustration of the one-and-only flight of my helicopter at the right.

Why do I share this story? Cuz I TOTALLY identify with Peter. Last week he figured out he could travel through time. But he doesn't know how he did it and how to do it again. And once there, if he could actually control his lightning-fingers or his moving-things power, he could've saved himself and his new found love. Instead, he tried to move-things but, whoops, traveled in time - leaving his recently-remembered mom and girlfriend in some apocalyptic future. DOH! And, oh ...holy swear word!!! It's Kensei. Didn't we just see him charred-to-bits in 1600-something China? I knew he wasn't dead. No one is ever really dead on this show. Except that Russian guy from last week. And anyone that Ms. Death-Eyes gets sad or scared around. A few others. OK. The writers sure do have a nice gig, though. Cuz when they really need someone back, they can just bring'em back. Back to Kensei ...he's alive. 400 years later. Apparently the regenerative powers are slower when you are either blown up by gun powder or split-atoms.

For the record, ANFTSJ has been calling for Kensei being alive for weeks. Weeks!

One groan moment. Parkman killed his Dad. Using mind-power. I'm to believe Parkman's Dad spent a lifetime honing his skill and in less than a week his son beat him at his own head-tripping game? OK. Because the rest of the epsidode was so, so, so good, I'll forgive it.

Finally ...the Flying-Boy is out in the open and Claire and her Dad (aka Bennet) are really talking. Gosh, it warms my heart when parents and children really, truly communicate. Whoa! Ouch! OK ...that went south in a hurry. I guess they're all moving. If I could offer some fatherly advice to Bennet, it's this: Talk to her. Tell her you love her. And maybe throw in a little detail about how she's the key to saving or not saving the world. I think she's old enough to handle that. What do they say? "Communication is the anti-drug?" Or is it "Parents. The anti-drug?" Only in this case "communication" is the anti-Armageddon. But you get my drift.

Flawless - except for the Parkman Dad storyline. But like I always say, don't believe anyone is ever dead on this show. Ever. Oh, and why can't Hiro just jump back in time to moments before he kissed that chick in front of Kensei and say, "Yo, me. You. Hiro. In about 10 minutes you're going to have a real nice opportunity to mash with her. Don't do it. Cuz Kensei will probably be looking at you guys and get really pissed." And then he could blink himself outta there. Right? We've seen him (last season) travel in time and talk to himself before. Why not now?

Grrrrrr. Hiro. Will you ever wise-up?

Mohinder has a gun and a nose-job as predicted in the paintings. Bennet's bullet-in-the-eye painting makes more sense to him. Kensei is alive. The girl is awake. And the previews look so awesome I wish I could go to sleep today and wake up next Monday at 8:55PM.

If I was Hiro I'd just think really hard and I'd be there. Throwing apple blossom flowers all about my living room.

Tune in later for my The Bachelor opinions. Riveting stuff, I know.

4 comments:

EJ said...

I don't think Hiro has enough control of his time-traveling to pull off maneuvers like that. Aside from his reluctance to alter history, when he does go through time, it's been approximate at best. When he tried to save Charlie in Season One, he went back six months instead of one day. Coming back from Feudal Japan, he showed up four months later, rather than returning at the moment he left. We saw that Future Hiro had it down, but Current Hiro is lucky to hit the right calendar year.

I'm eager for your thoughts on the parade of desperation that was The Bachelor.

KWass said...

"Heroes" is a cheap knock off of X-Men. And X-Men 2. And X-Men 3. Except X-Men didn't have an underage cheerleader for the guys who get caught on NBC's other show, Dateline, to ogle at.

If Hiro was on "Lost" then he could blink everyone off the island. If he was on "Survivor", he could blink someone else off the island. If he was on "Gilligan's Island", then the professor wouldn't have had to try to make a radio out of a coconut.

And the main character of "Heroes" is named Hiro? Nice.

EJ said...

Technically, anything where somebody has powers is a knockoff of Superman. You can trace just about everything back like that. Heck, the X-Men are a knockoff of the Doom Patrol, right off the top of my head. It's more about the way the material's being approached. Yeah, if the characters from Heroes started hanging out in a mansion, wearing matching outfits, and had their own jet, and suddenly became a thinly-velied metaphor for racism, teenage rebellion, homosexuality, or abortion (depending on which movie you're watching), yeah, then you'd be in ripoff territory.

Myndi said...

See, I personally liked the Parkman storyline, despite the fact that it might be a tad ridiculous to think that he could suddenly overpower his dad like that. Of course, I have a major soft spot for Greg Grunberg, as I am a chick and have been following him since his "Felicity" days.

Aside from that, yes, a marked improvement over the last few eps. I'm interested to see what Sark, I mean Adam, is up to and how all of the big questions are finally (maybe) answered.