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Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Heroes, Season 3 Villains, Episode 4

Frank started off this week's discussion:

Wow. What a great episode.

Lets go from best to worst, shall we?

Sylar, The Housewife...
What a bizarre scene. My first thought was "oh man, they've gone too far with this." But it played out perfectly and made sense. Zachary Quinto has really been tasked to do a lot of different things with this character, and he makes everything work. The entire scene at the Bennett household was awesome. Seems the fights are better this season - fighting how you would expect 'superheroes' to fight, powers and all. Remember back in Season 1, whenever there would be a fight, it would take 3 seconds and no powers would be used. When his son (do we know babymama?) was 'killed', I lost it. You don't see that kind of stuff on TV. Powerful scene, including the kabloom.

The future...
Last episode the future stuff was hit or miss - I think they've hit their stride in how they're going to use the future. Future Peter was mentioning that the line between Heroes and Villains is drawn by who was born with powers and whose powers were 'created'. Another question: Do we know if the ability to give people powers is from Suresh's stuff or the two-piece puzzle formula? I would guess its the two-piece puzzle - which leads to the next part...

Suresh's changes...
I liked the changes last episode, this episode was meh. I would think at the rate he's changing, in 4 years he would be an abomination. Every superhero story set around humanoids usually has one 'beast' type character. I would hoping Suresh would become this massive hairy monster of a character and would turn back around to being a hero.

Hiro and Ando...
Does Ando have a power? It's a stretch, but they spent quite some time with the two and the ceiling vent - could Ando's power be something along the lines of "he has the power to do something that others around him cannot do" or "...that others around him have failed at"? A stretch, I know, but something was up (maybe) with him being able to latch the vent - or maybe it was just a 'you need a partner, Hiro' type of message.

Frozen girl (wtf ever her name is now) and Nathan:
The scenes where she learned she was a triplet, or whatever, that seemed kind of forced. Again, her scenes seem so out of place - with everyone running around trying to figure out the future, or trying to find a forumla to save the world, she's... trying to kill herself? Ok, so 'i wanna die', 'nathan saves her life', 'she stays by his side while he becomes president', i get it. Moving on...

Parkman: painter, father...
Not sure I care much about this - interesting to see he's with Speedy, and that there's another daugther in the picture - his? theirs? another stolen child? Anyway, that was just ok.

Anyway, your thoughts?

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

JJ:

i thought it was a pretty good episode. what was the deal with the Dr. telling Ali Larter that she was a triplet: "Niki, Traci, and Barbara." who the hell is Barbara? another Ali Larter incarnation they will bring in later? bleh! i thought it was Niki, JESSICA, and Traci if we were going to play the triplet angle. so were they quadruplets or was Niki's real sister Jessica was younger or older and at some point she killed her with her super strength and then developed the split personality with Jessica looking just like her so we can have fun camera tricks with mirrors? either way, who the hell is Barbara?

i thought Milo's (Peter's) acting was hideous for the first twenty minutes. his duel selves looked silly and then future Peter was trying to pull the Batman voice and i just thought it played rather ridiculous. it also interesting how everyone in the future only chooses flying as they're power. didn't notice anyone doing anything else. did you guys?

i like the Sylar sequence and agree that his acting skills is having the weight of the show put on him... i liked that he named his son Noah. an obvious story yet to be told of he and HRG bonding on some major level for him to name his son after him. i also noticed that Bennett was nowhere to be seen in the future. did bitter future Claire kill him? she seems pretty heartless in the future. also liked how no matter what Peter does in the future, he believes he is doing the right thing, but everyone thinks of and pursues him as a terrorist. the flip of he and Sylar is a very good storytelling turn. we'll see if they can make good on it... I do wish that when Sylar boy was killed and Sylar lost control, he would have laid down a flurry of multiple powers on the Fear dude. i am waiting and waiting for either Sylar or Peter to do more than just one power at a time in a fight. it would be so cool if Sylar were freezing things, melting metal, reading minds, healing himself, teleporting, etc. all in one fight. his adversaries wouldn't have any idea what to do! the scene was good, but all we got was Sylar losing control of his nuclear-Ted power due to his emotions. it was well-written and makes sense, but it was a wasted opportunity to have an enraged, emotionally devastated Sylar to hit fear dude with half a dozen powers and THEN go nuclear.

I hate the Linderman-in-my-head storyline, but like Nathan. I love that no matter what happens, he will be President at some point. i just wish the Linderman thing would get the hook.

the Parkman story was a borefest. how is he able to have the future vision power just from putting some head phones on and gulping some John Locke jungle paste? will everyone eventually have multiple powers?

Claire as the leader of the company people is a different turn. she is obviously all messed up in the future... but it doesn't agree with Mama Petrelli's dream of which characters are teamed up together, so that is a little confusing.

sticky Suresh hiding behind his books and moving like a spider was lame. let's see him already or don't bother with it. to add to the Buzz: i think we have a duel power acquiring arc here - Suresh has the injection that gives people powers, but has terrible side effects. put the Company has "the formula" with the two halves which is what they used in the past to give people powers = Niki/Traci/Barbara. so maybe one is the only "pure" method, but even the Company found that to be a bad thing to be doing, so they divided it up and locked it away. that also explains why they could take Niki's power away in season 2. if they can do it, they should able to undo it.

Anonymous said...

Julia:

Couldn’t agree more with both JJ and Frank (aka Buzz aka Joe) on the Niki/Tracy/whoever stuff. I missed the Barbara reference so that just makes it more confusing. I do like her with Nathan though, so we’ll see.



Agree again with JJ (!!) on the Linderman thing. That’s just silly. Like Nathan a lot but do we really need imaginary Linderman skulking about?



Sylar was FANTASTIC in this episode. I loved how he had overcome the evil and was just a dad…my guess is HRG was instrumental in that, hence the Noah name for his child. When the kid was killed I was just waiting to see what particular power he brought out to take out the gang…interesting that it was the nuclear one – I had almost forgotten about poor nuclear Ted.



I am getting pretty sick of Peter. I know he is supposed to be the moral center of the show in a way, but seriously, is there anyone who is less fun than Peter? I don’t think I have ever seen him smile.



Parkman…snore. And maybe this is just me, but isn’t Daphne a little young to be his wife? I thought she was a younger character than that.



Suresh…snore again. And when did Maya start dressing like such a ho? That storyline doesn’t do a lot for me.



I am excited to see how whats-his-face reacts now that Hiro has let him out of the coffin.

Anonymous said...

Frank:

Just read this on a message board, so I can't take credit for myself, but (this is directed to Heather) I think we know what Suresh has turned into.

wait for it...

a cockroach. Weren't you the one that kept pointing out that the cockroachs were a little too suspiciously placed? He is Super... Cockroach... man... thingy... of all power.

yay!

Anonymous said...

Julia:

Great idea! And did you see the cockroach crawl over his Dictaphone thingy as they morphed into the future storyline?

Anonymous said...

Frank:

I like what JJ said about the lack of multiple powers usage, especially with pissed off Sylar... sorry, "Gabriel". I guess his nuclear power tumps everything else, especially since he can't control it.

Oh, and no one has menitoned this yes, but I really dug the "hunger" stuff - Sylar in the present time notices Peter now has the hunger.

Also, pertaining to the way Peter talks, it is annoying. They had one of those NBC commercials, ya know, the "Want to know more? Log into NBC.com and get behind the scenes crud" commercials. And he talked so normal. I will chalk that up to unneccsary overacting on Milo Ventimiglia's part. Bad Milo!

Oh, and it pisses me off when the opening credits show who's going to be on the show. Specifically, David Anders. "Oh, so Adam's going to be on the show." Then the whole ending was disappointing. If they're going to do a cameo like that, why even put the name in? Kevin Spacey's name was not in the opening credits of Se7en.

Anyway...

Anonymous said...

H:

First of all, I did the same thing when he said Barbara. I figured they were supposed to be triplets early on but could there be a fourth? Or is it that Jessica she thought Barbara was lame so she goes by her middle name?

The engineered current Heroes bit is what is interesting to me. Did Peter already have a gift so they gave it to Nathan and Gabriel or were they both engineered? They engineered it for Nicki, Jessica and Tracy or did one of them already have it? It seems odd to me that you would genetically be able to pass down powers to your kids from that kind of engineering (like Nathan did to Claire-unless that is all from her mother? Or like Nicki did to Micah unless his power came from his father?) Could they have engineered any of the really bad Heroes-like the ones who just escaped? Was Parkman engineered too since his dad was an original part of the company? What about Hiro?

The Gabriel/Noah bit was interesting. You'd think Gabriel would be able to control it after 4 years. I thought Peter was going to fly over and take him to space the way Nathan did for him. No such luck.

Also, I'm going to go back to the beginning where they were talking about "The Light".... Claire? Noah? Parkman's baby? Who?

Sylar is great...Milo trying to be Sylar... not so great.

Anonymous said...

H

Oh and thanks(?) for the cockroach reference recognition... I’m telling you... they were really specifically placed, at least for the first season.