Heroes: The Hard Part

[sdelmonte]

The hard part, I am afraid, is getting through an hour of this entertaining show without feeling like I need to nitpick. I want to love Heroes. I want to embrace the way I have embraced Lost and Supernatural and Veronica Mars, but something always stops me.

Case in point: Sylar and his mom. Well acted, well directed, creepy as anything, and quite gripping. But in ended pretty much how I thought it would. It strove to humanize Sylar - which I approve of entirely - but I'm not sure it really succeeded in expanded our understanding of him more than that great scene with him and Mohinder at the beginning of the episode. In short, I was left dissatisfied when I should have been enthralled with Zachary Quinto's performance.

This, however, was at least something that was trying to move things along for Sylar, and also for Hiro and Ando. Mohinder's scenes were just pointless. "I'm going to stop Sylar!" "Yes, but first you have to cure a cute little girl of her Coincidental Fatal Illness so she can use her powers!" "You are manipulating me!!" "Yes, you and the audience. Now go save her, and we can deal with Sylar after he explodes." "What was that?" "Nothing." I just don't see what we gained here.

And if Molly's powers aren't working, wouldn't the Company still have its technology to track the mutants...supers...metas....what ARE wwe calling them? I don't want to call them Heroes because Sylar sure isn't a hero.

Anyway, I think I have said why I was not madly in love, again. Not that I didn't enjoy this episode. Not that Hiro doesn't break my heart. Not that I don't adore Claire, who gets all the best lines when her dad is offscreen. And not that I wasn't trying very hard to figure out what's up with Mama Petrilli, doing her best Angela Lansbury-in-The Manchurian Candidate impression. It's all that these things that make me want to love this show. It's just a shame it never quite gets there.

Oh, and the best moment? Nathan's shrug when Claire learns he can fly. That one little bit of non-verbal acting was great! Adrian Pasdar rocks.

Comments

[innerbrat]

Funny, I thought the best part was Claire's "Cool."

But I love Claire to her little jailbait socks.

[skygiants]

Or Claire's "the universe is not that lame."

. . . okay, yeah, she does get all the best lines.

The Stupid

[happyfunpaul.livejournal.com]

Your bugaboo seems to be plot holes and things-not-quite-thought-through by the writers. Those bother me too, but what bothers me even more is The Stupid.

(1) Too many times characters doing the Stupid Dangerous Thing instead of the Sensible Thing ("Hey look, our artist friend is dead and beheaded! Let's hang around and look closely! And then, later on, when we nearly get killed, let's hang around his loft some more!")

(2) Or they have the Stupid Clueless Speech (Peter's big on these-- "No, we have to have this conversation right here, right now! In front of people where it puts our lives in jeopardy! No, I can't wait two minutes or listen to your sensible objections! Because what I have to say is That Important!") Hokey dialogue is bad enough, but Dramatic Speechifying at risky places and times, that's cringe-inducingly worse.

And "Heroes" has too much of The Stupid. In its best episodes ("Company Man", "Five Years Gone"), The Stupid is kept to a minimum, which is a big part of what makes those episodes so good. But in the latest episode, it's back in full force, and it is (at best) distracting.

Sylar resists TimeStop?

[happyfunpaul.livejournal.com]

How does Sylar have the ability to resist Hiro's timestop power? I don't recall any of his absorbed abilities accounting for him being able to do that.

Perhaps Sylar doesn't necessarily need to kill/behead/study to get others' powers; he can absorb powers more like Peter does, at least temporarily.

Which makes him even scarier.

Re: Sylar resists TimeStop?

[batyatoon]

I got the sense that it wasn't Sylar at all - it was Hiro losing his grip on the timestop.

Because if it'd been Sylar, everything else would've stayed immobilized.

Re: Sylar resists TimeStop?

[happyfunpaul.livejournal.com]

You are correct. I was so focused (read: freaked out) on Sylar's eyes move that I didn't realize everything else (such as his mother's falling body) was moving too.