Heroes: Really?
By Lisa Fary
Before Pink Raygun, I yelled a lot.
I was just as annoyed by the things I was watching, but had no outlet and would just yell at the TV screen, rant in the car, and send my co-workers scurrying away from the staff room. If I didn’t have Pink Raygun, this would be the scene on Tuesday:
Lisa frowned at her sandwich – peanut butter and jelly on wheat again. Things hadn’t changed for her on the lunch front since elementary school. She munched on her sandwich and took a sip of Crystal Light, wondering if she would ever grow up.
Two teachers from the foreign language department sat down at the table, and after their feminine ritual of describing every calorie they’d eaten that day, they began talking about what they’d watched on television the night before, and what they ate while watching.
They glanced at Lisa while talking, which made her wonder if she was being included. She took a chance and piped in, “Oh my god! Did you see Heroes last night? They want me to believe Niki’s not extra crispy? I mean, really?”
Silence.
The foreign language girls turned away from Lisa and launched into hair removal. Lisa finished her sandwich and Crystal Light, realizing that, if she hadn’t already grown up a bit, she’d still be drinking green Kool-Aid.
Now I can avoid that uncomfortable scene. You get it, and I thank you. And, by the way, how the hell is Niki not extra crispy? I mean, really? And just for the record, Crystal Light is just Kool-Aid for grown ups.
Heroes 3 carries on as if only a couple events from Heroes 2 happened:
- Kaito Nakamura was killed
- Nathan Petrelli got shot
- The actress playing Maya got a contract
All that other stuff? That stuff with the Shanti virus, Molly’s crazy eye guy, and Niki getting blown up?
Nah. Never happened.
Maya seems to be getting on beautifully for a mass murderer (totally by accident – she didn’t have a thing for her brother at all) who made out with Sylar while her brother lay dead only a few feet away. She’s shacked up with Mohinder, who needs a new wife since Matt Parkman has run off with Peter Petrelli.
Really, she’s shacked up with Mohinder for research purposes. She still wants him cure her. Of course, this is Mohinder we’re talking about, so he totally screws it up. He can’t find a cure, but he can make an injectable serum that will give abilities to anyone.
Congratulations, Mohinder. You’ve just created Promicin.
Which he is ready to toss into a river. You know, because that’s the scientific way to dispose of a super-power enabling serum in a syringe. Toss it in the river so it can wash up on the Jersey Shore and fall into the hands of a track suit-wearing mullet head. Real science-y, Mohinder.
Oh, wait! He’s injecting himself and imbuing himself with tremendous powers of douchebaggery! Now Mohinder is like every frat boy you ever met, but superstrong and able to climb walls! And for some reason, he can’t stop his pecs from twitching.
Perhaps Mohinder accidentally reinvented crack.
Once again, we have Hiro traveling into the future to see a major city getting blown up. We have another painter who can see the future. We have another prophetic painting. But this one shows the whole world getting a hole poked through it and bursting into flames, not just Manhattan.
Seriously, Heroes people. Now every single season you’ve had a character go to the future, witness some horrible catastrophe, and race to stop it. Isn’t it enough for the super-villain team to break out of Arkham- I mean, the Company’s own private Gitmo? Do we have to see Claire make another death video? Do we have to see Niki – excuse me, Tracy – rediscover her split-personality all over again? And do her alter-egos always have to be the sleeping around types?
The premiere had it’s moments, but overall, Heroes is just playing it safe. It’s not daring anymore. It’s not surprising anymore, and not even because we’ve seen it all before. Heroes is just retreading what it’s already done in it’s own history. It’s trying to be Crystal Light when it should be Kool-Aid.
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Lisa Fary’s early exposure to classic Battlestar Galactica in 1979 is largely responsible for her lifelong interest in science fiction and her childhood ambition of being an intergalactic space cowgirl. She thinks diagramming sentences is a fun alternative to Sudoku.
I have to agree about the rehashing of plotlines. Kinda boring. On the other hand…
It’s interesting to see our “heroes” and “villains” switching sides, though. Sylar isn’t eating brains, just looking at them; the people dying from it is just an unfortunate side-effect. Mrs. Patrelli is trying to save the future from her sons’ meddling. Elle is hoping for the same thing, while trying to impress her dad. Future!Claire is trying to kill Uncle Peter. Future!Peter is trying to kill Nathan. Mohinder’s getting all power-hungry and ditching people who count on him. Future!Ando is going all Palpatine on Hiro and we don’t really know why, but it has something to do with chemistry and a really fast girl.
Good and evil are functions of circumstance, intention, and perspective.
(Also, as a fun meta-reunion, Francis Coppola and Kristin Bell are back together again. Yay, Veronica and Weevil!)
How are you able to express your fury so succinctly? I feel like I’ve been slapped and told to excuse it because there was a mosquito in the general vicinity of my face. Seriously.
I couldn’t even do both hours last night. I was train-wreck gawking.
I dunno. I’m choosing to keep an open mind for the first couple of episodes. I think it’s been so long since they wrapped up the stinker that was season 2 that they are starting soft and kind of reintroducing the characters to us again. Then again, I’ve always been on the optimistic side when it comes to shows I like.
Things to watch out for:
-Parkman tells Jane Goodall what the Gorillas are really thinking.
-Niki/Tracy opens her own icee stand and makes a killing
-Mohinder undergoes the horrifying(and gooey)process of transforming into Jeff Goldblum.
Jeff Goldblum was a way better fly than mohinder. I have no desire to see the mohinderfly. It was such a bad rip off. grrrr arghhhh
I really want to be optimistic, but it’s so hard when I’ve been done wrong by so many shows. I also think that we can be reintroduced to the characters without them re-enacting previous seasons. It does have good moments -it has great moments – but, they’re equally weighted with stupid moments, such as Sylar, the mind-control-body-flinging bad ass being stopped dead by a slatted closet door and some Christmas tree garland.
@TrinityVixen: My expression is succinct, but my fury is boundless. I chose to focus on one point of rage this time.
networks need to contact you and your people!
@Alpha-Girl: “…Sylar, the mind-control-body-flinging bad ass being stopped dead by a slatted closet door and some Christmas tree garland.”
That whole sequence pissed me off. First, Claire changes her clothes for no discernible reason (except to don a white sweater, the uniform of the slasher movie victim). Then she runs around her house with a butcher knife rather than, say, opening a door and walking out or jumping out a window. (Come on, Claire, you’ll heal right up.) And then locks herself in a closet with flimsy doors that wouldn’t stop anyone with a little momentum and/or one of the other knives still sitting in the block on the counter. Maybe I’ve been spoiled by too many vampire slayers, kickass cyborgs, and alien-fighting soldiers, but that kind of behavior just makes me so angry at the characters who hide when they’re perfectly capable of defending themselves. At least Little Miss Indestructible was mad at herself for being such a wuss, too.
I dunno, it is what it is. I didn’t hate it as much as I liked it. Last night felt like hanging out with a really good friend from childhood after an awkward falling out phase. Hopefully, it’ll just take some time to get better again.
My sister and I have a theory that each of Niki’s personalities have individual powers cause they are different people in the same brain.
I want to know what anybodies thoughts on Momma Petrelli’s reveal to Sylar at the end. As much as I enjoyed it, my friend seemed to hate it which is leaving me feeling very mixed about the whole thing.
@theshotgundj – I’m thinking that Nikki isn’t Nikki at all, but Nikki’s presumed dead sister. Hence the new powers, the resemblance to the actual Nikki, and the fact that rather than looking like a crazed charcoal briquette (that exploding building she was trapped in), she looks like someone who has been working as a political advisor for quite some time.
Was anyone else bothered by Heroes’ use of the “in-head Six” device?
@theshotgundj – Lisa and I have long held the theory that everyone with powers is related, somehow.
What I’m looking forward to is the flashback scene with a young Mama Petrelli lying exhausted in a cheap motel bed, with a line of men (look, there’s a police officer! and a Japanese businessman! and some Haitian dude!) wrapping around the block and leading right to the foot of her bed.
@SpaceCowboy: “Was anyone else bothered by Heroes’ use of the “in-head Six” device?”
Yes. I mean, come on. The brought back Malcolm McDowell to play
Libbythe angel/devil on Nathan’s shoulder? What next, the revelation thatVaderLinderman is his biological father? Abrams and co. are throwing more twists at us than M. Night Shyamalan, and I’m not sure they know where all of them are going yet.Promicin reference! *high five* I was thinking that the whole episode, too.
…this was a great post. I’m hoping that they are just doing all of this incredibly similar stuff as an easy way to remind us of things from the past since it’s been so long and that maybe it will get better in the next couple of episodes. Maybe.
The fact the Niki is not extra crispy is driving me absolutely insane though, and yeah. Suck.