Heroes: Teenage Wasteland
By Lisa Fary
This must be what it feels like to parent a teenager.
Every week I watch Heroes knowing that it has the potential to be something great if it would only apply itself. You know, the way it applied itself before discovering girls and deciding that science wasn’t hip. Every week I offer advice on getting back on the right path, which is ignored.
As a teenager, I saw this same dance performed many times with my friends and their parents, sometimes by me and my own parents. As an adult, I see my friends with kids engaging in this same struggle, endlessly frustrated, but pressing on.
If only Heroes had an Xbox we could take away until it shapes up and stops doing silly things like hitting me over the head with how powerless the supers are in the wake of the Eclipse of Doom. In this episode, “powerless” was bandied about like “maverick” in the waning days of the McCain campaign.
Not only is everyone powerless on Heroes this week, they’re all atwitter about it, too. They’ll announce their feelings of powerlessness while being shown powerless in dire situations. Getting shot at by Noah Bennet while naked. A Haitian torture dungeon. Bleeding on the floor of the drugstore. Dying in the hospital. Fighting off a rogue Haitian army.
And just to drive home exactly how powerless the supers are. . . Flint gets his ass kicked by Mohinder.
But, back to Bennet, Elle, and Sylar for a moment. Last week, we ended with Bennet across the street with a sniper rifle aimed at Sylar, who was making out with Elle. In part two, Sylar doesn’t get shot at until after banging Elle, which means. . . .
Noah Bennet likes to watch. Or, the unsexy make out session made Bennet vomit so violently that he couldn’t properly aim the rifle and take a shot. Bennet has made some silly decisions lately (i.e., leaving his loaded gun on the floor with Sylar and Elle last week), so I’m not sure which possibility to believe.
Even if Bennet’s assassination of Sylar was delayed by vomit, sexual deviance continues to lurk the Heroesverse. Way to sex up Elle’s murder, guys. Did she have to be laying in missionary on a beach, moaning while Sylar sliced her head open?
And another thing! Am I the only person in America who isn’t all pissed off at my dad for working a lot when I was a kid? And being a Navy guy, my dad was gone for a hell of a lot longer than Claire’s dad ever was. But, that was his job. I got that and never tried to make him feel guilty about it. Every time Claire starts up with her angst about Daddy working so much, I want to smack her. Daddy has to work so you can have a decent life, Claire. Stop your bitching.
I can only hope that this is all just a phase that Heroes will grow out of.
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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.
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You knew I didn't want to go, but duty calls and I answered the call.
Nothing wrenches the heart (or destabilizes the gut) like a girl being nearly raped and then murdered. Just ask Claire.
For some reason I have it in my head that Claire started with the 'tude before the Sylar-brain-rape incident.
That's the dues ex machina with this show (one of them anyway): if they don't show the whole thing before the credits, it can always be turned around the following week. Or Hiro can time travel to fix it. Or Claire's blood can be injected to save the day.
It did. Because that wasn't the FIRST time that such a thing even happened to Claire. There was the drunk guy who tried to rape her on the bleachers in season one (who then chased her until she fell on a stick that got lodged into her brain). Sylar's brain-rape is like a bonus or something. I wonder how many times they're going to tap that well before the show is canceled? (It's not like they started the show with Niki almost being raped or anything. Lesson there: always have a psychotic and super-strong alternate personality around in times of crisis)
You make some good points about the Bennet-Sylar-Elle story, Lisa. I noticed them, believe me, but I was also kinda distracted by Elle and Sylar's magic clothing. I mean, one minute they're all naked on the floor (Augh, pasty pasty thighs on that boy!) and the next they're fending off sniper!Noah with Elle in a perfectly buttoned shirt (his, judging by the size) and spandex shorts (?!), and her precious Gabriel in his fully fastened pants. And possibly shoes, but I could be wrong about that. Either way, it makes no sense. Do you really stop to get dressed when someone's shooting at you from across the street?
"Am I the only person in America who isn’t all pissed off at my dad for working a lot when I was a kid?"
No, but you're not a character on Heroes. Daddy Issues (TM) are pretty much a prerequisite. Either he raised you and messed you up real good, or he was absent and that messed you up in a different but equal way. At least Sylar has issues with all of his maybe-parents and surrogate parent figures.
As for the Eclipse of Doom, my most recent theory is that all of the supers are related and they're half-breed Kryptonians. That's why the wildly unscientific lack of sunlight took away and restored their abilities. And how they could all stare at the sun's photosphere without burning up their retinas. Whadya think? Too much basis in fact?
Is Elle really gone? Since they didn't show the whole thing I was hoping this character that was *supposed* to be so interesting would get a more proper death next week if she has to die.