Books, Movies, Music & Entertainment - Heroes - SPOILERS INSIDE

There's an American Idol Thread, which I love dearly. So I thought I'd start one for 'Heroes', a show I loved, then hated, and then Parkman grew a pair and Nathan got shot.

Villains. This season, it gets evil. As opposed to last season, which got pointless.

Will Maya live?

Will Hiro ever return to feudal Japan?

What exactly is Mama Petrelli's power?

What happened to Caitlin? Is she stuck in the future?

Can Kristen Bell continue to balance being hot and superbly annoying?

Will Sylar take Claire's power of regeneration?

Will Suresh continue to be monumentally stupid?

It's back, folks. :D

I detest allegory in all its forms. But I like this show. And that? Was awesome.

In case you missed it, here’s what happened, though not necessarily in the order it happened…



Who shot Nathan Petrelli? His brother. From the future. Four years in an alternate future (I guess they’re all alternate) where Claire becomes a badass. Hey, Peter! I like that future. Stop messing up the future. Sure she's pulled a gun on you, but it’s not like you can’t stop time and heal yourself and teleport… and there he goes. Back to the press conference where Nathan is just about to tell the entire world about all the people with special abilities. Dude, we know all about people with special abilities. We’ve seen the show.

Nathan goes down, the media goes nuts, Alt!Peter runs into the restroom chased by Now!Peter. Only one comes back. But which one? Hey! The scars give it away. Alt!Peter teleports Matt to a desert somewhere. But where? Is that a meerkat? Why, yes. Yes it is.

Sylar tracks Claire down and after Claire stabs him, he pulls out his Sawz All finger and opens up her skull. Does Sylar eat brains? He does not. And the Internets is sad. He just pokes around in them until he finds where the power is. He doesn’t kill Claire, but she somehow loses the ability to feel anything. Usually that doesn’t happen until you’re in your mid-30s, so that sucks. Sylar also calls Claire ‘special’ and tells her she’s ‘not like the others’. Ew. Sylar finds secret files about secret villains that Noah just happened to leave out. And now he’s got a whole mess of powers to acquire.

Maya (who’s other power is the ability to suddenly get really good at English) finds Mohinder who has a scientific breakthrough based on her ability to be annoying. And it turns out Mohinder wasn’t really interested in helping the Heroes. He wanted a special power of his own. He’s so turning into a fly, y’all.

Nathan dies but gets better, and then he has a religious epiphany/meltdown and goes to a church where Alt!Peter is going to try and kill him again. But stops because… well… Nathan’s lost it. Hey! Linderman healed him.

Mama Petrelli can see the future, and she’s more than a wee bit pissed at Alt!Peter for shooting his brother. But mostly she’s pissed that he changed the future.

Niki isn’t Niki, she’s Tracy. And she’s working for/sleeping with the governor. And she sees Nathan’s religious freakout on the TV and has an idea. She goes to Nathan to convince him to become a senator.

Hiro and Ando watch messages from Hiro’s dead father. Hiro’s got a destiny – to keep one-half of some formula safe and never look at it. It’s in the safe. Which is opened by a remote control and Hiro’s fingerprint. And of course they open it. And of course it gets stolen in like three seconds by the Flash. Wait, nope. Just Speedy Girl. Turns out Speedy Girl has also stolen the Mona Lisa among other things. Obviously she’s having a hard time unloading some of the merchandise. Someone needs to sit her down for some Antiques Roadshow. It’s all about the provenance, kid.

Hiro jumps into the future where he watches Future Ando kill Future him with red lightning. Ando’s evil!! Oh, Alt!Peter, what have you done? Hiro runs as some sort of menacing Godzilla thing (which we don’t actually see) tramples Tokyo. My guess it’s Mohinder.

Hiro and Ando track Speedy Girl down, but she’s… too smart for them. So are the meerkats.

Mama Petrelli is having visions of the future. It involves villains. She should know. Alt!Peter screwed everything up. At least he has a cool scar and has ditched the bangs from season one.

Mohinder reads a poem, which happens to be one of my favorites. And he reads the whole poem, which is awesome. And he does a nice job with it, so I’ll cut him some slack. Parkman is in Africa. We know this because he’s talking to a tortoise. Except it’s not a tortoise. It’s someone with water who tells him he’s in Africa. Helpful. This nice gentleman has powers too. He can see the future. And it’s looking ugly.

Niki/Tracy is confronted by some reporter who looks like he stepped out of the Timothy Busfield School For Haggard Journalists. He has a picture of Niki from her Vegas days. Tracy swears up and down that she’s not this Niki person. I almost believe it.

Mohinder injects himself with Maya’s blood/adrenal gland serum. Sci-fi science always makes my eyes roll back in my head. Anyway, he gets powers. Like Spider Man without the web-slinging. Mohinder beats up a dude who tries to rob him. Mohinder and Maya have sex. Ew.

Nathan thinks being a senator would be just dandy. He also things Tracy is Niki, Invisible Linderman tells Nathan that she’s not. They play chess. Linderman and Nathan, not Nathan and Tracy.

Claire is having an existential meltdown. She can’t feel pain. Does that mean she’s still human? Claire tries to answer that question by jumping in front of a train. I usually try to answer that question by drinking, but Claire and I are very different people. Alt!Peter “saves” her by swooping in. Hey! Did you hear that Sylar’s basically indestructible? Yeah, he is now. Have fun with that.

The reporter is back, this time with footage of Tracy/not Tracy having sex with Nathan. She gets upset, naturally. She grabs the guy, and just as you think she’s about to pick up a car and beat him with it, she turns him to ice. And then he shatters into a million little pieces. She freaks out and runs. Awesome.

Elle and her father (the guy who turns stuff into gold), have a fight. She’s not good enough, never has been. She’s more than a little tired of all this. As am I. She goes back later to apologize or something and it turns out that Sylar has stolen the top of Dad’s head. And his power. So now Sylar can make stuff malleable and heavy. Great.

Elle goes after Sylar and after a brief struggle, she unleashes enough electricity to basically kill him. Even though… you know… that can’t happen anymore. He’s out. But so is the power. And the Villains. Including the one that has Peter trapped inside him (the hell?). Noah tosses Sylar in prison.

Noah and Claire talk about stuff. Villain stuff.

Oh… and Mama Petrelli is Sylar’s mother. Oh, why not.

Well done, Tim Kring. Well done.

Added spoilers to the thread title since I didn't expect to get a play by play of the episode I just pvred :)

I enjoy the show, but I find with shows like this they loose their luster quickly. Its rare I can watch a show with so much interest for very long as the plots become....redundant. Lost did this in 1 season for me. (that and I despise "thrillers" and "mysteries") Hopefully they can maintain the same interesting plots and subplots while staying on track with the "comic" feel. Sylar is an easy character to write, he epitomizes comic book villains. You can tell, damn good actor btw, that he is changing. There is no need to look into the future to find out what happens with him, you can see a change every episode.

Added spoilers to the thread title since I didn't expect to get a play by play of the episode I just pvred :)

I enjoy the show, but I find with shows like this they loose their luster quickly. Its rare I can watch a show with so much interest for very long as the plots become....redundant. Lost did this in 1 season for me. (that and I despise "thrillers" and "mysteries") Hopefully they can maintain the same interesting plots and subplots while staying on track with the "comic" feel. Sylar is an easy character to write, he epitomizes comic book villains. You can tell, damn good actor btw, that he is changing. There is no need to look into the future to find out what happens with him, you can see a change every episode.
Thanks... I really should've added a spoiler warning. Sorry about that.

After the nonsense that was season two, I'm really happy that the show seems to be back on track. It's got to be tough writing this show. Tough, but massively fun I would imagine. Keeping things interesting, developed but not overly developed. Giving the actors and their characters interesting things to do and interesting powers to do them with. Juggling plotlines and continuity.

And now there are two characters (Peter and Sylar) who are insanely powerful, and basically can't be killed. So they both have to change. How that happens will be interesting.

My guess is the show goes off the rails in early November. :D

From watching Doctor Who, I know with absolute certainty that your future self cannot come in contact with your past self because you’ll blow a hole in the Universe the size of Belgium. Unless it’s a very, very special episode. And you have the Key of Rassilon or whatever end-around the rules the writers can come up with.

Okay… so I was dumb enough to think that we’d spend the season (or at least a couple of episodes) tracking down the escaped villains. And that Elle would be involved. But no. It turns out that bad guys with powers are sometimes just as stupid as bad guys without them. They rob a bank so that Noah will show up. And then they’re going to kill him. But since that’s not going to happen, that’s not going to happen.

The Good – Mama Petrelli. Could this woman get any eviler? I hope so. Putting Sylar and Noah together? Awesome.

The Meh – Tracy and her new powers. I sort of get tracking down Niki and the doctor that ‘created’ her. But… Hang on. Does that mean there are more of her? Clones? Lots and lots of Ali Larters running around the Heroes universe? Nevermind. I fully support this development.

The Stupid – Hiro and Ando. I… don’t have the strength for these two anymore. And Speedy Girl… I just can’t care. Good to see the Haitian, though.

The Pointless – Matt and his spirit walk. Obviously Matt’s totem animal is the turtle, which reminds me of a joke. What does a snail say when it rides on the back of Matt’s plotline? Whee! ‘Cause, you know, they’re both really slow.

And that poor, poor African man. How sad and boring is your life when your whole existence from the time you are a small child is drawing pictures of Parkman’s life? Seriously? His whole life? Potty training? Awkward prom moments? The first time? Was that stuff painted on the rocks too? Lord.

The WTF? The bank robbery. Thanks Alt!Peter for sticking around while Noah gets his ass beat. And show... why trap Peter in the body of a bad guy if you’re not going to do something with it? Not that I liked that particular twist, but do something with it.

Claire and her biological mother. The girl got mind-probed and violated in some pretty cruel and unusual ways, so you’re going to lock her in a semi trailer and torture her until she admits she wants to kill Sylar? Wow.

And next week – Mohinder turns into a bug. Fun times.

Okay... so that was interesting.

Where are the rules? I'm not talking about good and evil, though that's part of it. I don't know if any of you who bother to read this thread are comic book/graphic novel fans. I'm generally not, though I like a few here and there. But it seems to me that a successful universe is mostly consistant, or works because there are limits in place. And the most interesting developments happen when the characters step over those limits. I'm thinking of Spiderman and the black suit, Dr. Manhattan, Ozymandias, and Rorschach, an ageing Batman killing Superman in "The Dark Knight Returns". You can probably thiink of better examples from other universes. Anyhoodles...

But to me they work, and are infinitely cool, because the rules are there. Boundaries exist. And the characters are well defined. If characters change, the change takes place over time. Or they're being controlled by an alien intelligence. Or something.

But there seem to be no rules in "Heroes". Anything goes. And anything should go, I guess. It's fiction. But there's no sense, no reason to it. It's a pile of barely related OMGWTFBBQ moments. The things that are interesting - Suresh becoming a Fly because he actually wanted powers, nevermind that he's a massive idiot - are so poorly developed. And the things that should be interesting - Claire becoming a badass and killing Alt!Peter - make no sense. Yes, I get the whole "Butterfly Effect" thing - I saw the Simpsons' Halloween episode where Homer repeatedly goes back in time and steps on a bug and sneezes and all the dinosaurs die. Maybe I need dots connected where other people don't need dots connected.

SPOILERS:

In the future: Claire whacks Alt!Peter. Sylar has a grip on his hunger and has a child. Sylar's making pancakes. Or was it waffles? Whatever. Nice. Past Peter shows up and wants Sylar's power. "Hey! Did you know we're brothers? Oops, guess not. Did you know that with great psychotic power comes great psychoticness? You don't care, Pete? I guess I got the brains in this family. Ha! Get it? You see what I did there? Okey-doke." Claire and the gang show up. Sylar's kid dies in like thirty seconds and Sylar explodes. Mohinder has been a fly for a while and hates cleaning. Matt has a kid. His wife, Daphne (Speedy Girl) dies in the blast. President Petrelli is married to Tracy. Past Peter, now with Sylar powers, kills President Nathan.

In the present: Hiro and Ando try a wacky escape from Level 5, which has a convenient air duct that I'm sure no one else noticed. They get caught and Mama Petrelli sends them off to dig up Adam Monroe. Nathan saves Tracy from suicide and they make out. Parkman wakes up from his spirit quest/journey thing and finds out that his totem animal is the turtle. No kidding. And the only people who can save the future are Hiro and Ando. And they need Adam Monroe to do it?

Makes. No. Sense.

I'll keep watching, but I don't know. I predicted that the show would fly off the rails in November. But where we're going, if we're going anywhere at all, we don't need rails.

dawg that was hawt. . . it was smokin. . .you da bomb!
oh wait wrong tv thread.
I like Hero's, even the misguided second season. One big plus for this
show is no one dies, not even Linderman (whose first name is undoubtedly Alex).
I have no clue as to where this show is going, but it's a fun ride.
The other show that I find 'interesting' is Fringe, sort of X Files meets CSI.

Marty

And tonight we meet Peter, Sylar, and Nathan's dad.

Oh, that's right! Dad shows up - the evilest evil that ever eviled an evil. That should be good. Or weird. Or pointless. Or Claire will shoot him. Or something. Whatever, I'm looking forward to it. :D

That? Was better. Still a whole lot going on, but more of it makes sense and the writers are knitting ideas together to make a dark and evil idea sweater. Cool.

Stuff that happened, though maybe not in the order it happened.

Suresh is no longer the narrator. Which? Good. Also good is that we’re no longer in the future. The not so good? Nathan is still on his God kick. And he can still see Linderman. Hm… I think I should have guessesd how this turns out.

Hiro and Ando dig Adam up. And put him back, and let him out, and put him back, and let him out. That was funny. They all go to a bar.

Peter is a bit upset that Sylar is his brother. He goes to confront his mother. But unable to control the hunger he has now, tries to kill her. See... he can already take powers without having to kill people? Why can't he just... oh, nevermind. Sylar knocks him out, and Ma Petrelli puts him in a medically induced coma. Yes!!! Excellent. I could not be more happy with this development.

Claire tries to become a vigilante... with mixed success. Okay, no success. She goes after a guy who is a cross between a Gitmo detainee and the Large Hadron Collider. He has the power to create black holes. Awesome. Frakking awesome. LHC has been stuck in Level 5 because he killed a guy accidentally. I feel for him… that’s a heck of a power to not know you have. Claire finds him and Tasers him. Where’s Elle when you need her? LHC wakes up, black holes Claire’s gun, and they have a chat. Of course.

Sylar and Noah are also after the LHC, and they all wind up together in the same house. LHC recognizes Noah and flips out, a half-hearted hostage scene ensues… except this one ends with lamps and drapes getting sucked into another universe. Hopefully it’s a universe where things make sense.

Nathan convinces Tracy not to turn herself in. Why did we need that scene?

Suresh is hungry. But he only Shelobs bad guys. Until Maya sees blood on the laboratory floor. At first she’s like, “Hey! I’ll leave you to your work.” And she gets out of there. And I’m thinking, “Wow! That’s like the first smart thing anyone on this show has done in a long time.” But she comes back. Stupid, stupid, stupid. And then Suresh comes back. And Maya loses. I’m not real sad about that.

Nathan confronts Angela. Turns out it wasn’t God who gave Nathan his powers. It was the Company. Okey-doke. That seems to take the wind out of Nathan’s sail for the moment. Peter is still in a coma.

Adam and Hiro and Ando are in the bar. The Puppeteer is the bartender. It turns out that Adam was sleeping with the Puppeteer’s wife. The Puppeteer punches Adam, but misses, and hits Hiro. Hiro’s out. Adam runs away. Well, almost. He gets knocked out and stuffed a van. Hiro and Ando drink.

Linderman is recruiting an army to do something... change the world with real change. Lord. He’s recruited Speedy Girl and the guy who gets stronger from other people’s fear. But it’s not Linderman. It’s Parkman’s dad. Ah… now we’re getting somewhere.

Speedy Girl goes off to recruit Hiro. He proclaims himself a badass. Yeah, not really. Hiro wants the formula back, so he plays along. His first test of badassery is to kill Ando. That’s not going to happen. And yet it does. Hiro stabs Ando with a sword. He says he has to because he needs to save the world. W. T. F? As lotek pointed out, no one dies on this show. And since we know that Ando kills Hiro in the Future, I’ll bet a pair of shiny new Zipp 404s that we’ll see Ando soon. Regardless, I yelled at my TV.

Claire finds LHC. Noah and Sylar find LHC. Noah puts a gun to LHC’s head and orders him to kill Sylar. And since that’s not going to happen, that’s not going to happen. Noah’s completely lost it. I don’t even know what he’s doing anymore. LHC, who has quite enough of all this, creates a black hole and sucks himself into it. Bravo, LHC. Sorry you had to leave us so soon. Noah tries to comfort Claire. Sylar tries to mess with her head some more. Claire isn’t listening to either of them.

Angela dreams that Tracy and Nathan are dead, Sylar is dead, and Peter drops dead in front of her with a pipe in the back of his head. It’s Pa Petrelli. He’s evil. Ma Petrelli snaps out of it and finds herself paralyzed. And so is Pa Petrelli. He’s on a vent and only Parkman’s dad can talk to him.

And Puppeteer Guy creeps the hell out of me.

Oh, sweet lord. Okay... so Peter kicks Sylar's ass, but then gets his powers taken away by Daddy. Thank you, show. Thank you. Peter is an idiot. Hiro fake stabs Ando. He's not dead. Tracy has a brain. It turns out that Claire does too. And Parkman spends his bit of the show in an airport. Hi, turtle! Hiro gets whacked on the head twice. Thank you, show. Thank you. Oh, and Adam Monroe was brought back for... no damn reason whatsoever.

Was that better? Worse? Papa Petrelli is evil... evil!

I'm starting to love Daphne, just a little bit. And Claire's biological mom. Good stuff.

If we cross heroes with Fringe now that would be something.

I did think the hiro african guy scene was pretty funny as was hiro adam
buried, unburied, buried again scene.