i think that i've had just about enough of "heroes"

[rone]

"Heroes" is a comic book title on the TV screen, and it carries all of the dreadful drawbacks that you'd expect from your typical comic book:

• The plotting is twisty and leaky: a lot of it springs from the heavy reliance on time travel and precognition, which are being handled with a ham-handed grace.  As for the stuff that doesn't, here's one: how did Bob know Peter would be flying Nathan back to that specific hospital and walking down that specific corridor so Elle could zap him?  And my biggest complaint: why didn't Peter absorb Sylar's "instant comprehension" power?
• The characters are not interesting except for their powers: leaving aside the really dumb but insignificant things, such as various characters looking directly at the solar eclipse, the characters alternate between being railroaded into being dull and predictable, and doing crazy, nonsensical things just to move the story along (why was Candice all alone taking care of a complete psycho like Sylar? why did Bob put Peter in the cell next to the extremely dangerous Adam, through which they could speak?).  To say the characters are two-dimensional is rather generous in at least half the cases.
• Women and Blacks fare poorly: Charles Deveaux: dead.  D. L. Hawkins: dead.  Monica Dawson: nearly injected with lethal virus.  Simone Deveaux: dead.  Micah Hawkins: alive, but his dad was killed and his mom's crazy and irresponsible (also, he's only half-black and not a woman and just a kid).  The Haitian: almost died from Shanti virus.  Eden McCain: dead.  Angela Petrelli: scheming, manipulative, untrustworthy.  Maya Herrera: toxic crybaby who's developing a taste for killing.  Candice Wilmer: dead (didja notice she was a fatty?  god forbid an overweight girl pretending she's thin!  kill her!)  Niki Sanders: dissociative, and of course all her alternate personae are indecent and unscrupulous, oh, and she's infected with a lethal virus.  Molly Walker: her parents were gruesomely murdered by a serial killer and she was trapped in a nightmare.  Elle Bishop: way-over-the-top clichéd crazy.  Claire Bennet: teenage angst out the ass.  Sandra Bennet: she talks to her Pomeranian and was a bit dotty even before she got repeatedly mind-wiped.  Audrey Hanson: promising, and therefore written out.  Caitlin McKenna: stuck in the grim meathook future.  Janice Parkman: cheated on Matt, no explanation whatsoever.  Heidi Petrelli: stuck in a wheelchair after horrific accident, but at least Linderman healed her.  Yaeko: she's without the man she loves.  Jackie the Other Cheerleader: dead.  Charlie Andrews: dead.  Virginia Gray: dead.  Who does that leave?  Oh, right, Nana Dawson, but she's barely appeared.

Sure, i'm curious to see what happens next, but if "Heroes" were a comic book, i'd tell wacky_hijinx to drop my subscription.  How does a TV network pick up mediocrity like "Heroes" but not "Global Frequency"?  Oh, right, "TV network".

This ought to segue into my oft-promised rant about the dismal world of DC & Marvel, but i've had a migraine all day and i'm feeling a little drained now.

Comments

No defense

[erikred.livejournal.com]

You're right, there's plenty of silly going on. That having been said....

Sylar: Despite eating Hiro's girlfriend's brain, he hasn't demonstrated much in the way of instant comprehension. At a guess, his powers aren't working because he's been injected with the Company's virus, so it's a two-fer: his powers don't work, and he's going to die unless he gets the cure. Plenty of potential drama there. Btw, Sylar _does_ have a power: bashing people's heads in with blunt objects. I mean, c'mon, what is it about this guy that lets him get close enough to brain people when they ought to know better?

Matt Parkman: He breaks your "women and blacks fare poorly" rubric; he's a borderline moron, and his dad abandoned him. We see from the dim future that with the proper fascist leadership, he'll become an eager Gestapo recruit.

Adam and Bob: If you can't kill Adam, your best bet is to keep him contained in a furnace. Leaving him waiting around in a cell, any cell, is just not a reasonable way to approach his incarceration. Hell, if you can regenerate yourself after breaking bones and such, the only thing preventing you from breaking out is your tolerance for self-inflicted pain and the structural strength of your bones vs. that of whatever's holding you in place. So, now that we've eliminated this as a reasonable means of keeping him in, we're left with either bad writing (probable) or continued collusion between Bob and Adam (less likely, but more dramatically attractive).

DL Hawkins: Capital WTF? I mean, you'd think the man would have phasing down as a freaking instinct. He took Linderman's shot to protect Nikki, but why the hell would he let some clubber scumbag shoot him-- especially when we've already seen him phase in a fistfight? Senseless death is not "edgy"; it's just bad writing.

The major selling point for continuing to watch Heroes (as opposed to picking up any of the current comic books out there) is that Heroes is free... and it's not Lost.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Wait, hasn't demonstrated much in the way of instant comprehension? He could slice off the top of a skull with telekinesis almost right off the bat. He harnessed the nucular boom power right away. He figured out the plague twins' schtick right away (and if he can figure that out, why don't his acquired powers work?).

Just because women and blacks fare poorly doesn't mean that the white dudes are all doing OK. At least Parkman's getting over his abandonment issues.

Can't kill Adam... did they try decapitating him and then splitting the skull down the middle? Hmmm? That's what Hiro should've done with Sylar instead of poking him and saying "Yatta!" like the total dork he is.

DL... man, let a guy get over being a jailbird, start doing honest work, saving lives, being a hero... fuck it, let's kill him. The show is called "Heroes" but it ought to be called "Super-Powered People With Issues". I really hope Micah decides to activate Skynet and get rid of everyone.