I’ve not followed the Heroes threads this year, so I’m very glad you came here to remind me of what a real thing this was for you (the whole “Nikki” red button bit). I don’t know if it’s good or bad to see that it is still such a major issue for you, but there is some comfort in finding consistency in the world.
But Claire’s car being stolen and ending up being driven by Sylar in Mexico is a huge, impossible coincidence.
So, for that matter, is Claire going to the same school as, and dating, West.
And Hiro and Nathan just happening to end up at the same diner way out in the desert, with Hiro witnessing Nathan coming in for a landing.
The entire Heroes world seems to be driven by these impossible coincidences- and we’ve never been given any explanation.
When we first started seeing these huge coincidences, I thought that maybe they were going to say that the abilities are the function of some mathematical formula (similar to Lost’s lottery numbers), rather than something genetic. Unfortunately, they don’t seem to be going down that road.
Then man up and tell your girlfriend not to watch the DVDs when you’re around.
There has been no indication to date that either of Nathan’s sons have a power.
It is not a coincidence that they are all tangled up together. With very few exceptions, the characters that we’ve seen tangled together are tangled together because of the aforementioned machinations of the previous generation. When you have characters whose motivation is to actively seek out other people with super powers to use them in their nefarious schemes, it is not really that valid of a critique that the characters interact with each other.
The series is set in the United States. Most TV shows that are set within a particular country have the bulk of their characters from that country.
What about it? It’s a show about people with super powers. Imagine my shock that many of the characters in it are people with super powers. They’ve had, what, about two dozen people with powers over the course of the series? Compared to the 300 million population of the US, that’s not all that overwhelming of a number.
Quit watching.
That every single person in a story has a relationship is commonplace in every type of storytelling. It can grow annoying as hell, but it’s so standard that it should be taken as given.
The hole that the show has dug itself into is that it made too many characters too powerful too quickly. The characters were introduced as ordinary people with one bit of specialness, something that wasn’t obviously useful, in fact something that needed to be kept hidden because it could ruin their lives.
They needed to band together to stop one menace and did so hesitantly and haltingly, learning as they went. At the end they came to terms with themselves and with their powers.
When the writers stayed on this arc, the show worked fine. They did unbelievably stupid things - the one that stays with me is Micah changing the election results by talking to networked electronic voting machines, even though a) New York doesn’t have electronic voting machines; b) all electronic voting machines are designed never to have any interconnections precisely because of the danger of someone hacking into the system; and c) the election results turning out to have no meaning at all for the plotline. Mostly, though, viewers could accept them because of the identification with the characters.
This year, the writers tried to introduce people learning about their powers, but it didn’t work because it was a repeat of what happened last year emotionally and so lost any force. (It didn’t pay off either, because neither Monica not Maya wound up using their new powers to any heroic end. Maybe they will next time, but it was all buildup and no payoff for characters the audience had no emotional connection with.)
Meanwhile, the people with powers, once they finally got around to doing something with them, turned into unstoppable badasses. Instead of being fragile humans they became wish-fulfillment fantasy creatures capable of doing anything. And in comics anything means whatever the writers think is showy rather than anything that makes sense. Peter and Adam striding down the corridors wiping out the guards was showy but idiotic. (Of course, everything that Peter did at any time in this season was idiotic.) A show built on characters, emotions, and identification turned into kick-ass tv. Who could have foreseen that it wouldn’t end well?
Does this leave any hope for the future? Not an awful lot. The tendency in comics is that the next menace has to be even bigger and more unstoppable than the last. (Look at the Bond movies, too.) You can put characterization in cosmic stories but it’s much harder. I don’t see how any story can put back what made the show so attractive in season one. You’re going to see all-powerful characters irrationally diminished so that the season doesn’t end in five minutes, the same way that Green Lantern has the power of making his wishes come true and can’t think of better ways of stopping villains than creating a giant hammer to hit them with.
The Bond movies went back in time to reboot. Comics wipe out their universes and start over. On television people want to see their favorite actors over and over. If your response to much of what happened this season was, “that’s so stupid” be prepared for next year. It’ll get much worse.
I’m not saying that there haven’t been some coincidences that strain credulity, including the ones you mention (although I don’t care how impossible it is for Hiro and Nathan to have ended up at the same diner because their scene together was 17 different kinds of awesome). The series has not been cancelled so there may yet be some explanation offered.
LOUNE isn’t complaining about that sort of coincidence. He’s complaining about things like the “coincidence” of Linderman and the Petrellis knowing each other, when it’s been explained time and again that they joined together in common purpose, or the “coincidence” of Linderman’s using Nathan when it’s been repeatedly explained that the older generation is using the younger to advance its agenda. It’s hard to tell whether he just doesn’t get it or if he’s just mad because his girlfriend is making him watch so he’s griping for the sake of it, because the criticism makes no sense.
Puerile.
Good point about concentrating too much on Heroes in the U.S… And personally I wish they’d never established a genetic factor in the powers; it requires them to studiously avoid the word “mutant”. I’d prefer it if powers were emerging with nobody having a clue why.
But – no, those other things still are not coincidences. Gabriel travelling in Claire’s stolen car with Maya and Alejandro – that’s a ridiculous coincidence. But the other story elements you’re complaining about are actually a coherent backstory.
Answer…there is an as yet unrevealed hero that generates a “coincidence field”. I think it’s Mohinder, I can’t wait to see how he applies the power intentionally once he discovers it!
I don’t seek the show out. She watches them. I don’t mind, because the idea of the show intrigues me, but the way it gets handled sometimes doesn’t. There have been some very good moments and some very very bad moments. I don’t know what time the show comes on, and if I did know, I wouldn’t watch it, but I happen to stumble across it when I’m over there.
No, no indication they have a superpower…yet.
Actually, yes, it is a criticism of the show, at least, the beginning parts of the show where Sylar wasn’t entirely known and Mohinder was hemming and hawing over this stuff.
I’ve got no problem with some people being from the United States. Of course, a show that is shown in the US has US characters in it, but it’s skewed wildly towards the US with regards to their representation and their Heroes. We’re also not talking about the entire population of the United States. We’re talking about the population of the show. The population of the show is abnormally US-centric.
I can’t now. Now I have to piss you off. A little too defensive over this show maybe?
Also, what IS Niqi/Nikki’s superpower? Strength with the extra personality?
That’s okay since the term for them would not be mutant, they’re “sports”.
My bad on the typo.
I wish it weren’t a genetic “defect”, but it does make it convenient down the road for the writers to come up with an “us versus them” type of situation.
Coherent backstory? Ando happens to subscribe to Niki’s webcam, he comes along with Hiro, they drive to New York City to save the world and they also happen to be there the same day all this other stuff goes down and that’s not a ridiculous coincidence?
This show is laden with some incredulous coindences. Some of them, I’m more than wiling to pass over. Some I can’t.
This is about the part in the argument where you say “well, you haven’t watched every episode and therefore have no clue what you’re talking about.” (not YOU you, but the collective you)
You know, it could just be what Exapno Mapcase said about the writing and the coindences.
In season 3 we find out there’s a particle called the plotrino. All heroes have high concentrations of plotrinos. Plotrinos are like virtual photons and charge; large collections of plotrinos attract each other.
Plotrinos can be used by heroes to enhance their powers. Back in season 1 when Nathan flew to escape from the Haitian, they were in a particularly strong plotrino field. In fact, we find out that Ma Petrelli’s power is emitting large amounts of plotrinos, and West’s other power is emitting negatively charged plotrinos, effectively creating a plot vacuum. Plotrinos can have detrimental side effects however; they can corrode brain cells and inhibit mental activity, leading to illogical decisions or forgetting important things. And sometimes, when the plotrino density gets too high in a small volume, it results in what’s known as a “plot hole”.
A show that’s set in the US is abnormally US-centric. That seriously makes no sense whatsoever. What shows that originate on US television networks that are set in the US aren’t US-centric?
It’s not even all that terribly accurate. The show has included an Indian and two Japanese characters in its cast since its inception and has featured additional supporting characters from those countries, and added two Latin Americans, several Irish and a Brit in its second season. Off the top of my head I can’t think of another US show set in the US that includes anything approaching that number of non-American characters.
Off the top of my head, I can’t remember when I brought another show into it.
Edited to add: Poopy head.
There it is, just like clockwork!
Do you watch any other television programs which are set in the United States?
Do you criticise them for having characters that are “too US-centric”?
How does their number of non-US characters compare to Heroes?
It’s a perfectly logical response to people who watch a show they don’t like. Sort of like the old joke, “Doctor, it hurts when I go like this.” “Then don’t go like that.”
Here we have someone whose response to the show is:
If he despises the show so much that he expresses, even in jest, the necessity to destroy the DVDs and pray never to watch it again, what advice other than “stop watching” would you offer? Me, if I violently loathe a show, I watch something else. Or I sometimes even turn off the TV and read a book. Since LOUNE seemed not to be aware that he has an option other than watching the show, how can you begrudge my trying to fight his obvious ignorance of his television’s ON/OFF switch?
There is a problem with the show – which Kring has acknowledged – in that they moved away from what worked last season (e.g., characters you care about, storylines that have something happen on each episode). Kring recognized that, apologized for it – and had no time to correct it because of the writers’ strike.
Many of the other perceived problems being complained about – both here and in every Heroes thread – are problems of viewer expectations not matching up with the writers’ intents.
The Heroes writers are all comic book geeks. They get that wild coincidences moving the plot along are unrealistic. They’re not trying for realistic. They’re trying to tell a comic book story using television tropes. Whacky coincidences and classic comic scenarios are the point of the show they’re making.
Likewise, Peter or Hiro being “too powerful” is also part of the story they are trying to tell. Peter forgetting some incredibly-useful power is exactly in-genre for comic stories – how many times could Superman solve problems with his myriad of superpowers, without punching something? That is the type of story they want to tell.
This inevitable wailing about how Heroes isn’t [whatever vision random Internet poster has] is pointless to “fixing” Heroes. The writers could definitely improve on their plotting and writing (e.g., Maya’s storyline), but even if they do, they’ll still be writing Heroes with the same tropes such as the whacky coincidences and too-powerful characters and scenes that occur more for the visual interest than for elegant forethought.
If you think there is a need to “fix” the very concepts of the show, then you’re really just looking for another show altogether that matches whatever oddball assortment of likes and dislikes you happen to have. Wacthing this show and expecting otherwise is just begging for disappointment.
She causes tattooes to appear and disappear, just to whip Internet fans into a raving froth trying to fanwank it.
They could explain away a lot of the show’s lazy plot contrivances simply by introducing an enigmatic character who knows things he shouldn’t. Or just use Ma Petrelli but have her actually give some information at some goddamn point.
Peter is inexcusably retarded. I’m not even sure what you could do to fix that, other than kill him off. Perhaps introducing some instability that makes it hard for him to control which powers he activates. (“Why don’t we just walk through the door?” “I … don’t know … I can’t get my body to go insubstantial. I’ll just have to rip it open with TK.”)
Claire’s blood needs to have unexpected side effects. Maybe it gives powers to those who don’t have them (by “healing” the portions of their brains not well-enough developed to use them, say). Something needs to make it a risky proposition to use the stuff.
I’d say the show’s in a lot of trouble, narratively. The season two finale was not at all compelling and the return of Sylar as a villain doesn’t really strike me as all that interesting, either. He’s been done, extensively.
Stop saving the world. Just scale it all back and save some people every now and then.
If I were to build Peter in a game system, say, Champions, I would’ve made it so that he can only consciously use other people’s powers. He’s not gaining their powers, he’s just faking them using his own, unique power. This would mean that if you knock him out, he’s just an ordinary shmoe. It would also mean that if he doesn’t have time to concentrate, he wouldn’t be able to use any powers.
Of course, this would mean that he could be killed. As it is, he’s a god- and with every new hero he meets, he becomes just that much more powerful. Heck, I’ve already lost track of which heroes he’s met and absorbed. As an occasional GM, I was really hoping he’d be vaporized at the end of last season.
Again with the “raving froth” when we have patiently explained that it didn’t bother us all that much. You’re a real pleasure.