It’s simple, Otto, the Haitian removed Zach’s gay. That’s his secondary power.
I think it’s a bit simplistic to blame the network for “inning” Zach. There could be a lot of reasons why his character was changed. Maybe the actor chickened out and didn’t want to commit to playing a homosexual. If an actor decides to play a gay character, Hollywood will have trouble separating the person from his character’s sexuality. No matter how loudly they preach acceptance at the Oscars, the movers and the shakers are by and large still a bunch of small minded bigots. I wouldn’t blame him for not wanting to narrow his potential roles so young in his career.
Also, no matter how loudly he pinged your gaydar, Zach never said he was gay. He said he felt different. Shit, every teen says that. It seemed to me that it was purposely worded ambiguously in case someone needed to change their mind. So far he doesn’t act straight, either. I wouldn’t have known he was inned if I hadn’t read your linked article.
See this as a blessing. If the show fully endorsed his gayness they’d take the typical myopic route and make him either a stereotypical flaming queen or a tortured martyr with a tragic self esteem.
Television shows and movies and books almost never get it right when it comes to mental health professionals. You are correct that the disorder is (and has been for 13 years) called Dissociative Identity Disorder. She was, however, a psychiatrist, not a psychologist, making it even less realistic that she would be spending her time sitting on the floor with, or engaging herself in longterm individual therapy with a patient. It’s not impossible, but it’s highly unlikely.
She’s also not a very good therapist either, telling someone that they have (or are) a “classic case” of a disorder. At least the writers didn’t have the psychiatrist try to have sex with her, deviously manipulate her, try to eat her, or otherwise act in a grossly incompetent and unethical manner with her.
I’m not sure which show you’re watching but the one I’m watching hasn’t focused on the sexuality of any of its characters. A show’s merely noting the existence of someone’s sexuality cannot reasonably be construed as focusing on it. Nor has anyone on the show, gay, straight, underage, of age or whatever been shown as being “angsty” about their sexuality. Again, simply noting the existence of one’s sexuality is not reasonably construable as portraying “angsty.” An occasional throwaway reference to Zach’s being gay or Peter caring for Art Agent lady is not going to consume so much screen time that it becomes a waste of storytelling time. Possible references to Zach’s sexuality on-screen have amounted to something like five sentences. It’s unclear that utilizing those five sentences in another fashion would have advanced any other storyline to any great extent.
And no one is suggesting that simply being a teenager is not filled with its own angst. However, I don’t think that there’s much question that in society today the baseline of angst for gay teenagers is at least a little higher than that for straight teenagers, and that gay teenagers have few to no representations of themselves in popular culture whereas straight teenagers have a large number of them. Not my intention to play the “my oppression is worse than your oppression” game, but just as a simple matter of numbers that’s the case.
The actor has already played gay and since he went on to land a lead role in an upcoming Terminator spin-off series it does not appear to have limited his career.
I understand that and have said it here more than once. The creators of the show, however, have stated that they intended for the character to be gay.
Given that Zach has already exhibited a lack of stereotypical flaming and an enormous amount of self-esteem, I disgaree with this assessment completely.
This is a comicbook show. It wouldn’t be a comic book without psuedo-science. Or maybe I missed something and you really can get super powers from being bitten by a radioactive spider.
Besides didn’t you know that the government gets a copy of your DNA everytime you touch a penny? That’s why they are still in circulation.
Snark aside, aren’t there limits to the suspension of disbelief? I think this master list, with its dubious origins, is a big sore thumb, and I cringe every time they approach the subject. Just saying “human genome project” as if it explains the issue is offensive to the intelligence of the audience. They may as well say that he found them on the internet.
It depends. Do you like comic books? I still have mine but I have not bought one since 1985. Radioactive spiders, bombarded by gamma rays, fictional indestructible metal skeletons, mutated by cosmic rays. Pseudo-science is the bedrock on which comic books are based. If you have reached your limit I can understand. I start humming to myself when they start talking about the science. It’s easier that way.
Sorry to go back to this. Do you know of anything indicating that it is from NBC? The only myspace page I see officially from NBC is this one. What sets off my bullshit detector is how heavy handed the profile was. Priscilla and Hedwig? Now that he is inned did they change it to Rambo? Maybe you can link to the pages in question. I’m not a myspacer.
Theory: Jessica isn’t dead. Niki is. Niki is an alternate ‘repressive’ personality of Jessica.
No particular evidence to support this one, but it’s the sort-of twist that I’d expect.
Speaking of twists… I avoided this show like the plague because I heard it wasn’t bibled- that the stuff isn’t really planned in advance, and when you have such a complex storyline with so many diverse characters, it means continuity errors sneak in (and I hates me some continuity errors. Let’s start with Claire’s age…). Sadly, my comic-book-geek-ness and the excellent use of cliffhangers has drawn me in.
I -am- getting a little peeved about the ‘adding more metahumans every other week’ thing they seem to be doing. Hey, writers? Tie up some storylines, PLEASE?! Otherwise, you may start getting the same disatisfaction that people are starting to get for Lost. Thank you.
Once again, Claires age is not a continuity error, its just not possible to make an underage public myspace profile. Unless there was something in the show saying she was older, which i dont remember, then her age has always been 16.
Here is Zach’s myspace profile, still showing Rocky Horror and Velvet Goldmine and other queer favorites on his movie list and still listing his sexual orientation as “not sure.” I don’t know if there’s a way to determine if a myspace page was created by a corporate entity or not so I am unable to prove that NBC created the page.
Ok. I found it on my own too. I’m not digging my heels in and saying it isn’t. I don’t know either way. Unless proven otherwise it shouldn’t be used as a cite for anything. If it was created by NBC then they did a shitty job. Both pages are boring as hell and give no interesting information.
I agree - AED did say something along those lines, and my friend I were speculating the same thing - that the fire was actually started by Meredith in an attempt to escape AED’s crew.
(The moment she lit her cigarette both me and my friend shrieked in glee. This show is turning us into 10-year-olds!)
The cardinal rule in the science fiction world is you are allowed one leap (and it can be a heeeyuge one), but that leap must be consistent and explained properly within the parameters of the show. They’re using human mutation as their leap; that’s fine, but they should now give us some proper backstory and keep it consistent within their own show. They would have been better off to explain it without using something that exists in real life, so all us fanboys (and girls) wouldn’t be cringing so much.
Giving a little serious thought to the Niki/Jessica character, she is a hero - she has a genetic mutation power, but we don’t actually know what it is yet. Her sister is dead, as far as we know. There appears to be two women in one body, rather than two personalities, as we’ve seen from her reflection, but how that works is still a mystery. Niki/Jessica has the potential to be a very interesting character - what would happen if someone killed her when she was Jessica? Would that kill both, or just the powerful Jessica? Can they be split apart again or completely integrated somehow? Is her superpower absorbing dead people?
I believe you are reading too much into it. I have said it before, this is not a very twisty show. What they show you is what it is. Jessica died, she was killed by her father. Niki created the persona of Jessica as a defense mechanism against her father’s abuse. When her powers started to manifest they stayed with the Jessica side because that is the strong personality, the one that always protected her. There is a mental block keeping Niki from using her powers, not a physical one. There is only one person with another personality formed because of childhood trauma. Now that Niki is starting to understand this she will probably integrate Jessica and her powers into herself. It has already started, she broke the baton as Niki.
As for the leaps of faith, this is a comic book. It is not serious science fiction.
Just wanted to put on record before next week, my wife’s immediate reaction was that Nathan is Claire’s father. I agree with her. Adrian Pasdar is 42 so it could easily be him.
Niki’s father reacted to Jessica’s being present in Niki’s body. If the surviving sister were Jessica and Niki were the alter, he wouldn’t have responded as he did. All of the dialog in their scenes together support that Jessica’s dead.
Plus, there’s that tombstone with Jessica’s name on it.