Heroes 10/08/07 - "Kindred"

Cafe Society
101

Personally, I detest Smallville. He’s an arrogant ass and I hope he ends up evil or dead because in his current form I find him boring. Of course, seeing how this show treats dead characters (with the exception of Ghost Dad) I would probably enjoy seeing him turn evil the most.

I don’t buy the puppy love stupidity of Candace for a second. It makes no sense and goes completely against her character from last season. I will admit that having Sylar alive is clouding my judgment because I find the idea of permanent heroes irritating. They need to realize that there is nothing wrong with killing characters off and leaving them dead. I suggest they start with Niki.

Out of curiosity, does anyone actually enjoy the Wonder Twins arc?

The producers seem to be borrowing the theme of one of my favorite shows Gargoyles in their tendency to prefer Star Trek actors. Nothing wrong with that.

102

They may be on to something here. If they got Niki and/or Claire with their shirts off I’d certainly stop noticing anything else and would tune in every week. :wink:

103

I would be more interested if they would make it to the US already. Moving 5 miles a day towards the border each episode with cops and random bad guys thwarting them at every turn is getting old REAL fast.

104

He seems to have absorbed that one from Papa Shaft.

I’m not enjoying it but I don’t have the naked hatred for it that others seem to have. I’m mildly interested in what will happen when they get to the US and learn that Papa Suresh is dead.

105

It says “Ando Open”. Clearly, successive generations of Japanese people have been too polite to open something not addressed to them.

106

There is something to the idea (perhaps mentioned upthread by another poster) that the words and paper do not appear until Hiro adds them in “viewer time”. For example, Hiro did not appear in the diner photograph with Charlie until the viewers saw that he should be there. This also explains why Hiro has not returned to the present, where Ando awaits him. In “viewer time”, Hiro is still in the past. And this also explains why Ando does not notice the words and paper until he did.

Granted, this requires viewers to turn off their logic centers, but the alternative is to either show Hiro in the past exclusively until it is resolved and he rejoins the present storyline (mere instants after he left!). This plot device works in movies where the time travelling protagonists carry the main plot. But it just doesn’t work in an episodic series with a varied cast, each with ongoing simultaneous plot points. To support this format, all the plot lines have to interweave within each episode, hence “viewer time”.

107

Okay, I thought of a possible explanation for the never-found notes in the sword:

What if the sword was basically ‘out of action’? Kensai’s sword is buried with him by his grieving widow, and not dug up for a looooong time. At which point it goes into the private collection of someone, say, a 19th century Englishman, who cannot read the inscription even if he notices it. The sword gets bunged into a curio cabinet and essentially overlooked until it gets sold to Linderman.

Hmm. Who no doubt has professionals to inspect/care for his purchases, so that person should notice… Oh, well.

Nevermind.

108

Gawd, you genre fans are such fucking WHINERS.

You want to see truly BAD television? Watch (or at least TRY to watch) Moonlight. Even when it’s spinning its wheels Heroes is WAY better than THAT crap.

Why is Hiro writing notes if he can just time travel? Open your fucking eyes, nitpicking whiners! He doesn’t KNOW if he can travel back to the right time and place yet, so he writes notes and sticks them in the sword because he HOPES Ando will find them. Even if Hiro does travel back to the right time and place (and of course he will) he couldn’t have known at the time that he was back in old Japan that he would be able to; he was covering his bases, or maybe he was just passing the time by writing to his best friend. Why is that so hard to understand?

West is annoying? SO WHAT?? Most high school guys are pretty annoying and arrogant and pretentious! It’s actually REALISTIC! A hot cheerleader who feels “special” but has to act like she’s normal and dumb meets a guy who is smart and a “bad boy” and falls for him, despite all logic? It’s EVERYDAY LIFE for a lot of people.

“Oh no, Sylar is on the LOST island now hardy har har!” Actually, we DON’T know that for sure, no more than we KNOW Candace is really dead, anymore than we KNEW Sylar or Peter or Nathan or Parkman was dead. Wait till the season continues to make your judgments!

“Oh, this sucks, I totally figured out blah blah blah!” SO WHAT? Much of what people “figure out” about storylines has more to do with an inherent knowledge of human nature and what makes SENSE (guy falls for girl, tries to impress girl) and a lot also has to do with fans being overly exposed to decades worth of movies and TV and comics and books that all strive to “break the pattern”. NOTHING is shocking, NOTHING is novel, and even if one DOES shock or innovate, it’s not enough because you can’t maintain that week after week. It’s so goddamn postmodern that it pisses me off.

Here’s what I’m REALLY pissed about this season:

Everyone, and I mean EVERYONE out there on the message boards that are snarky and whiny and bitching and it seems that no matter WHAT they do on Heroes they are NEVER going to be satisfied. I swear some of these people watch the show and must be taking down notes for things to bitch about. TURN THE CHANNEL! For those of us who are generally enjoying it but maybe have some complaints from time to time, it’s nice to be able to discuss an episode in a thread without it turning into a constant competition to see who can be the snarkiest, bitchiest malcontent each week. It’s more predictable and tiring than any bad episode of Heroes or Lost. It makes me want to make separate new threads on SDMB for the shows that declare it a “SNARK-FREE ZONE” where legitimate critique is welcomed but not the nonstop efforts to shit on everything about the show. I felt that way about the Lost threads last season, too. Yet Lost managed to build up to a much better second half of the season; three episodes in and people are trying to predict that Heroes is going to be canceled? Really? Give it a chance.

OK, I know I ranted and everything; sorry. I’m not THAT invested in the success or failure of the show, and I agree that this season seems to be needing a boost to really get the ball rolling. I’m not blindly in love with the show. Mostly I’m annoyed that we seem to be entering into a Culture of Snark where threads seem to turn into a competition to see who can come up with the most clever insults for shows. It’s becoming more tiring and predictable than the worst episodes of Lost or Heroes ever were.

109

I am among those who think that the Hoodie Killer is someone we haven’t met yet - Molly’s big baddie with the spooky eyes. I do hope we’ll somehow end up with a showdown between this villain and Sylar.

Interesting though, that I almost feel (after the Excellent Points everyone’s made) that we’re being led to believe that it’s Claude. Invisible, check. Able to possibly survive a long fall, check. Likes throwing people off buildings, and that building in particular, check. I would point out the fact that the build of the Hoodie Killer did not resemble Claude in the slightest, but that has never stopped this show. Early, silhouetted Sylar looked nothing like Zachary Quinto. However, doesn’t fit the character whatsoever - scratching up and tormenting Mama Petrelli? Claude’s more the type to just whack 'er upside the head and call it good, if he wanted to off her for some reason. Also he refused to " hunt (his) own people", why would that change now?

I like the theory that Candace isn’t really dead - makes a lot more sense than the alternative.

110

P.S.

And seriously, enough with the “Smallville” shit. We at least had an excuse with Noah Bennett, calling him HRG or AED or whatever the hell you wanted to call him, but we KNOW his name is West. He’s WEST. Any superficial resemblance he has to a character on ANOTHER genre show is irrelevant. Why don’t we make up nicknames for ALL the characters based on other genre shows? Claire can be “Buffy” and Sylar can be the “Big Bad” and Mohinder can be “Professor X” and…nevermind. I know I’m not going to stop it from happening. It’s just annoying the hell out of me lately.

111

Anybody remember how long Hiro was in the past with Charlie? I suspect it was longer than the day in the present that Ando was waiting for him, yes?

It doesn’t seem that if Hiro spends X days in the past, he comes back to the present X days later. So it is puzzling why Hiro has no expectation that he can’t just arrive back in the present minutes after he’d left. His time travel power is somewhat erratic, but he’s used it reliably before (e.g., with Charlie), so should have every expectation of doing so again – particularly after his training montage last season getting his confidence up.

Unless he’s deliberately planning for a time gap before returning to the present, to prevent any “Great Scotto!” moments of messing up the timeline…

Aww. You had me with all the delicious black bile, up until this part. Snark is great. More snark, please. It’s the incessant whining that’s the problem. If people are snarking, they’re at least engaged enough to pay attention for ridicule purposes. And, let’s face it – the show has its snark-worthy moments. But just the endless whining? God, wake up and realize you’re not enjoying the show. Find something else to do and put yourself out of our misery.

Word, on the “Smallville” crap, though. The resemblence isn’t even superficial – it’s wrong. West flies. Clark doesn’t. In fact, Clark not flying is the one thing that’s stayed constant about his character. Stupid, stupid comparison.

112

Hiro was not so accurate when he went back for Charlie. He meant to go back to the day before and ended up going back 6 months. Also I believe he ended up living those 6 months until time caught back up with when he left. Hence him walking into the cafe to the waiting Ando instead of just appearing.

Also in the episode, “5 Years Later”, at the end future Hiro tells Hiro that he needs to go back to the present and Hiro tells future Hiro that he is not good at time travel yet and future Hiro tells him that he will help Hiro send them back.

So Hiro staying in the past until he “fixes” it and makes Kensai the legendary samurai makes sense. He doesn’t want to go back to the present and tell Ando, “Hey, I am having a good time in the past. I’m going back now to continue the adventure so I’ll see you again in a couple of minutes.” because he is afraid he might not be able to get back to the past to fix it.

113

If you want snark, wait until 24 returns. That show is written with snark-factor in mind!

114

Alas, I tried watching 24, found it too annoying despite the ridicule value, and stopped watching.

And have been much happier for it, really.

115

I know the feeling. I watched the first episode of this season’s “Prison Break” and realized, the story was over at the end of last season and this was just stupid. No regrets.

116

You fool! You’ve swallowed their misdirection! Clearly the doctor they are REALLY going to see is Gregory House!

117

I’ve heard that there is a possible writers’ strike looming, so that could explain why the writing has been so sloppy if they’re distracted by that. I’m not thrilled with any of the storylines, but what really annoyed me were some of the stupid details.

Alejandro decides to steal a car, and picks one right on the friggin’ street in full view of everybody, including a cop. That was just egregiously stupid. At least have them go into an alley or something! Mexico isn’t so lawless that you could steal a car right on a city street in broad daylight and nobody would care, and of all the people around, one of them could be the owner. Maybe Alejandro’s power is colossal stupidity.

Claire and Stalker Boyfriend both just up and run out of class with nobody saying a word to them, and then he flies out from the middle of the courtyard with nobody seeing.

Irish Guys knock off the sports book without attempting to cover their faces.

Come on now. I’m willing to wait a little longer for the plots to really get cranking, but let’s at least make it a tiny bit believable.

118

Well, we now know that powers do repeat, so it’s not impossible that they all have the power of stupidity. ('cept maybe Angela, who’s awesome)

Let’s not forget Matt… who can’t get a little girl to tell him something, when his power is to read minds.

Or stalker West, who didn’t notice that the father of the girl who he is stalking is his abductor. (seriously. worst. stalker. ever.)

The Oirish gang, who opened up a crate to find their loot missing… and thought that the guy chained in the crate took it. Oi.

And then there’s Niki…

But is this really new to this season? I seem to recall everyone was pretty bone-headed last season ('cept maybe Claude, who was awesome). Mohinder’s botched kidnapping of Sylar… and then dropping off dead Peter at his mom’s house. Peter himself wasn’t too bright most of the season, even once he got his powers sorted out. Ted was pretty slow, Ando and Hiro were entertaining but not too bright. And then there was Niki…

The only one who really made me think “hey, that’s pretty clever” was Noah.

119

Yeah, maybe it was just that the plot was moving better last season (or at least the second half) that I didn’t really notice the idiotic blunders or they didn’t annoy me quite so much.

120

Amen. But, in truth, it’s Wes.