Ok, Jessica is a “hot chick who kicks ass”. That’s great. If she were just Jessica, that would be cool. A hero who uses her super strength for bad, no problem. I actually think that would be great. Not everyone with super powers is automatically a good guy.
It’s whole split personality thing irks me. The whole looking in the mirror thing is really getting old. Niki’s character is awful. She’s supposed to look like a victim…broke with a gifted child, her husband is a bad guy who left her. She had to be an internet stipper for a living because presumably she’s too stupid to find other work. She stupidly borrows tons of money with no real way to pay it off. Aaack! She offends my sensibilities.
Glen Quinn had a drug problem. The shows creators never came out and said that’s why they got rid of him but I have a strong suspicion that is why he didn’t last the season. I don’t watch the other shows so I can’t comment on them. I will say that despite all of the wild conjecture about certain future plot elements *this * show usually follows the least twisty course.
I should say that I never heard Whedon or anyone else mention his personal problems as a reason. I don’t exactly sift through the internet for *Angel * news. I remember Whedon being very coy about the reason in an interview, or it may have been on a commentary track. I think it was after Quinn died so it seemed more like not wanting to speak ill of the dead rather than giving the real reason.
I am by no means an expert on the subject so feel free to tell me how wrong I am.
I’m pretty sure he jumps about 6 weeks into the future when he found Isaac’s body. He kept telling the cops it was early October and the date was November 8 (the day after Nathan got elected in a mudslide).
I have always heard that Doyle was slated to die from the start. The character was originally supposed to be Whistler from the S2 Buffy ep but the actor didn’t want to commit to a series.
Doyle was originally supposed to be Whistler, true, but Doyle was supposed to be a longterm series regular. Glenn Quinn had a nasty drug problem though, which led to problems on the set and they couldn’t continue with an unreliable major cast member. They hurriedly killed off the character and brought Wesley in to replace him. I don’t have any cites handy, but I was really into *Buffy * and *Angel * fandom. At first it was an open secret, and it was much less secret after Quinn died.
Yeah, diners not recognizing Hiro and the appearance of the Japanese phrase book are hard to reconcile. I figure it’s a result of the ripple effect of time travel. When Hiro first enters the cafe the likelihood of his eventual TT is minimal, so no one recognizes him. As he begins to interact with Charlie, some small ripples from the soon to be future past begin to take effect, resulting in Charlie having gotten a phrase book “for her birthday.” After Hiro jumps back in time, more ripples become evident to Ando, who has a unique perspective on what’s happening. Hiro’s picture appears on the wall, the other waitress remembers Hiro now. The more time Hiro spends in the past, the stronger the ripples get in the future (don’t think too hard on this). Hiro reaches a point where he realizes he never really could change the time stream in a significant way and at that moment gets yanked back to a present time and geographic location which prevents him from causing a rift. Ando and Charlie have spent the most time closely interacting with Hiro so they have the strongest awareness of changes in the time stream. Everyone else gets at most, a strange sense of deja-vu when Hiro walks into the diner several days after he’s mucked with everyone’s past - but only in minor ways the time stream can accommodate.
I figure Charlie had to die on schedule at Sylar’s hands or it would have thrown off Sylar. He doesn’t find Charlie so he goes and kills Claire a day early, or maybe waits around a few days and kills Claire a day or two later. In either case, events don’t converge such that Sylar gets captured. He’s still on the loose and he’s killed Claire and the world doesn’t get saved.
I tried calling him E-Sock but it didn’t catch. Mystery Sock is way cooler though and I vote for it.
I don’t hate Niki at all. I think the actress does a pretty good job of switching faces when she’s talking to herself. But, hot chicks who kick ass can be had a dime/dozen on TV and they don’t even need super powers. Show us how she rips bodies in half and make it interesting or I vote she can die.
Good point. It’s very common in comics that super heroes don’t really use their powers to their fullest potential. Maybe for fear of hurting an innocent or something. But it’s common for a villain with a strong will power to gain control of the hero’s body and use their powers in ways the hero never did, what with not having a conscience and all.
Moving on, I can see Isaac dying. They said they’re going to prove their seriousness by killing a hero and Isaac joined Hiro & Peter in the hero category when he finally jumped on the “save the cheerleader” bandwagon. But what good is he now? In a crisis, he’s the last person I want on my team. “OK everyone, let’s take a break and let me paint for awhile. The paintings may have nothing to do with the current crisis, but what the heck.”
Most useless and irritating power ever. He’s going to have to figure out how to produce visions of the future a heck of a lot faster. I’d rather have Niki backing me up in a fight.
Nathan is a possibility. He’s done some bad things and has failed to step up to the hero plate. Hiro has experienced loss now and Peter losing Nathan would be even more devastating. Maybe while Nathan is dying in Peter’s arms, Peter will permanently gain his flying powers. I will be very sad though.
That’s awful to hear about Doyle of Angel fame. I didn’t realize Glen Quinn died. What a shame. I think part of the reason I never really stuck with Angel was disappointment over Doyle’s demise. He was a big part of my watching every week.
The question then becomes whether Charlie knows this, and if so, how could she possibly? What in her interactions with Hiro in any of the presented timestreams would lead her to conclude “I must die on this day so that the person who kills me will not try to kill someone else instead of me, thus ending the world” or whatever?
In the alternative, if there’s some cosmic schedule that must be kept, that imparts to the space-time continuum a certain sentience that I’m not really prepared to accept in terms of this show, at least not based on what’s happened so far. They’ve been laying it on pretty thick with the watch and watchmaker metaphor though so I suppose there could be some cosmic Rolex but I can’t say as I’d be too terribly pleased if there were. I’m not a big fan of predestination adnwe already seem to know that the “Hereos” future is malleable.
It’s also just as likely, as you note, if Sylar was targeting Charlie, that her not being at the diner would have led Sylar to spend time searching for her, thus delaying his encounter with Claire and sparing jackie’s life. So by “dying on schedule” Charlie actually continued a chain of events that resulted in Jackie’s death. There’s also no reason to think that Sylar wouldn’t have been captured had he attacked Claire a day or two later. Eden and the Haitian would still have been there. Peter would have been there and Hiro would have had time to get there.
Why can’t DL be the one to die? As far as I’m concerned, he is neither likeable or interesting. And, as long as he is around, the Niki/Micah relationship is not as exploitable.
He’s only been around a few episodes, compared to the others, we’ve seen him use a power twice. Story-wise, it wouldn’t be so bad, but we don’t really know him other than as the missing dad.
Of course they won’t. The superhero genre is full of characters that don’t. Supervillains, in fact, generally lie rather thicker on the ground than superheroes. Even Marvel!New York which has the highest concentration of superheroes in comics has something like a 5:1 Villain:Hero ratio, at a guess.
Heroes changes that trend, but not by that much - 2 villains, 2 active heroes, a whole bunch of people who just want to try to live a normal life. Even within the context of the show, Jessica’s not exactly unusual.
Jessica would be supremely uninteresting without Niki. She would be just another of a long line of superstrong crooks with no personality whatsoever.
Well, other than watching the old 60’s tv show Batman and the Christopher Reeve Superman, I really have zero experience with the “superhero genre”. I don’t know what’s typical, different, or whatever for the genre. I just know I don’t like the Niki/Jessica character and her storyline at all. I’d like to see her gone. It won’t likely happen, but there it is.
As far as I’m concerned all three could go up in flames and I’d be just fine with it. Maybe I’m becoming impatient. This is really the first TV show of this type I’ve ever tried to watch regularly. I find it frustrating that there are so many characters with open storylines, unresolved issues, etc. You can go a couple of episodes without see this character or that one. There’s so much backstory we don’t know. My brain hurts! Fewer characters might help that. LOL!
Don’t get me wrong, I love the show. I’m guess I’m still just getting used to the style of it.
re: Hiro not getting recognized, analyzed Star Trek/Multiple timeline style:
Timeline 1: Hiro and Ando walk into a bar. No, sorry, that’s the wrong timeline. They walk into a diner. Charlie’s there, she was given a phrasebook for her birthday six months ago, Hiro helps her brush up her japanese, Charlie dies, Hiro goes back in time, and creates timeline 2. Due to his proximity to the effect, Ando is drawn into timeline 2 at the point in time he left timeline 1.
Timeline 2: Hiro walks into the diner, meets Charlie, gives her a book, gets his picture taken, falls in love, plans a big trip for Charlie which she doesn’t go on because Hiro teleported away and she’s kind of freaked out. Charlie dies of a brain aneurysm and her diner buddies put up a shrine to her. Ando appears in the diner at the appointed time and starts drinking coffee, not realizing he’s in a timeline where Charlie didn’t get murdered but instead died a natural death a week or so ago; the stress of losing Hiro caused her brain to go sproing. People here recognize Hiro, realize he’s been missing for a few weeks, and most importantly, nobody is freaking out about a bloody murder taking place in the back of a diner that is still serving food.
Do we know how long Ando was waiting before Hiro came back? It has to be at least a day, right? Hiro teleported out during the day, then Peter arrived that night, then it was day again when Hiro got back to the diner.
I would have to say, subjectively, it’s almost like Timeline 1 is better. If we can get past the violent death thing… at least Charlie’s power is preserved. If Sylar can be redeemed, then a part of Charlie lives on.
