Heroes

[ivyfic]

Here is the problem with Heroes so far this season. (Yes, the one problem. Um.) They love their alternate future timelines. But by throwing so many of these alternate timelines at us, they have no burden of making the stakes in those timelines matter. In other words, we know these events are getting etch-a-sketched out, so I really don’t care all that much about them. Unless they were showing us something really cool (like season one, the moment where future Peter realized future Nathan was Sylar—that was awesome) I don’t have any reason to actually care about what’s happening.

Not to mention that by jumping four years into the future, they have no need to actually show continuity in the characters. People change, sure, but since they aren’t even trying to show us how these characters changed, it ends up being completely out of character. The changes aren’t organic or justified, and I don’t trust that if they went back through the intervening time they could make them so. They’re just radical changes to be shocking. And that kind of shit gets old fast.

Also, “I make bad decisions.” Truer words were never said, Peter.

I have discovered that I can watch current Heroes on Netflix--no need to ever have a copy of the episode on my hard drive. Yay for that. Wouldn't want to give the show the disk space. (But for some reason I can't get Pushing Daisies to play. Curses.)

Comments

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

There have also been about twenty million, billion different futures shown in this season alone. By the time Future!Peter mucked everything up, he should have gone back to his time only to find it was different. He said the problem was people learning about supers and that the world went to shit when Nathan spilled the beans. Okay, Nathan didn't do that. Now why is his future still the same? Why is it ALSO DIFFERENT!? Why is it normal-ending-in-explode-y when Sylar paints it but it's all concentration camps and death squads when he left it?

It's the same, except not??

There's something to be said for shocking the audience with glimpses of a future they don't understand--like first season Smallville where Cassandra saw Lex Luthor in the white suit, black glove, and rain of blood. It was hardly what Lex was at the time, but it was awesomely, promisingly ominous and enough like him to make sense. The futures we've seen on Heroes have produced few, if any, changes of character that we can understand from their character now. Exceptions being Matt and Nathan because this show has never known what to do with them, and it still doesn't, so they're still floundering. (In fact, the best Future!Nathan was Sylar.)

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

That vision of Lex was entirely different though--to readers of the comics, they would recognize what Lex actually was. President, missing hand and all. So it was linking this youthful (more) innocent Lex with the supervillain that everyone watching the show was supposed to know about.

You're right about them having multiple futures that they haven't shown the differences between. It really doesn't make any sense anymore, and they keep insisting on keeping Peter and Nathan apart, which we all know is just a bad idea.

Also, Parkman seems destined to be somebody's wife, whatever season of the show it is.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I realized after posting that, hey, when you know where the continuity is going, it's okay to pull a few WTF! rabbits out of the hat. Heroes has no such luxury since it's evident that they don't know from one season to the next (and, in this season, one episode to the next) where the F they're going.

Peter is only mildly tolerable, and even then, only when Nathan is around to belittle him for being a dumb shit. Here's hoping his other brother continues that tradition or kills him. I don't care which.

Matt Parkman is the show's whipping boy. Mohinder--the indecisive, sometimes champion of humanity now turned into a monster--has more to do in an average episode than Matt. Hiro is joining him in that category. Somewhere, lost in time, Future!Badass!Hiro is debating going back and aborting himself to put Hiro out of his misery.

[tirtzah.livejournal.com]

Ugh. I am swiftly losing interest in Heroes, for the reasons you stated and so many more. They are just letting the story get way out of hand and I don't care much what happens any more. Sigh.