Heroes #25:An Invisible Thread/Season 3/2009

[Psionicist]

The first season of Heroes was completely awesome in my opinion. Best show ever. The second season was not so good, but enjoyable. So I was really pleased with the first few episodes of the third season. Really good.

Unfortunately, somewhere in the third season things got much worse, and the last few episodes have been especially unwatchable. I think this season finale was okay though - at least the first 30 minutes.

My hope is the next season will be better, the old writers and Sylar/Nathan can be interesting. Of course, the writers have much to live up to know, they basically sacrificed this season finale just for Sylar/Nathan. If Sylar returns the first few episodes I will be disappointed.

 

[Felon]

So who is this Chuck character?

And could someone explain to me why they didn't resurrect Nathan with Claire's blood like they did a while ago with Noah? He got shot in the freaking eye and recovered.

It might be Claire just wasn't able to get to him in time. Maybe the tissue has to still have some trace of life?

As to Peter impersonating Nathan, I think it's a matter of a long-term impersonation. Peter gets to live his life, rather than spending the rest of it disguised as Nathan. And Sylar brainwashed is likely a better Nathan than Peter just shamming.

 

[WhatGravitas]

There were a lot of scenes I liked. Claire in "action", Sylar as usual. The way they tricked Sylar was well done, too. But then... They have the protagonists come up with a really bad plan and have them believe that could work.

It is the problem that plagued Heroes since the end of the first season: Great characters with a bad plot and mediocre pacing.

Cheers, LT.

 

[rowport]

My girlfriend and I are done. Not showing the big fight? Completely contrived reason to keep Sylar around (and utterly idiotic to boot)? All of the usual stupidity? We're done. If we hear several episodes into next season that it's suddenly gotten good then maybe we'll check it out, but we're not going to keep watching something we're just not enjoying...

That was it for me, too.

A superhero show that does not show the big fight after building up to it most of the season? In the *finale*??

'Nuff watched. Meh.

Face front, true believer! 'Nuff said!

 

[rowport]

Or, they could have just sort of had him magically resurrect himself, like they did last season. You know, when he rose from the dead and had a never-explained, born-again religious conversion? For two episodes, before it was forgotten about?

Feh.

You know what I'd do to save heroes? Start season 4 off normally, with the usual oversights and conveniently-forgotten plot points, and all that. 'Round about the 4th episode, it starts getting really bad...obvious inconsistencies between scenes from earlier in the episode, people acting completely out-of-character, etc. Cut to a scene of Peter (with scar), Matt, Sylar, Ando and badass Future Hiro, in Isaac's loft, enveloped in Red Lightning, all staring with grim concentration somewhere in the middle distance. "I can't hold it together any longer!" shouts Peter, through the Parkman Mind-link.
"You HAVE TO!" Sylar shouts back.
"There's been too much damage to the Space-time continuum," snaps Hiro. "At this point even if we..."
Hiro is drowned out by a sound effects crescendo and a lot of shaky-cam as, our heroes screaming, the scene cuts to black.
Post-commercial break, it's revealed that when Hiro appeared to Peter back in time, they broke the space-time continuum with some kind of paradox, and the past 2 seasons have been the future-heroes trying to splice things back together, with increasingly frayed and jumbled results. From that point, either each of the Heroes get shunted off into their own stable reality, and has to figure out the lay of the land in the world they've found themselves trapped in, or all the gang gets shunted, Quantum Leap style, to a new world and a new plot every couple of episodes.

You explain away the bad stuff that lead up to that point, and can focus on the parts of Heroes that have worked the best...the discovery and exploration stages.

I dunno. I still like the show, but I don't feel too bad if I miss it, anymore, either.

Well, this one seems a bit over the top. I am not sure if you are totally serious, or just making the point. The general idea about clearing away the deadwood somehow is a good one, though.

There is so much leftover garbage from dropped plot lines. What happened to Peter's Irish girlfriend? Where the heck is Nathan's wheelchair-bound wife (and kids??)? What happened to all the heroes/villains who drop in and out in an episode or two? Where does the rest of Claire's family disappear all the time-- heck, even Sylar joked about forgetting Lyle in the *show*!

For that matter, I personally find that as many of the characters have "grown" they have become less likable to me. I much preferred the kind-hearted Peter to the scowling bada** version. Claire as cheerleader (who took a job in the comic shop for... 5 minutes??) is better than as whiner. Mohinder is an idiot. Matt is aimless. Hiro is... wow, I dunno, his variety of uselessness and silliness changes so often now. Honestly, I only like Sylar, HRG and Ma Petrelli as recurring characters anymore.

Frankly, I think that is the real problem. Turning a show about normal people discovering how powers change their lives became a soap opera about the Petrellis. And, like a soap opera (or Friends, Melrose Place, etc.), there are only so many ways for the same characters to interact. No wonder stuff gets confusing and forgotten.

Bummer, really. The show had serious potential but lost its way entirely.

 

[Blastin]

As much as I have been forcing myself to continue to like this show I just can't do it anymore. As has been mentioned multiple times already: Should have used Clair's blood to revive nathan and killed Syler. But they chose this shtick. I'll wait till next season is done and see if it was any good and watch it on dvd if by chance it bounces back.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

It might be Claire just wasn't able to get to him in time. Maybe the tissue has to still have some trace of life?

As to Peter impersonating Nathan, I think it's a matter of a long-term impersonation. Peter gets to live his life, rather than spending the rest of it disguised as Nathan. And Sylar brainwashed is likely a better Nathan than Peter just shamming.

He wouldn't have to pretend to be Nathan for long. They could have fabricated his "death" after he had settled things. ("Complications from his gunshot wounds. It was a surprise to all of us, he seemed perfectly fine!" ("Remember when he disappeared for a while? He had cancer. And it came back. Hard.")

---

Just thinking back to the episode:
Angela Petrelli saying "I can't lose my son like this!".. Really? But you can keep it as a Sylar fake? The murderer of your son pretending to be your son? That works for you?

 

[Brown Jenkin]

But this way Sylar can have multiple personality disorder again. Sigh

 

[Krug]

Not showing the big fight was really lame. And Nathan dying... again? and not being saved by Claire? What the heck is it with this? Can't they keep their own universe consistent? Frankly I think an even shorter season would help. Please next season, not Sylar again. It's like Batman fight the joker every issue. After a while it gets stale.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

I still think it has great potential and I want to see it do well. But the writing has sucked so severely since the close of season 1. That, I can actually forgive. Hey, they ran out of time, they ran out of money. Mistakes made, lessons learned. But since then the show has struggled so desperately. It's like each week they're swinging for the fences to finally knock something out of the park but hitting foul after foul.

The earlier part of this last season was almost worse than season 2. When I start to realize that _I_ could write better episodes or at least write a more interesting plot arc then people are being CRIMINALLY overpaid. Stupid plots and character decisions that wouldn't fly on Saturday kids shows; COMPLETE lack of consistency of not only plot but characterization [geez, EVERY FREAKIN WEEK Sylar swings from wanna-be-good to love-to-be-bad as predicatably as a clock pendulum]; REPEATED introduction of new characters bloating the cast of a given episode - some more interesting than "main" characters", only to see them killed or simply FORGOTTEN. OMG the offenses go on and on.

I think I said a number of weeks ago that by the end of the season it'd be make-or-break. But once again they've done such a feckless job they can't even make it easy to decide to abandon the show for good. Oh well. We wait til next season then I guess and see what happens.

 

[Arnwyn]

I thought the final episode was okay. Stupid, but less stupid than other episodes. Keeping Sylar around in this ham-fisted manner sucks, all the missing threads (mentioned multiple times by multiple people in this thread), etc still hurt the show, but it was okay because - as another poster mentioned - stuff happened and it moved along.

Though not showing the big superhero fight in the season finale could almost be considered insulting...

Oh, I think folks are a little too hard on this show....and a little too easy on Chuck.

If they just played up the elements of comedy, would all of the "dumb" stuff suddently be forgiven as farce?

If the show took itself a whole lot less seriously, then yeah - I suspect it would get a few more passes a little more often.

But Heroes tries not just to be serious, but deadly serious, almost all the time. Trying to be that serious with crap writing will get a show slammed. (Rightfully so, I might add.)

 

[Banshee16]

There were a lot of scenes I liked. Claire in "action", Sylar as usual. The way they tricked Sylar was well done, too. But then... They have the protagonists come up with a really bad plan and have them believe that could work.

They could have at least just killed off Sylar after he has done is part at fixing the company.

That they didn't show the fully fledged SFX battle.. I didn't care about that. That the characters had the brilliant plan that erasing Sylars memory and having him believe he is Nathan (did Sylar learn to fly?).

Ah, well, I suppose next seasons threads will be emptier, eh? I think I will still be watching. I still want to see what the characters will do next. But I am not seeing that they will actually come up with sensible, consistent plots.

For Sylar, it seems rather dangerous to keep him around, even with him "convinced" he's Nathan. Maybe they can't kill him, but they were evidently able to tranquilize him.

While he's out, put him into a dump truck or something, throw him in, and fill it with cement. Freeze it...then drive it off a pier or something.

What was unclear was whether Peter was only able to absorb one power (ie. shapechanging), or if he absorbed Sylar's ability to absorb powers....

We saw him shapechange, then when they grabbed hands, it looked like Peter drained Sylar's power, because Sylar was forced back into his old shape. So, did Peter get the ability to steal powers, and consequently all of the powers Sylar had, during the fight? Or, did Peter just steal the shapechanging ability during the fight, then when they shook hands, he duplicated Sylar's ability to steal powers (taken from Peter's father?).

Of course, Sylar still seems to have the ability to shapechange, and read memories from objects, as he's in Nathan's shape for the beginning of next season.

Very unclear.

Banshee

 

[Tilenas]

There is so much leftover garbage from dropped plot lines. What happened to Peter's Irish girlfriend? Where the heck is Nathan's wheelchair-bound wife (and kids??)? What happened to all the heroes/villains who drop in and out in an episode or two? Where does the rest of Claire's family disappear all the time-- heck, even Sylar joked about forgetting Lyle in the *show*!

Yeah, what the hell? Completely forgot about them. They probably all died in Iraq like Joe Swanson's kid on Family Guy.

Frankly, I think that is the real problem. Turning a show about normal people discovering how powers change their lives became a soap opera about the Petrellis. And, like a soap opera (or Friends, Melrose Place, etc.), there are only so many ways for the same characters to interact. No wonder stuff gets confusing and forgotten.

I hear they planned to renew the cast for every season but got greedy/chickened out because of S1's runaway success.

When I start to realize that _I_ could write better episodes or at least write a more interesting plot arc then people being CRIMINALLY overpaid. Stupid plots and character decisions that wouldn't fly on Saturday kids shows

That.

COMPLETE lack of consistency of not only plot but characterization [geez, EVERY FREAKIN WEEK Sylar swings from wanna-be-good to love-to-be-bad as predicatably as a clock pendulum]

That's just what makes him *tic*, he is, after all, a watchmaker! :-D

On the missing final showdown: They probably blew their budget on those two guys from Robot Chicken who played the comic book store employees.

Bottom line: Season 1 is enjoyable as a standalone mini series. Everything after that is only there because they couldn't pull the plug on this cash cow.

 

[satori01]

This episode has some pretty severe continuity errors:

1) Claire's blood Not being used.

2) Dr. Surresh being a PHD and not a medical doctor.....something Surresh stated explicitly in a season past....yet Hiro/Ando sure treated him like a medical doctor.

3) I am pretty sure that in the first episode of season 1 you see a picture of Nathan in the army. Yet for this season finale....Sylar said "you claim you graduated first of your class at Annapolis"....hmm wrong service Acadamy, unless a Marine.

4) Sylar does not fly. Now we saw him, possibly levitate in with his TK power...but as to powers we have seen him take...flight is not one. Kinda hard to impersonate a flying man, that revealed his power to the chief of staff and Secret Service, when you can not fly.
Sure you can say he stole it empathetically during the fight, or from someone else...but that is incredibly poor writting.

5) The US Government already has an organization called "The Company". I'm sure the CIA is fine sharing with a bunch of mutated freaks

The sad part is you see the writting staff struggling to fix the show, but it just does not feel organic. People feel there is too much Sylar....trap the unkillable man inside the personality of another character. Nathan Petrelli the character has gone stale, lets add a bit of Sylar and suspense on when he will blow.

Intellectually, these are not bad plot developments in theory, but the execution is off.

Moreover, they just brought back the Overpowered Peter () Problem, if he absorbed all of Sylars powers. Hiro being allergic to his own DNA is an incredibly unsatisfying answer/situation.

Can Ali Larter not die and stay dead?

Honestly I think they should reboot the show, and go with the original plan, every season is a new set of Heroes. If the writing staff ignores continuity then you feel cheated and the writers do not know their own show. If the show repeats too many old story lines, or uses the same tricks, then you feel like the show is going nowhere and has no clue.

Reboot completely, or the writing staff had better map out a 2 season arc and not half ass it.

For those that want Heroes cancelled, it is an NBC/Universal produced show, which means that it will be unlikely to get the axe first as it is in effect an in house production....however if they can not even show the big fight...what type of budget restrictions is the show under if for the season finale throwing people already and some levitation is the order of the day.

 

[LightPhoenix]

4) Sylar does not fly. Now we saw him, possibly levitate in with his TK power...but as to powers we have seen him take...flight is not one. Kinda hard to impersonate a flying man, that revealed his power to the chief of staff and Secret Service, when you can not fly.
Sure you can say he stole it empathetically during the fight, or from someone else...but that is incredibly poor writting.

I agree with most of your points, but I can't agree with this. How is Sylar using a power we know he has poor writing? The only thing that was poorly written was the fact that they didn't show the fight at all.

For example, suppose Peter and Nathan were actually getting the upper hand on Sylar. Sylar takes Nathan's power to escape, Nathan chases him but Peter can't because he can't fly anymore. It makes sense written out, but since they didn't bother to write it at all, that's the actual poor writing.

Can Ali Larter not die and stay dead?

Please no, I think she's one of the better actors on the show, especially since they tend not to overuse her.