Heroes Season 4

[dreamylittledream]

You're all miserable gits.

I thought it was ace...and after the dull fest that was the introduction to season two something of a triumph.

[mercenarri]

What a joke. What a fucking bore-fest. Even the editing was horrendous.

[sith]

Its not shit or good.

Just plain bizarre atm.

[vcassano]

Sylar can cut open brains, turn himself into base molecules, use Telekinesis... But he can't open a cupboard. Also why does Future Peter have a scar when he can regenerate?

[cassidy]

Sylar can cut open brains, turn himself into base molecules, use Telekinesis... But he can't open a cupboard. Also why does Future Peter have a scar when he can regenerate?

Cos it makes him look tough init.

Anyway I enjoyed the start to S3

The Hiro and Ando banter was as amusing as usual and overall the 2nd part set things up nicely for the rest of the season. Much better than most of S2 but still not a patch on 5 yrs on.

[vcassano]

Oh I did like the new painter. I can see he's clearly an attempt to recreate the Hiro childlike/charming view on American pop culture with his "Do you know Britney Spears?" but I liked the look of him.

[Droo]

Oh I did like the new painter. I can see he's clearly an attempt to recreate the Hiro childlike/charming view on American pop culture with his "Do you know Britney Spears?" but I liked the look of him.

A couple of things of note:

Suresh = The story from 'The Fly'.

The paintings (through time,. assuming parkman is in the future) = The 'bad wolf' graffiti from Dr Who.

There's more, I just cant remember.

[Kamatari]

Does anyone know how sylar takes the powers then? you see him playing around with the brain and "pop" something but its still not clear?

[Benji]

Downloading tonight, although i'll be watching it in HD next week, hoorah

[SeanR]

Does anyone know how sylar takes the powers then? you see him playing around with the brain and "pop" something but its still not clear?

he can "see how things work". all he has to do is take it apart.

I used to do that as a child. (the taking things apart to to see how they work, not cutting peopls craniums open.)

[Sabreman]

I doubt I'm going to continue to bother with this. I got through the first two seasons pretty quickly recently - the last few episodes of season 2 I did in one chunk in preparation for the new season. I just got more aggravated as the end of the second unfolded though, because this is a show where nothing that happens has any consequence. It's impossible for me to care about any of the characters or their fates, because anything that happens to them is reversible in one way or another. Anyone can die, any terrible fate can befall the world... just travel through time and fix it, or dish out some Magic Blood.

It aims for complexity but ends up being a directionless mess. Hell, it wouldn't surprise me if one of the characters woke up and found that the whole thing up to now had been a dream. It's that lazy and scrappy with its writing.

[cassidy]

I doubt I'm going to continue to bother with this. I got through the first two seasons pretty quickly recently - the last few episodes of season 2 I did in one chunk in preparation for the new season. I just got more aggravated as the end of the second unfolded though, because this is a show where nothing that happens has any consequence. It's impossible for me to care about any of the characters or their fates, because anything that happens to them is reversible in one way or another. Anyone can die, any terrible fate can befall the world... just travel through time and fix it, or dish out some Magic Blood.

It aims for complexity but ends up being a directionless mess. Hell, it wouldn't surprise me if one of the characters woke up and found that the whole thing up to now had been a dream. It's that lazy and scrappy with its writing.

You've just described the last 20 years of the X-men.

Oh is Jean Grey/Prof X etc etc dead again. Oh no they got better.

[Garwoofoo]

You've just described the last 20 years of the X-men.

And, to be fair, the last three years of Doctor Who.

[Clap Your Hands]

It's impossible for me to care about any of the characters or their fates, because anything that happens to them is reversible in one way or another. Anyone can die, any terrible fate can befall the world... just travel through time and fix it, or dish out some Magic Blood.

It aims for complexity but ends up being a directionless mess. Hell, it wouldn't surprise me if one of the characters woke up and found that the whole thing up to now had been a dream. It's that lazy and scrappy with its writing.

Totally agree with this. That blood thing has sucked all the drama out of the show and don't get me started on the bloody time travel paradoxs they casually throw in every season.

What they really need to do is just screw it all and show the descent from today into the horrible future dystopias they show, map it out for 2/3 seasons and just run with it. No more time travelling, no magic blood, no talk of destiny. Just the slow descent into a post apocalyptic wasteland. Then if they still have TV time to play with just do Dragon Ball Z style megabattles in the desert.

Plus they should of killed sylar off by now, he's good but he's fufilled his purpose in the show.

[mercenarri]

Its such a shame as the beginning of the show started off so well. The first few episodes of season one had me hooked because it was tackling human ability on a philosophical level. But the more they tried to answer those very initial questions, they further they spiraled downwards in plot lines.

I think the main problem with the show is they tried to handle way too many things at once. There are too many characters with super abilities. I would have liked it if they stuck with the initial few characters, and made only their story arcs more and more complex. Rather than introducing about 20 characters with super powers and having each of their arcs intertwine with one another.

The only thing I've found impressive so far with Heroes is the "can I really fly?" of Peter Petrelli at the very beginning, the initial freezing time from Hiro, and the latest Africa scene. Other than that its been nothing short of drivel.

When will Hiro travel through time and bump into Benjamin Linus?

[Gambit]

I liked it, but some stuff just made me do a Picard Facepalm.

The

Spider-Suresh

bit in particular was ridiculous. And the writers really need to actually create plots rather than rip them from comic books in the hope nobody will realise, the

jail break is the same as an Avengers comic I read last year, but with a limited budget, and the army of villains reminds me of a Sinister Six type of scenario.

But I suppose when creating a superhero TV show it's hard to come up with original content. Same goes for super powers.

Magnetism

, really?

The Ando and Hiro future bit was really good though. Especially Andos Hadoken style lightning. And surely the whole Suresh thing is leading up to some HULK SMASH.

[Jamieee]

Downloading tonight, although i'll be watching it in HD next week, hoorah

I can only see the second episode listed as 'simulcast in HD'. Looks like the first one is on BBC2 only.

[Smoothy]

Just finished watching the second episode. Personally I thought it entertaining, although I do agree with some of the massive plot holes (as someone already mentioned, Sylar not being able to open a cupboard was a real dumb one). There's some weird stuff going on plotwise too, like the complete giving away of the climax of Sylar and "Save the cheerleader, save the world" Claire subplot already, in a big anticlimax (didn't they spend two seasons trying to protect her).

Still, that Mohinda is a fucking lucky bastard! She's HOT!

[mprice]

So far this season... after the first episode I doubted I'd be able to watch any of this season at all. Got bored and watched the second episode today, found it to be marginally better but still shit.

It's like Kring took the criticism about there not being enough powers and said to himself, "fuck it, lets give them all powers and screw the plot, we can gloss over loopholes with flashy effects because people are really thick."

As someone already said, they should have stuck with a very limited number of main characters. To add to that they should have limited their powers and not had Peter as the "good" version of Scyler. They need to stop with the time paradox bullshit and introduce one solid believable bad guy/girl and have the core cast team up to take them down. At the very least that would give it some direction, and something to direct the budget at. It would also reduce the amount of writing needed, because that is fucking woeful as it is.

The longer they drag this on, the more painful it's going to get to watch. Just have Nathan wake up from a daydream before his Senate acceptance speach and be done with it.

[BossSaru]

In a series where two good guys (Hiro and Peter) can effectively beat every bad guy without any effort there is little drama. Every series could effectively end in five minutes by Peter locating the bad guy (did he ever absorb Molly's power?), stopping time, teleporting them to the middle of the Nevada desert, going nuclear, getting better, and going back home to continue perfecting his gurning in a mirror.

I imagine some long-term problem will limit the stronger characters, such as teleporting screwing up Hiro's health if done too often, or Peter's magic depending on him not getting a haircut. But I would rather a well-written series focusing on several weaker characters fighting a Sylar-style enemy than this mish-mash of strong and weak heroes with. Elle, Parkman and Claire could be cool but they will inevitabvly be overshadowed by a single heroic character who has all their powers plus more.

[smithstock]

In a series where two good guys (Hiro and Peter) can effectively beat every bad guy without any effort there is little drama. Every series could effectively end in five minutes by Peter locating the bad guy (did he ever absorb Molly's power?), stopping time, teleporting them to the middle of the Nevada desert, going nuclear, getting better, and going back home to continue perfecting his gurning in a mirror.

I made that point as soon as Peter's power was revealed in Season 1. Peter is always going to be better than Sylar, because he has everything Sylar has when he comes up against him and more. I think you are forgetting the fact he can go invisible too.

Which reminds me, this season won't completely win me over until Eccleston returns to reprise his role.

[mprice]

I think you are forgetting the fact he can go invisible too.

See, the problem for the writers/producers isn't what we forget, it's what we remember.

Since the start of the second season almost every cliffhanger or set piece has been spoiled by the fact that there are glaringly obvious workarounds for anything that can ever happen in the show. Someone dies, oh they can come back to life. Something in the way, oh I have super strength. I can't reach my frizbee that's stuck in a tree, oh I can fly.

The show as a whole has taken on an almost Superman-esq quality, there's an ability for everything and all the people with the good abilities know each other. Where it differs from Superman is that the only weakness of the characters is their seemingly endless stupidity, or the ineptitude of the writers.

If there's no suspense and little action it becomes a character drama, with the slight issue that all the characters here are shit.

EDIT: I think the best we can hope for is Maya, stung by Mohinder's rejection of her, goes on a rampage and wipes out cities of people, and all of the main cast. Then the Noah Bennet will shoot her in the head and they'll never make another series of Heroes and Kring will never get any work ever again.

[dfq23]

What happened to the girl who could do things she saw on TV and Nikkis son? Cant remember and cant be bothered to trawl through series 2 again to find out

[vcassano]

She isn't returning apparently.

[Gambit]

Good. She was awful.

[Barnard]

I made that point as soon as Peter's power was revealed in Season 1. Peter is always going to be better than Sylar, because he has everything Sylar has when he comes up against him and more. I think you are forgetting the fact he can go invisible too.

Which reminds me, this season won't completely win me over until Eccleston returns to reprise his role.

Ah ha! But if Peter is going to

keep being stupid and following strangers around, with no reason to do so, he won't be better than Sylar.

Last year it was the oirish and their oipods.. oh lets go rob a bank, you coming peter? ok!

This week with the escapees.. lets get out of here fat ugly man(Peter)! Ok!

Duh!

[Sideshow]

Also why does Future Peter have a scar when he can regenerate?

It's a visual device so the viewers can see that it is Future Peter.

Well, you did ask...

[Crusey]

like the complete giving away of the climax of Sylar and "Save the cheerleader, save the world" Claire subplot already, in a big anticlimax (didn't they spend two seasons trying to protect her).

I always thought they were only protecting Claire so that Sylar could be knocked off at the end of season 1, rather than needing to have her alive to save the World?

As some people have already mentioned it's started a lot better than Season 2 did. I would imagine some of the loose ends are going to be cleared up in the future but aren't most movies/comics/videogames full of glaring plot holes? Like why doesn't Bowser just lock the door to his castle rather than let Mario waltz on in? I know this doesn't excuse the show but, as throw away entertainment, it isn't bad. I'm enjoying the Hiro and Ando bits, the African dude seems cool, they haven't introduced any annoying kids (yet), that flying cheeseball that Claire fell for hasn't returned and Kristen Bell is still in it. If I started over analysing it (and the fact the show tries to be deeper than it is does encourage this) I would likely be annoyed at it.

All being said though, it does appear to be very similar to season 1...

[Meh]

Oh COME ON, it was fun.

[Sideshow]

It was alright, certainly not as bad as Season 2.