TV Quote of the Week

Didn't I throw you out a window?
--Ali Larter, Heroes, "Landslide"

TV Quote of the Week

They can't just leave viewers hanging like that. Firefly had a movie to wrap things up. Buffy the Vampire Slayer continued on as a comic book. Heroes lowered their quality season by season until we were grateful it ended.
--Jim Parsons, The Big Bang Theory, “The Closure Alternative”

TV Quote of the Week

Who needs God when you've got me?
--Ali Larter, Heroes, "Godsend"

Comic Book Image of the Week

Oh, no! Not Sylar?!

On second thought, this image was drawn long before anyone conceived of the TV show Heroes. And one suspects that character on the cover could beat Sylar with one arm tied behind his back. Though if they ever make Alan Moore's Miracleman into a movie, I would not be a bit surprised if Zachary Quinto (the actor who played Sylar) ended up playing this character as well.

TV Quote of the Week

I hate heroes.
--Zachary Quinto, Heroes, "Eclipse -- Part I"

TV Quote of the Week

You'd be surprised what a father would do for his daughter.
--Jack Coleman, Heroes, “Cautionary Tales”

Pensamientos Acerca de Televisión

Heroes: “An Invisible Thread”

I was going to post something about every Heroes episode that aired this season, but I kinda lost interest after the season finale and it's not like the episodes were inspiring my best thoughts anyway.

I wish I could say that the third season of this series was an improvement over the second, but no, not really. If anything, it seemed even more disappointing than the last season because neither the writers nor the characters seem to have learned anything. And the entire show seemed to have lost direction altogether.

Moreover, the writers appeared to have lost interest in any character on the show who is not Sylar or Noah Bennett. Even Claire Bennett -- whom I had thought to be a popular character -- is not getting all that much decent dialogue and don't get me started on the increasingly tiresome Petrelli brothers, Peter and Nathan.

While I had liked to think that former writer Bryan Fuller's return to the show was going to improve things, all it really appeared to have changed was to produce yet more emphasis on everyone's favorite supervillain Sylar. Indeed, even when the show has an inspired idea, it appears to refute said idea by the next episode. Has Sylar reformed? No, he didn't. Does Angela Petrelli tell all? No, she doesn't. Does Hiro get his powers back? No, not quite.

And most insulting of all, so-and-so is killed. But wait, another character -- who just happens to have shape-shifting powers -- is being hypnotized to take his place. Never mind that such a twist doesn't make any sense to anyone who's not a staff writer desperate to prevent the loss of a single cast member. (And, btw, just where were these staff writers when they killed off one of my favorite supporting characters earlier this season?) That's what the writers decided and that's what we're going to get.

I would be so surprised if this show had much of an audience next season. And, sorry, trying to bribe me with the image of a naked blonde at the end of this episode is not going to make me change my mind about this show, guys.

Pensamientos Acerca de Televisión

Heroes: “The Eclipse -- Part 1” and “The Eclipse -- Part 2”

The eclipse is a lonely child. It's waiting by the door...

Okay, that last paragraph doesn't really mean anything but it makes about as much sense as anything that happens in this episode.

This time out, a solar eclipse takes away every super-powered person's powers and gives Noah Bennet his first real chance to kill Sylar since the show began. However, you know what they say about things that are too good to be true...

And yes, it's not much of a spoiler to guess that everyone eventually gets their powers back.

Pensamientos Acerca de Televisión

Heroes: “Eris Quod Sum”

Should I consider it evil of me that the first thought that came to mine when I saw this episode's title was the old Xena character Discord -- whose name in Greek is, of course, Eris?

And what the hell happened to Janice, the original spouse of everyone's favorite telepathic ex-cop, Matt Parkman? Is she not going to appear on the show anymore or did the producers decide that blonde supersprinter Daphne is more photogenic?

And speaking of Parkman, anyone else get the feeling that “Didn't I throw you out a window” is going to become a running gag for this show? Apparently it's now The Defenestration Show. Tune in next week to see who else gets thrown out a window...

And anyone else wonder if the producers have a same-sex subplot in mind for Claire the ex-cheerleader and Elle the electric girl? Of course, it could just be wishful thinking on my part but stranger things have happened. However, I doubt they're going to go in that direction.

However, it does seem like someone on the production staff has a thing for blondes almost as serious as Nathan Petrelli's. And incidentally, his wife appears to be seriously AWOL as well. (Maybe she's sharing a timeshare with Janice Parkman.)

And given that Matt Parkman has already proven capable of involuntarily reading someone's thoughts (look what happened with his wife in the show's first season), the decision to have Daphne pretend to go along with Matt at Arthur Petrelli's request seems really, really stupid.

Anyway, the most shocking thing I found about this episode was the Viagra ads that were being shown during the show on the NBC site. Apparently they're trying to vanquish whatever family audience that still remains after first season's stripper mom subplot. Good thing we live in such a Puritanical society...

Pensamientos Acerca de Televisión

Heroes: “Dying of the Light”

An episode in which it is discovered that second season villain Adam is just as unpopular with the writers as he is with me.

And in which it is discovered that even veteran character actors like Robert Forster can play surprisingly boring villains. Though I suppose that his character, Arthur Petrelli (father of Nathan and Peter, natch), does earn a prize for being the one TV character this season who's most unlikely to get a Father's Day card.

Pensamientos Acerca de Televisión

Heroes: “One of Us, One of Them”

Hilary ensues when Noah Bennet is forced to work with Sylar, the man who attacked his daughter Claire, in order to track down dangerous supervillains. Okay, it doesn't but I suspect that the Sylar-like writers had such a thought in mind.

Meanwhile, Claire gets self-defense lessons from her biological mother, Meredith, who is using her pyrokinetic abilities to play bodyguard while Noah is gone.

PresentPeter gets his body back but also gets a vision of the future.

And Tracy visits Micah Sanders, who thinks she's his mother. She isn't.

Pensamientos Acerca de Televisión

Heroes: “The Butterfly Effect”

Claire Bennet, the cheerleader whom Sylar symbolically raped in the last episode, is now acting like Seventh Season Buffy, what with the angst and the “I can't feel anything” and so on and so forth. Considering what happened to her in the last episode, this is understandable. Yet, apart from a conversation with her mother, she doesn't seem to be getting much sympathy from anyone.

Meanwhile, FuturePeter (the Peter Petrelli from a distant future) is still messing things up, PresentPeter (the Peter Petrelli from our present time) is trapped in the body of an imprisoned supervillain, Nathan Petrelli is seeing dead people, Tracy Strauss is discovering her superpower at the worst possible time, and Elle is trying to make her father proud by tracking down Sylar. Only Sylar tracks down her father first and almost kills her.

Sylar ends up being captured but in the process, Elle accidentally knocks out the electrical system in Level 5 of the Primatech Paper facility where supervillains are imprisoned, and as a result, a trio of nogoodniks gets away, taking PresentPeter with them.

Hiro and Ando do their damnedest to track down the mysterious blonde girl who stole the secret formula in the last episode -- a blonde girl who looks almost like Elle but isn't and who goes by the name of Daphne -- but don't have much luck.

Angela Petrelli takes over Elle's late father's position as the head of the Pinehurst facility and decides to talk to the imprisoned Sylar. Only to reveal to him that he is actually a member of the Petrelli family and that she is his mother.

And the poor guy didn't have a chance to buy a Mother's Day card. I just knew he'd pay for that Claire Bennet attack in some way...

Pensamientos Acerca De Televisión

Heroes: “The Second Coming”

The second season of the series seemed devoted to proving that the show's top villain, Sylar, could be as much of a bastard without his super-powers as he is with them. So much so that it seemed genuinely disappointing to see the guy get his powers back at the end of the second season since he was certain to become an even bigger bastard with such powers than without them.

So in the first episode of the current season, the show's writers waste no time in proving me right. One of the first things Sylar does in this episode is symbolically rape one of the most likable female members of the cast. Nor did he get punished for this act. Instead, he walks away to live another day.

In other scenes, Senator Nathan Petrelli ends up being shot by a mysterious figure that turned out to be his own brother Peter. Actually it wasn't his actual sibling who did the shooting but a sibling from the far-flung future. A future in which Clair Bennett has dark hair and does evil things and Future Peter is genuinely unpopular with his fellow heroes.

Meanwhile, Niki Sanders -- who was last seen trying to rescue her son Micah and his cousin Monica from a burning building -- is now apparently dead. But wait. In Washington, D.C., there's a mysterious blonde woman named Tracy Strauss who looks just like Niki. You don't suppose...

As for Hiro and his friend Ando, they uncover a mysterious secret formula entrusted to them by Hiro's late father. So naturally they lose it.

Pensamientos Acerca de Televisión

Heroes: “Angels and Monsters”

The writing goof I most love on this show thus far:

It's been established that Maya -- a character who can kill a village full of people without lifting a finger -- has a tendency to inadvertently kill people when she's under stress. So naturally another character yells at her a lot...

Plus how exactly do you capture someone who can kill you without lifting a finger? For a modern-day poison damsel, Maya is remarkably useless at defending herself. I appreciate the fact that the show's writers chose to include a Hispanic character in the show. I just wish the character had been a better one than Maya.

For that matter, I must confess I'm not exactly pleased to see the return of Adam (one of my least favorite characters from the second season) but then I wasn't pleased to see everyone's favorite nogoodnik Sylar get his powers back last season and thus far Sylar's story arc is going better than I thought it would.

Predictions:

The conflict between Meredith (Claire Bennet's birth mother) and Claire's adoptive mother will work itself somehow -- hopefully without a big sacrifice on Meredith's part.

We'll see Tracy's hermana Barbara sometime before the end of the season. Probably on the side of the bad guys. And she better not be in the same business as her deceased sister Nikki. Although I wouldn't mind seeing Jessica again. As unlikely as that would be...

One of the writers of this show is going to admit to having one hell of an Oedipus complex...

TV Quote of the Week

The people I love are not distractions.
--Milo Ventimiglia, Heroes, “Distractions”

All the TV Shows That I Have Seen

1. Burn Notice: The First Season.

An USA cable series about an ex-CIA agent who does good deeds for a fee while trying to figure out why he was blacklisted from the CIA. It sounds like The Equalizer: The Next Generation but it is much better than that. The series also stars Gabrielle Anwar as a "trigger-happy ex-girlfriend" and Bruce Campbell as a former comrade-in-arms.

2. Eureka: The First and Second Seasons.

A TV series produced by the SciFi Channel but unlike most SciFi productions, this show is actually very good. Colin Ferguson stars as a former U.S. marshal who gets drafted to become the new sheriff of a small town that specializes in government science projects. Easily the best science fiction program I've seen since Firefly though considering how few such shows I've seen since then, that's not saying much.

3. Firefly: The Complete Series.

A Joss Whedon show that really is as good as you've heard. Advertised as a Western in space but way more complicated than that. More successful on DVD than on the small screen and the obvious inspiration for Serenity.

4. Heroes: The First and Second Seasons.

A show about -- surprise, surprise -- superheroes that started off promisingly at the beginning of the first season and then went downhill. The second season almost made me give up on the whole thing in disgust.

All Politics Is Loco, Parte IV

Heh. I actually saw someone wearing a "Vote Petrelli" campaign button last week and I was actually tempted to ask him where he got it.

Not that I particularly hate both of the current presidential candidates enough to cast such a write-in vote -- but it is tempting.

Pensamientos Acerca de Televisión

Heroes: “Genesis”

You just gotta love a TV show in which the first scene reminds you of the beginning of Run, Lola, Run.

Random Thought

Should I not find it more than a little scary that a recent amor de mi vida looked more than a little like the Ali Larter character on Heroes?

Save the Cheerleader, Save the World?

As if the Bring It On set doesn't have a big enough problem with vanity as it is...