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Heroes: Hysterical Blindness

The carnival family of misfit superheroes has failed to capture my interest up to this point, and now it's never going to happen. Brigadoon? Really? They just lost me. Seriously. And I'm not just making a cute pun there.

Sylar's amnesia, his 'jamais vu,' was the most interesting part of the episode, and that's sad because they've reinvented Sylar too many times before. What more can they do with him? I'm also thinking Robert Knepper is going to be sorry he rescued Sylar from the cops.

The inconsistency with how Peter acquires powers is driving me bonkers. He's touched other super people and not picked up their power (like his mom, in this very episode), so I have been assuming he has to consciously acquire them. So how come he picked up Emma's by accident? What am I missing?

Putting the theme from The Greatest American Hero into the hospital scenes was a nice bit, but there were so many sounds as streams of color that it got repetitive and lost its impact.

Were there romantic vibes between Peter and Emma? I kept thinking subconsciously, no, he's taken, he's with Claire. Silly me.

Gretchen appeared to be the source of all evil, and then she turned into a harmless lesbian with a crush on Claire. Who is single, and not dating her uncle. Got it.

Last week's episode was so good and got me all hopeful. And now I'm in the dumps again, completely discouraged. Cheer me up, please. Tell me it's not as bad as I thought it was.

Billie
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Billie Doux loves good television and spends way too much time writing about it.

5 comments:

  1. I didn't think it was bad. A step up from last week in terms of moving the story and pacing, in my opinion. I think Peter's just that way. Remember in Fugitives he accidentally took Tracy's power too? It's possible he can take on powers if he's not mindful and if he doesn't know he's touching a person with abilities. The running scene was hilarious though.

    The duet scene was nice and all but it wasn't as great as I'd hoped. Emma playing the cello a few episodes ago was better. The carnival actually did interest me, because there's still so much to reveal about them and somehow the idea of a super family is kinda cool.

    I agree about Sylar, they've been reinventing him too many times. Though I must say this is a better twist than him trying to redeem himself. We all know he'll come back in the end but I think he should die by the end of the season. The writers can't have him collecting powers anymore after 4 seasons, it's just old. There's nothing left for him to do but give us one last (real) deathmatch with Peter (which might not happen since he's got just 1 power) and then die a spectacular death.

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  2. The fact that promotional pics and video were sent out concerning the lesbian kiss is really, genuinely embarrassing. Are we still doing the lesbian-kiss-for-ratings? Ugh.

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  3. The carnival scenes always gives me a bit of a "Carnival" vibe. (The show - and what an amazing one it is). I can't shake the feeling one of the writers either came from it or copied it.

    About Peter, he is an Empath. He's power is controlled by feeling. So every time there is a big emotion, say like saving someone from being buss pancake, it triggers.

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  4. I would like to congratulate myself for being right about that lesbian vibe last week! Sad to hear about the promotional thing, but that's just the stupid network. In the episode, I thought it was sweet.

    Sylar remains the weakest part of the series. Ever since the end of the first season, he has been completely useless to the big picture. The writers should have done what they had planned, and killed most of the original heroes off at Kirby Plaza. At least Sylar and Peter should have died there, as that would have concluded their story arc at a natural point, as well as solved the problem of their tendency to become overpowered. Then Hiro could have died somewhat later, when his quest for maturation had completed.

    This season should have focused on the carnival people from the beginning. Just make a clean break with the past, then reintroduce a few old characters, and kill them off one by one.

    All problems of Heroes stem from the absolute stand-still we have now because none of the characters are allowed to complete their story arcs and go away.

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  5. Exactly. I think you're right. The writers wrote the characters mostly with the first season in mind I think. So their stories were brilliantly done, their development slowly built up and they had a fulfilling story arc. But after that, they've mostly lost their purpose. The writers' one big mistake early on was to not account for future seasons, to design an overall story arc for their characters that spans multiple seasons. That's what they did for most of the Smallville characters, and it turned out OK in that aspect.

    Once some characters outlive their usefulness, they should either be written off or killed off. Mohinder should have kicked the bucket last season. Sylar is still nice to watch but in my opinion he's running out of relevance fast. This story should be his last. Hiro I believe was just a victim of bad writing, hopefully they'll redeem him this season even if it means killing him. Nathan should stay dead, and maybe Claire should die too. That would give HRG purpose at least, maybe a revenge arc.

    I think Tim Kring's original idea of an ever-shifting cast is a good one. Each season or two bring in new major characters and phase the older ones out slowly, one by one. Keeps the freshness and the mystery of new characters in the field intact, which is what a lot of people liked initially I think.

    This season so far is still OK. It's certainly not bad, not terrible. I'm hopeful.

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