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So, I just finished season 3 of Heroes. Thoughts under cut.
Immediate Post Finale Reaction:
WHY THE HELL DOES NATHAN DIE AT THE END OF EVERY SEASON!?!?
I mean seriously, in the first, he flew up with Peter so that the explosion didn't take place in New York City, without any healing abilities (like Peter) so its easy to assume he's dead. In the second season, he's shot in the chest. Now, his throat is slit by Sylar.
There's a bit of pattern here with him: start out good, go down wrong path, try to redeem himself, die.
I think we need a new plot for him.
Of course, he's dead now. So his plot is Sylar's plot. That's new I guess, however SERIOUSLY FUCKED UP it is. I mean seriously, these can get really really twisted, never mind the serious mother issues that we know he has and that he will take out on Angela, now we've got a Senator who is even more attracted to power, is addicted to it even. Also, his relationship with Claire can get majorly creepy, what with Sylar's obvious lust for her. And now he's supposed to take the place of her father? That's fucked up. I mean, I thought the incest ideas that Heroes seemed to inspire were already bad enough. (Though I suppose the Nathan/Peter Petrellicest could no longer be categorized as that. Still. Messed up I say.)
I bet Peter figures it out though.
Thoughts on the Season as a Whole
Well, I think that they took the comparisons between season 1 and season 2 seriously, because I definitely could see some season 1 things in there: the look into the future with the whole end of the world scenario, the one goal hanging over their head because of it, the paintings that showed the future were prominent again, and of course, Peter's hair. It grew back and became more emo again.
However, there were some DEFINITE ISSUES with this.
Though they start out with a disaster to avoid and motivate our characters, just like in season 1, it didn't really seem to be the focus of the show. Wherein season one we get more clues about what is going to happen as we go further along the season, giving us the sense of a mystery clearing up and strands of time being tied and untied, there wasn't much of that this time around. There was the first telling of it: the world starts buying and selling abilities to the public, Sylar is somehow good, Peter is a terrorist, Claire hates him, the world is going to split in half, but we never find out how all this happens. What causes the world to split in half? Sure, I know it is someone with an ability, but who? and why? Season 1 dealt with those things, made them interesting, and never as straightforward as you thought. In this season it was just kind of...left there, with out details or structure. It was too generic an event for me to care about it.
And the deal with Claire the Badass-Brunette. It would have been nice to see bits and pieces of how that came along, or to see Claire becoming more and more like that, getting into situations where she could possibly start to hate Peter as much as she did in the future, but that too is just kind of left there and not dealt with. Peter makes a comment about her remaining innocent, she worries for one episode that soon she won't be able to feel anything at all, and then it is never mentioned again.
The whole things just seemed sloppy and disorganized to me.
Then, there was Arthur Petrelli, who really annoyed me, and not just because in his second or so scene he killed off one of my favorite characters (I missed you, Adam!!). His power seriously pissed me off.
Okay, so this show is about people with all these crazy magical abilities, I know this. But still, there were rules to all this. People had these abilities because of genetics it was evolution, not being blessed by angels or praying to demons or saying magic words and calling on the power of the earth, the moon or the space aliens who visits wackos in their sleep. And because of this there was a limit to what people could do. There were consequences.
For instance, Peter, who had an ability much like his father's, couldn't handle the abilities the minute he absorbed them. He didn't get them and know exactly how to deal with them. If he did, then the whole plot of season 1 would have been moot since he was the exploding man in the show. But no, he had to learn to control, them learn how to bring them up to begin with (remember the whole think-about-how-Claire-made-him-feel thing?).
But Arthur, when he took these abilities didn't have to deal with any of that at all. I mean, if Maya, who had that ability for a while now, could barely handle it, don't you think it might overwhelm Daddy Petrelli just a little?
Maybe this is because he can only use the abilities for a little while after he takes them? Or perhaps he discards them after he takes them from someone? I don't know. It was never explained. Hence the annoyance.
And then of course there was Matt and his new painting ability, which didn't have anything to do with genetics at all. He met some cryptic African man with an ugly orange Universal Studios t-shirt, kept seeing the guy after he was dead and for some mumbo jumbo mystical reason, he can now paint the future.
WHICH, by the way, wasn't as cool as it was as in the first season. In the first season it was used as foreshadowing and to instill a sense of foreboding in the show. Now it's just used as a cheap plot device to get characters where the writer's want them without having to do some actual good writing to get them there. (Hiro and Ando's pointless trip to India, for example.)
ANOTHER ISSUE I HAD:
The character development. Many character's changed what they thought and believe in without any development taking place at all. Or if it did, it wasn't very much and there was some kind of weak explanation to go along with it. Like Nathan, who went from being proud and wanting to tell the world about people with abilities, to wanting to give everyone abilities to help save the world, to suddenly being back in denial and locking everyone with abilities up to keep the public safe from them. Major belief flips without very good explanations!
And then there was Sylar, who was like, bi-polar. He was all "I'm going to be good now," then "Ooops. No, I'm evil." and "I'm on the road to redemption. I can be different." then "Heh. Fell off the wagon. I'd say sorry about sawing off the top of your head and then burning your body, but I'm not really." Oi. I know his whole plot line is just one long identity crisis, but seriously!
Speaking of identity crisis, that scene where he shapes shifts into his mother was seriously creepy and disturbing, but I felt so bad for him when Micah caught him and he started to cry a little. I just wanted to hug him. *Huggles and pets imaginary Sylar*
This is getting really long, so:
MY LAST ISSUE:
I think splitting the series into two volumes was a bad idea. By changing the plot like that mid-season, they really slowed down the momentum of the show, and it started to drag in my opinion. I really think they needed to slow down at the beginning too. The whole pace of this season seemed off to me. It also made it hard to take the "disasters" coming seriously, since it seemed the writer's didn't take them very seriously. They just kept jumping from one thing to another.
RANDOM THINGS I LIKED:
Alex. Though he was only in two episodes I liked him much better than creepy stalker!West. But it could be I just have a thing for cute guys with glasses. ;)
Ando and Hiro. They were cute through out the whole thing. I loved that they got GPS implants to track one another, and that Hiro's password was "Ando." And the two of them with baby Matt was absolutely adorable--I especially loved the face Ando made to make the kid smile. I think I want an icon with it.
Sylar and Elle. I thought they were cute. Until he killed her and all.
How personal Sylar's obsession with Claire got. Wonderfully creepy, I thought. And I really wonder what she did to piss him off in the finale that he threw out of the room like that.
But I should leave it there because if I start going to into ships then this will be like, four times longer, and I probably won't be very nice. (Where did my MattMo go?!?!?) But I will say that though there were a lot of things that irked me about this season, I sill enjoyed it, but with the way it ended I don't have much hope for the next season.
Immediate Post Finale Reaction:
WHY THE HELL DOES NATHAN DIE AT THE END OF EVERY SEASON!?!?
I mean seriously, in the first, he flew up with Peter so that the explosion didn't take place in New York City, without any healing abilities (like Peter) so its easy to assume he's dead. In the second season, he's shot in the chest. Now, his throat is slit by Sylar.
There's a bit of pattern here with him: start out good, go down wrong path, try to redeem himself, die.
I think we need a new plot for him.
Of course, he's dead now. So his plot is Sylar's plot. That's new I guess, however SERIOUSLY FUCKED UP it is. I mean seriously, these can get really really twisted, never mind the serious mother issues that we know he has and that he will take out on Angela, now we've got a Senator who is even more attracted to power, is addicted to it even. Also, his relationship with Claire can get majorly creepy, what with Sylar's obvious lust for her. And now he's supposed to take the place of her father? That's fucked up. I mean, I thought the incest ideas that Heroes seemed to inspire were already bad enough. (Though I suppose the Nathan/Peter Petrellicest could no longer be categorized as that. Still. Messed up I say.)
I bet Peter figures it out though.
Thoughts on the Season as a Whole
Well, I think that they took the comparisons between season 1 and season 2 seriously, because I definitely could see some season 1 things in there: the look into the future with the whole end of the world scenario, the one goal hanging over their head because of it, the paintings that showed the future were prominent again, and of course, Peter's hair. It grew back and became more emo again.
However, there were some DEFINITE ISSUES with this.
Though they start out with a disaster to avoid and motivate our characters, just like in season 1, it didn't really seem to be the focus of the show. Wherein season one we get more clues about what is going to happen as we go further along the season, giving us the sense of a mystery clearing up and strands of time being tied and untied, there wasn't much of that this time around. There was the first telling of it: the world starts buying and selling abilities to the public, Sylar is somehow good, Peter is a terrorist, Claire hates him, the world is going to split in half, but we never find out how all this happens. What causes the world to split in half? Sure, I know it is someone with an ability, but who? and why? Season 1 dealt with those things, made them interesting, and never as straightforward as you thought. In this season it was just kind of...left there, with out details or structure. It was too generic an event for me to care about it.
And the deal with Claire the Badass-Brunette. It would have been nice to see bits and pieces of how that came along, or to see Claire becoming more and more like that, getting into situations where she could possibly start to hate Peter as much as she did in the future, but that too is just kind of left there and not dealt with. Peter makes a comment about her remaining innocent, she worries for one episode that soon she won't be able to feel anything at all, and then it is never mentioned again.
The whole things just seemed sloppy and disorganized to me.
Then, there was Arthur Petrelli, who really annoyed me, and not just because in his second or so scene he killed off one of my favorite characters (I missed you, Adam!!). His power seriously pissed me off.
Okay, so this show is about people with all these crazy magical abilities, I know this. But still, there were rules to all this. People had these abilities because of genetics it was evolution, not being blessed by angels or praying to demons or saying magic words and calling on the power of the earth, the moon or the space aliens who visits wackos in their sleep. And because of this there was a limit to what people could do. There were consequences.
For instance, Peter, who had an ability much like his father's, couldn't handle the abilities the minute he absorbed them. He didn't get them and know exactly how to deal with them. If he did, then the whole plot of season 1 would have been moot since he was the exploding man in the show. But no, he had to learn to control, them learn how to bring them up to begin with (remember the whole think-about-how-Claire-made-him-feel thing?).
But Arthur, when he took these abilities didn't have to deal with any of that at all. I mean, if Maya, who had that ability for a while now, could barely handle it, don't you think it might overwhelm Daddy Petrelli just a little?
Maybe this is because he can only use the abilities for a little while after he takes them? Or perhaps he discards them after he takes them from someone? I don't know. It was never explained. Hence the annoyance.
And then of course there was Matt and his new painting ability, which didn't have anything to do with genetics at all. He met some cryptic African man with an ugly orange Universal Studios t-shirt, kept seeing the guy after he was dead and for some mumbo jumbo mystical reason, he can now paint the future.
WHICH, by the way, wasn't as cool as it was as in the first season. In the first season it was used as foreshadowing and to instill a sense of foreboding in the show. Now it's just used as a cheap plot device to get characters where the writer's want them without having to do some actual good writing to get them there. (Hiro and Ando's pointless trip to India, for example.)
ANOTHER ISSUE I HAD:
The character development. Many character's changed what they thought and believe in without any development taking place at all. Or if it did, it wasn't very much and there was some kind of weak explanation to go along with it. Like Nathan, who went from being proud and wanting to tell the world about people with abilities, to wanting to give everyone abilities to help save the world, to suddenly being back in denial and locking everyone with abilities up to keep the public safe from them. Major belief flips without very good explanations!
And then there was Sylar, who was like, bi-polar. He was all "I'm going to be good now," then "Ooops. No, I'm evil." and "I'm on the road to redemption. I can be different." then "Heh. Fell off the wagon. I'd say sorry about sawing off the top of your head and then burning your body, but I'm not really." Oi. I know his whole plot line is just one long identity crisis, but seriously!
Speaking of identity crisis, that scene where he shapes shifts into his mother was seriously creepy and disturbing, but I felt so bad for him when Micah caught him and he started to cry a little. I just wanted to hug him. *Huggles and pets imaginary Sylar*
This is getting really long, so:
MY LAST ISSUE:
I think splitting the series into two volumes was a bad idea. By changing the plot like that mid-season, they really slowed down the momentum of the show, and it started to drag in my opinion. I really think they needed to slow down at the beginning too. The whole pace of this season seemed off to me. It also made it hard to take the "disasters" coming seriously, since it seemed the writer's didn't take them very seriously. They just kept jumping from one thing to another.
RANDOM THINGS I LIKED:
Alex. Though he was only in two episodes I liked him much better than creepy stalker!West. But it could be I just have a thing for cute guys with glasses. ;)
Ando and Hiro. They were cute through out the whole thing. I loved that they got GPS implants to track one another, and that Hiro's password was "Ando." And the two of them with baby Matt was absolutely adorable--I especially loved the face Ando made to make the kid smile. I think I want an icon with it.
Sylar and Elle. I thought they were cute. Until he killed her and all.
How personal Sylar's obsession with Claire got. Wonderfully creepy, I thought. And I really wonder what she did to piss him off in the finale that he threw out of the room like that.
But I should leave it there because if I start going to into ships then this will be like, four times longer, and I probably won't be very nice. (Where did my MattMo go?!?!?) But I will say that though there were a lot of things that irked me about this season, I sill enjoyed it, but with the way it ended I don't have much hope for the next season.