Hiro’s nemesis looks to be pretty interesting. She moves too fast for him to completely control, evidently. ^_^
“Noah, what did I tell you about leaving a labeled cardboard box full of super classified materials laying around?”
Oh god, they found a way to make Suresh even more insufferably annoying.
Evil Peter is cool though.
There’s a lot of interesting stuff going on. They’ve almost done a reset.
Cute Magneto shoutout.
No matter what happens, they have redeemed themselves by writing flyboy out of the story.
this was a pretty great season opener. they sure as hell learned their lesson about pacing.
some characters still doing dumb things, though. all i kept thinking was, “have you people never read a comic book or seen a comic book movie?”
Suresh is turning into the fly!
Brundlefly lives!
SPOILERS!
I dunno, I was pretty disappointed. I wish to hell that people would stop being given opportunities to kill Sylar just to have them not take them. My wife and I were screaming “JUST KILL HIM!”
I’m also confused and annoyed by what’s going on with Nikki. There had better be a good payoff for that. At least the Linderman turned out to be better than at first blush.
But I’m still baffled by Nathan’s sudden turn to God. The guy has seen --and done-- some seriously crazy stuff in the last couple of years. He was cooked alive and came back to life thanks to Peter’s powers. Why does he need to attribute his surviving a few gunshots to divine intervention? It smacks of the writers shoving the character in a strange direction that suits their big ideas.
And I still think Suresh is easily the worst thing about the whole show. Now he’s super randy horny fly guy. I’m not sure they could have ripped The Fly more if they had tried.
The only thing that clicked with me from this last episode was Hiro, Ando, and the Speedster. As usual, they’re off the wall and kind of silly, but the best thing about the show.
I dunno, it looks like that the other people that were in Section 5 were worse than him. I mean, Sylar wasn’t killing for fun like they were.
Don’t agree at all. To me, they overcompensated far too much for lackluster season 2 by throwing far too many plot elements into a jumbled mess.
You want action, you want resolution? Well look at what we’ve got!
Alternate time lines/future heroes - check!
Retconning characters powers/accents without any explanation - check!
Non-powered folks getting super powers - check!
Multiple folks back from the dead, but maybe some are still dead…spooky - check!
Sylar finally gets Claire’s power - check!
Multiple folks even badder than Sylar being let loose on the world - check!
Abstract artistic symbol to serve as framing device for entire season - check!
There were a few minor highlights – I enjoy Hiro & Ando, the “Eat your brain? That’s disgusting” comment by Sylar was cool, and I’m glad to see more Veronica Mars alumni getting work (go Weevil).
I’m giving it two or three more episodes to find a clear direction for the season. If I don’t see improvement, it goes in the pile of other sci-fi/fantasy shows with good beginnings and lousy follow-through. Heroes, meet Battlestar Galactica & Carnivale.
I believe she actually isn’t Nikki. Nikki is suppose to have a (twin) sister that died when they were younger right? Something about an abusive father. Looks like we found the sister, or at least an excuse to keep that actress around.
I always assumed that Nikki’s split personality was a manifestation of her sister’s memory. Until she got a 3rd/4th/??? personality.
You are the failure to end all failures.
Misc. thoughts on the opener, spoilers follow.
I’ve been saying from season 1 that Suresh’s real superpower is that he always make the stupidest decision possible out of any particular set of potential decisions. Always. And I swear I am still right. Maya should have killed him as soon as he got all excited about his stupid serum.
I was really irritated by Sylar and Claire being separated from each other by tiny slats of wood that I could kick in, and it being treated like an impenetrable barrier. I was also irritated that neither Modern!Peter nor Parkman used telepathy to figure out the killer since we’ve seen that trick before. And man, Future!Peter is a dingbat.
I like Linderman being in Nathan’s head, though I am not necessarily digging the rest of Nathan’s direction right now. Mama Petrelli tells us that her power is dreaming and we see a dream to back that up, but from her final interaction with Sylar the touch-based-command power is not off the table. If Hiro doesn’t calm down, he will totally be asking for it when Ando uses his Sith powers against him.
Dude, they have a villian named The German?
I enjoyed it a lot, though the criticisms in the above posts are valid. Still–lots of action, old mysteries resolved, new ones initiated, etc. I’m hooked again.
I wish they would cut Ali Larter out of the show like the cancer she is…
Disappointing, given that they have had this much time to come up with something better. This thing had holes the size of the Grand Canyon in it.
And yes, Suresh’s superpower is Super-Stupidity. Its just an upgrade from his normal Stupidity power.
I assume that, from what Suresh said about how the powers are formed, that the subject’s subconscious has some degree of control over what power manifests. That being the case, Nikki is now firmly in control of at least her 3rd personality, and that one has chosen “Mr. Freeze” as her comic book hero (or maybe Arnie, I dunno). Really a cheap plot device, anyway.
They should have let Nathan stay dead. He’s almost more annoying than Suresh.
Another assumption: since the “Sylar has to team up with the good guys to save the world” plot didn’t materialize last year due to the writer’s strike, I assume that’s what we are seeing this year. Mama Petrelli (and how many of us would love to see her killed in some excruciating fashion!?) will “convince” him to pitch with HRG and the rest to capture the really bad guys who escaped–as if Sylar’s serial killing isn’t bad enough.
PLEASE KILL DOMINICAN GIRL!
Note that we’ve already started recycling powers, they are running out of ideas.
Claire’s behaviour when home alone was completely out of character, imo. But yes, at least they got rid of fly-boy.
Hiro needs to pop into frame right in front of Flash, err, fast-girl, and stick out an iron bar (“Told you I could break his fucking neck!”).
The retconning was heavyhanded. Show gets a C for writing, C+ for humor, and a D for plotting.
I will give them credit for getting William Katt into the episode, even if it was a one-off.
Meh.
People who need to die immediately:
Maya
Sylar (though a good villain in season 1)
Whatever the hell Larter’s character name is this time
Peter (All the acting power of Keanu Reeves plus a stroke)
Suresh
That would help straighten out the story some.
I agree with the most of your list, but they need to keep Sylar. He’s the most focused character; his motives and means are clear. He’s the most consistent villian in the show.
If they dump him, the various plots will become even more muddled and what little progress has been made will be reduced to doggy-paddling in circles.
So they hooked me at the end of the second episode and I am looking forward to the rest of the season, but there was definitely some seriously retarded stuff happening.
Cool:
- The overarching setup for the main action of the season: a band of supervillains roaming the countryside, setting people on fire, with Peter accidentally undercover with them and Sylar hunting them down? Awesome.
- The potential for anyone to have powers PICK ME PICK ME PLEEEEEEEEEEEEEASE
- Marlowe from The Wire being in it this time.
- Sylar getting Claire’s power finally without making a big production out of it, relatively speaking.
- Hiro’s nemesis, conceptually.
- Nathan’s hallucinations of Linderman.
- The chance that Ali Larter is actually playing a new character who looks like Nikki but actually isn’t.
Lame:
- Time travel from an alternate future being the very first thing that happens? Come on.
- If I were Hiro, I’d just stop visiting the future. Every time he goes there he’s just in time to see a big world-ending disaster.
- Hiro’s nemesis in execution. “Are you a speed freak too?” “Whatever, time-stopper.” Jesus Christ, I hope a new character shows up with the ability to stop someone from talking, or this one is going to get old fast.
- The greater chance that Ali Larter is, in fact, still playing Nikki.
- Everything Mohinder says and does, as usual.
- Parkman being Parkman.
Yeah, lots and lots of over-the-top stuff, mostly lame, but they hooked me with the, er, hook.
You didn’t get a huge midichlorian vibe out of this? I rolled my eyes at the “superpower syringe”…
The fact that everybody is related to each other, and that everybody seems to have superpowers now is just ridiculous, and robs the show of a lot of potentially interesting character interaction.