Structure Problems
I know I should be finishing up my trip report about New York, but I feel compelled to take time to bitch, moan, complain, vent and generally hurrumph.
Could somebody please put HEROES out of it’s misery? After the third dull episode I’d vowed not to watch again. Putting aside the fact that the show was boring, there was the big cheat of having everybody who’d been dead at the end of first season suddenly be alive after all. Don’t ask me for an emotional response and then say “gotcha”!
But I still hadn’t removed the season pass for HEROES off my tivo. And I suppose it’s curiosity because I’m back writing in a superhero universe so I kept tuning in week after week. Well, I think tonight they have finally managed to drive me away for good.
Guess what? The cheerleader’s dad has superpowers too! And he has the same power as his daughter. He just recovered from being shot in the eye. And guess who shot him? The kindly doctor because Dad was about to shoot the man who had kidnapped his daughter. Little out of character? Don’t get me started on the doc. He’s infiltrating the evil company in order to take it down, but then he confesses to the creepy head of the company that he’s working with Claire’s daddy to destroy the company. I have no idea why. The concept of motivation seems beyond these people.
The telepathic cop has daddy issues. Hates his dad, but has decided to act just like his dad. And the mysterious killer of the older generation turns out to be the drunken Englishman that Hiro met in Samurai Japan. Why is he killing them? Because they locked him up because he was “dangerous”. These people have never hesitated to kill each other, but they decide not to kill him? Huh? But he can heal, you might say. Well, let’s see him heal from being dismembered and cremated. And if he can’t be killed he’s a god, and there is no consequence to any of this. But there is no consequence because _nobody will stay dead_.
And stupid. Why is everybody in this show so stone stupid? Creepy company guy kidnapps Claire and after they free her she and her boyfriend go back home to cuddle on the bed while mom pets her dog, and nobody _gets the hell out of dodge because the company is trying to kidnapp Claire_! I swear if anyone in our gaming group played this stupid Walter would have killed us so dead.
Sorry, I’m back now.
Then there was the book that I finished reading last night. THE GEOGRAPHER’S LIBRARY by Jon Fasman starts out great. It has a fascinating narrator with a distinctive voice, and this author has a gift for description that had me sighing with envy. Consider this description of one of the journalists at the paper. “He resembled a human pinwheel: tall and thin, with a perpetually surprised expression, a loping, reeling gait, and a shock of clumpily wild red hair.”
But the structure — oh my God. The book has alternating chapters between the past where people in different eras are searching for rare objects that are necessary for the art of alchemy, and first person chapters written by this young journalist who is trying to write an obituary for this mysterious old professor.
I was loving this book, but I kept thinking that all these chapters in the past really needed to pay off and be part of the solution of the present day proble. If they didn’t this book was going to fail. Well, they didn’t and the book failed. It ended up feeling like the author really wanted to write a historical, but was afraid that wouldn’t sell so he hungit on a thriller (a la the DA VINCI CODE) framework.
Aside from promising me something and not paying it off, the author also disappointed me because this wonderful hero he created ultimately has no effect on anything. The problem is solved by outside agents, and our hero goes home to live in his mom’s basement and sulk.
I’m going to read QUEEN FERRIS and at least there are two more episodes of Torchwood before the season ends.
November 22nd, 2007 at 2:12 am
There are issues this season. To be fair, however, I think you misunderstood what’s going on with Bennett.
Bennett does not have Claire’s powers. In the immediately previous episode, it was established that a person with the power of cellular regeneration (like Claire) is able to cure the injuries of others through blood transfusion. Nathan Petrelli’s horrible burns following his carrying his brother while Peter was in nuclear meltdown faded away completely within half a minute of Adam’s blood entering his bloodstream.
Bob took Claire’s blood in this epsiode before he delivered her to Bennett … and it seems he’s decided to use it to heal Bennett. And since Claire can come back from even fatal injuries, it seems the blood does the same for her father.
Mohinder shooting him was weak (why the eye, for Ghu’s sake??). That said, I think what may have revolted him so much as to pull the trigger in the first place was the fact that Bennett was going to gun down a man in blood while he was cradling his own (albeit sadistic, psychopathic) daughter. I can’t help but consider this in light of the fact that Mohinder’s difficult relationship with his father stems from the early death of his sister Shanti. What place does the father and daughter relationship hold in Mohinder’s world view?
I don’t know that I buy Parkman becoming just like his dad because he forced Angela to reveal her secret. There’s people out there trying to destroy the world, and this woman may be a key to it.
As to Adam, I suspect he’s killing the “older” generation to prevent them from doing anything to stop him, rather than as revenge per se. What’s 30 years to an immortal? He was surprisingly sanguine about it all in the previous episode (in which we see him imprisoned next to Peter Petrelli for several months, slowly convincing him that they need to make a breakout and “save the world”).
His actions would be better understood from his promise to Hiro in their final confrontation in the past: that he would take and destroy everything Hiro ever loved. He killed Hiro’s dad as the first of his victims, and I’m pretty sure he’s setting out to destroy the world because it’s Hiro’s world. I wouldn’t be surprised if the virus is really his idea — Hiro valued heroes above all other things. So, get rid of all the heroes.
There are still a lot of problems with this show though. You’re right on about the character being congenitally stupid, which means the writers are being supremely lazy — ‘Oh, well, he sure was dumb when he did that’ is the cheapest way to push the plot around, especially when it’s done serially (as on this show).
Mohinder Suresh is clearly a powered hero, gifted with naivete above the bounds of normal men. He basically believes the last person who speaks with him. As others pointed out, his turn from working with Bennett to destroy the company to agreeing to kill him involved little more than Bob showing him a picture of a guy that Bennet murdered (a former member of the company — think you missed that episode too).
It doesn’t make sense, and it’s annoying. This show could be so much better. I can only hope that the third volume (whenever it airs) puts the ship back on course.
November 22nd, 2007 at 9:10 am
You’re right, I’m not watching this show very closely because it is annoying me beyond belief. I don’t mind that the cop ultimately did mind control on Angela, but this is a guy with _major_ daddy issues and we never get to see that struggle.
I love a show where something that happened in episode three will pay off in an interesting way in episode six. JOURNEYMAN is doing that very well.
Another show that is handling complexity well is LIFE.
But HEROES — oh God. I really hate the fact that everyone we meet will ultimately turn out to have a power, and that the world seems totally unaware of these people. I just don’t buy it. I’ll take Wild Cards where the people are integrated into the society. Perhaps not comfortably, but they are present and people are aware of them. This is a conspiracy dating back decades, and nobody has twigged to them. My “oh come on” alarm has been sounding for a long time now.
November 23rd, 2007 at 8:19 am
Nice rant.
A lot of the new shows that are successors to the X-Files–Buffy style of sf/f adventure series seem to have this problem with structure and character motivation. Lost does the same thing you describe with Heroes, which is why I stopped watching it. I trace the problem back to what I call the DC syndrome. Back in the early ’60s every great DC comic idea (”Batman’s Identity Revealed!” “See Lois Finally Marry Superman!”) turned out to be a dream or a fraud. So I stopped reading DC and turned to the Marvel Age of comics instead.
If only there was a Marvel Age to turn to now.
November 24th, 2007 at 7:31 am
I’m not quite at the point of giving up on Heroes, but they have never had good, convincing motivation; they’ve always gotten by on “good enough for television” motivations that have next to nothing to do with how human beings actually function. Not that this isn’t a common problem on television.
November 26th, 2007 at 10:46 am
You do know that Raiders of the Lost Ark has exactly the same problem: take out Indian Jones and the story doesn’t change one whit. He’s certainly the POV character, but he doesn’t really accomplish a darned thing.