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May. 22nd, 2007 12:06 pmSam's Three Things About Heroes. A little more awake this morning. No less ticked off, but awake, at least.
1. Okay, I'll talk about my observation in re: lameness, and it will be long, but then we'll move on, because there were some good points to the episode. What made me feel incredibly let down was the lack of coherence and cohesiveness. This is the event that an entire season has been building for, something that's been in the offing ever since Isaac's mural. I'm not asking for perfection, but it shouldn't play like an ordinary episode. There was no build and tension overall: the scenes didn't mount one on the next like they should have and the even tone throughout, the "little events", created absolutely no background setting for the explosion. The short-scene soap opera episodic format, which worked in the early season when we knew less, didn't do the show any favours here. I didn't really believe in the explosion.
It was wrong to set it in an isolated plaza at night, with only the "heroes" present -- we needed to see people passing, people staring and running, in order to connect the idea of this is happening now with these people are going to die. Additionally, in Hiro's visit to the past, the explosion happens in the middle of the morning, so the timing is off for no apparent reason.
Heroes has been working all along on the subtle moral implication that violence is not the answer, even as a reply to violence. In the finale itself, Deveaux tells Peter that his power is to love unconditionally; all along the viewers have been led to believe that it will be an act of love that prevents the explosion, if it is prevented at all. Nathan's apparent self-sacrifice is appropriate in that light, but it's a contrived deus ex machina sacrifice, and the message goes awry anyway when Hiro stabs Sylar, when Sylar in fact "dies" an ordinary death. In the episode as a whole, Sylar becomes the one-dimensional supervillain that they actually saved him from becoming last week by showing him as a human being. Even that would be forgiveable if his death meant something, but it didn't. It wasn't epic or squalid, either of which would have been acceptable. It was pedestrian, and the Sylar of last week deserved better dramatic treatment.
Plus the F/X -- while great -- were used badly. Top to bottom shoddy use of good technology -- Walt Disney coined the phrase "plausible impossible" to describe the art of making something unreal seem believable, and all the flinging and slicing and gauze-filtered-Japan didn't cut it.
2. There were some bright moments in the episode, as there generally are. Bennet's name-reveal was brilliant -- whether or not you like his name, that scene really worked for me. I like that Niki took control of her power and knocked Sylar around. Matt and Molly are all kinds of adorable together, and the one special-effects moment I really loved was Peter's emergence from the dream -- tip-tilting up out of it and consciously moving into wakefulness.
3. When Peter punched Sylar I did have a called it moment, remembering the Hiatus Continuation's Claude shoving Sylar and thinking that special people forgot they had bodies just like everyone else. :D
3a. Well...it gives me something to rewrite, anyway.
1. Okay, I'll talk about my observation in re: lameness, and it will be long, but then we'll move on, because there were some good points to the episode. What made me feel incredibly let down was the lack of coherence and cohesiveness. This is the event that an entire season has been building for, something that's been in the offing ever since Isaac's mural. I'm not asking for perfection, but it shouldn't play like an ordinary episode. There was no build and tension overall: the scenes didn't mount one on the next like they should have and the even tone throughout, the "little events", created absolutely no background setting for the explosion. The short-scene soap opera episodic format, which worked in the early season when we knew less, didn't do the show any favours here. I didn't really believe in the explosion.
It was wrong to set it in an isolated plaza at night, with only the "heroes" present -- we needed to see people passing, people staring and running, in order to connect the idea of this is happening now with these people are going to die. Additionally, in Hiro's visit to the past, the explosion happens in the middle of the morning, so the timing is off for no apparent reason.
Heroes has been working all along on the subtle moral implication that violence is not the answer, even as a reply to violence. In the finale itself, Deveaux tells Peter that his power is to love unconditionally; all along the viewers have been led to believe that it will be an act of love that prevents the explosion, if it is prevented at all. Nathan's apparent self-sacrifice is appropriate in that light, but it's a contrived deus ex machina sacrifice, and the message goes awry anyway when Hiro stabs Sylar, when Sylar in fact "dies" an ordinary death. In the episode as a whole, Sylar becomes the one-dimensional supervillain that they actually saved him from becoming last week by showing him as a human being. Even that would be forgiveable if his death meant something, but it didn't. It wasn't epic or squalid, either of which would have been acceptable. It was pedestrian, and the Sylar of last week deserved better dramatic treatment.
Plus the F/X -- while great -- were used badly. Top to bottom shoddy use of good technology -- Walt Disney coined the phrase "plausible impossible" to describe the art of making something unreal seem believable, and all the flinging and slicing and gauze-filtered-Japan didn't cut it.
2. There were some bright moments in the episode, as there generally are. Bennet's name-reveal was brilliant -- whether or not you like his name, that scene really worked for me. I like that Niki took control of her power and knocked Sylar around. Matt and Molly are all kinds of adorable together, and the one special-effects moment I really loved was Peter's emergence from the dream -- tip-tilting up out of it and consciously moving into wakefulness.
3. When Peter punched Sylar I did have a called it moment, remembering the Hiatus Continuation's Claude shoving Sylar and thinking that special people forgot they had bodies just like everyone else. :D
3a. Well...it gives me something to rewrite, anyway.
