Heroes : Season 3 - The Offical Thread - spoilers likely

[MikeVic]

I don't know, maybe I'm wrong then. It just felt like the main characters had changes to them, and changes to the cast as the seasons progressed.

[Honolulu_Blue]

The casts for Buffy and Angel changed a bit, but the core characters remained pretty consistent.

For Buffy, for example, you had the core group of Buffy, Willow, Xander, and Giles. Cordelia and Oz joined the "group" for part of season 2 and through season 3. Angel was around, of course, until he went off to his own show after Season 3.

Throughout the show there were a number of other "main" characters like Jenny Calendar, Tara, Faith, Dawn, Spike, Anya, Riley, etc. who were added later on or came and went. Each season had its own "big bad" and there were a couple of recurring villians as well who popped up every now and then.

[MikeVic]

Even with the main characters that stayed, Willow had significant changes. Err I guess the others didn't really, but I found them interesting anyway. I liked the secondary characters a lot too. Spike, Faith, and Anya were probably all up there in terms of my fav characters.

In Heroes, I think they need to maybe say bye to some of the characters for awhile. Would it be that hard to not see Nikki/Jessica/whatever her name is now for season 3?

[Anthony]

maybe the best thing for the show is to have Peter Petrelli captured by the Company and contained in Level 5. he's not a villain, but the company's goal is to prevent people from misusing their powers, and well, a guy who can alter the events as he sees fit via time travel is a guy who misuses his power. at least this way he's still in the show, but you don't have this uber-powerful guy who has no weaknesses running amok. you can always let him out to take on uber bad guys, like with Noah, but for the most part he's too dangerous and needs to be contained. Ma Patrelli is evil/cold enough to do that to one of her sons.

[BrianD]

At some point it would be nice to see Heroes do what Lost did and kill off a couple of fairly main characters just to give us the sense that not everybody is safe. Some of the drama is removed if you know nobody can die.

[Honolulu_Blue]

Originally Posted by MikeVic

Even with the main characters that stayed, Willow had significant changes. Err I guess the others didn't really, but I found them interesting anyway. I liked the secondary characters a lot too. Spike, Faith, and Anya were probably all up there in terms of my fav characters.

I totally agree. They did enough each season to shake things up a bit in terms of character without straying too far from what made it great. Until the end, of course, when things sort of fell apart. The only secondary character I never really liked was Dawn. I was really warming up to Tara. And then she got killed.

Originally Posted by MikeVic

In Heroes, I think they need to maybe say bye to some of the characters for awhile. Would it be that hard to not see Nikki/Jessica/whatever her name is now for season 3?

While I think Heroes could certainly use some culling, I am one of the few who actually likes Nikki/Jessica/whatever her name is, simply because she's really hot and one of the better actors on the show.

I know they can never get rid of Peter, but he'd be my choice. He's a horrible actor, the character hasn't been that interesting since around the mid-point of Season 1, and he's powers are just too inconsistent.

Parkman would be a good choice. That said, his power is pretty cool and I really liked what they did with his father last season. It was one of the few things that worked.

I think Mohinder has definitely run his course, too. And Maya.

[MikeVic]

I just mentioned Nikki/Jessica because she was supposed to be dead. Like Sylar.

I like HA's idea of locking up some in Level 5. They're still there, and can make appearances once in awhile.

[BrianD]

Originally Posted by Honolulu_Blue

I think Mohinder has definitely run his course, too. And Maya.

Mohinder gets a bad rap because of his acting and his stupid character, but he will always be essential to the show. He is "us", the normal person. We don't really get a normal person's perspective in the show, so he has to stick around. His current situation is also fairly important as we would probably all like to take his serum and be part of the fun.

[MikeVic]

I would not inject that into me after doing what, half a day of research on it? He's not the every-man because he's a scientist who's father was a huge research guy on the evolution of humans. I can't stand Mohinder.

[BrianD]

He's the closest thing to an every-man we have. He is still trying to break into the hero world with his research, but he is still starting from pretty close to scratch.

Edit: And we may not have injected ourselves that rashly, but I'm sure we'd all love a serum that could give us powers.

[ISiddiqui]

Yep and he's the main voice over guy!!

[MikeVic]

I think they need to focus more on some other real every-man then... like, Claire's friend from the first season. Or Claire's mom and brother. Mohinder is too into the world, and he sucks anyway. Noah doesn't have super powers and he's still interesting, and I actually like his character.

[Izulde]

Originally Posted by ISiddiqui

Yep and he's the main voice over guy!!

I actually like Mohinder's voiceovers.

[hoopsguy]

Originally Posted by BrianD

At some point it would be nice to see Heroes do what Lost did and kill off a couple of fairly main characters just to give us the sense that not everybody is safe. Some of the drama is removed if you know nobody can die.

I would especially like it if it was one of the characters that is not supposed to be able to die. I think that would have a greater shock/awe factor than taking out the weakest link.

It isn't all that hard to construct scenarios where one of Claire/Sylar/Peter/Adam can be killed off. Just have some character whose power is to remove powers.

I think they are going to have to kill some characters off this season. There is no way to effectively tell a story when the audience is having to keep track of so many plotlines.

[Huckleberry]

Originally Posted by hoopsguy

I would especially like it if it was one of the characters that is not supposed to be able to die. I think that would have a greater shock/awe factor than taking out the weakest link.

It isn't all that hard to construct scenarios where one of Claire/Sylar/Peter/Adam can be killed off. Just have some character whose power is to remove powers.

I think they are going to have to kill some characters off this season. There is no way to effectively tell a story when the audience is having to keep track of so many plotlines.

So basically one of them could be killed off while in a Level 5 holding cell. I like it.

However, I vehemently disagree with your earlier post in which you claimed Kirsten Bell and Ali Larter would be able to maintain the hotness factor if they killed off Dania Ramírez's character (Maya). Dania Ramírez brings twice the hotness of the rest of the cast put together.

[Anthony]

Maya is the hottest.

[gottimd]

Where is the Haitian?

[MikeVic]

Maya is the hottest. I thought they realized the problem with too many characters last season, when they had Adam buried alive. His character is not gone, but he's not demanding the viewer's attention in a storyline. Now it seems like even he might be back, if the future vision is true.

I guess it's personal preference, but I would've preferred no sight of Adam until at least a season later. The awesomeness factor with him all of a sudden showing up next to Hiro would've been very high for me, and I was actually hoping for that. It's two episodes of the next season, and we've already seen a brief shot of him.

[ISiddiqui]

Originally Posted by hoopsguy

It isn't all that hard to construct scenarios where one of Claire/Sylar/Peter/Adam can be killed off. Just have some character whose power is to remove powers.

Like... the Haitian?

[gottimd]

What happens if you have two people who have the Haitians powers...when they are near eachother? Who takes whose powers?

[MikeVic]

Originally Posted by gottimd

What happens if you have two people who have the Haitians powers...when they are near eachother? Who takes whose powers?

Plot line for season 4. It'll be a woman, and they'll fall in love. So the other heroes must keep them away from each other, otherwise the world ends.

[spleen1015]

Originally Posted by MikeVic

Plot line for season 4. It'll be a woman, and they'll fall in love. So the other heroes must keep them away from each other, otherwise the world ends.

That would make a great movie! They should cast Will Smith as the leading man!

[MikeVic]

Originally Posted by spleen1015

That would make a great movie! They should cast Will Smith as the leading man!

[Anthony]

not for nothing, for future seasons they should make the big plotline something other than "if we don't stop this villain, then the world will end". the world isn't always at jeopardy in comic books, not everything is has apocolytpic ramifications. where are the companies/villains who just want to rule the world or something.

[gottimd]

Originally Posted by Anthony

not for nothing, for future seasons they should make the big plotline something other than "if we don't stop this villain, then the world will end". the world isn't always at jeopardy in comic books, not everything is has apocolytpic ramifications. where are the companies/villains who just want to rule the world or something.

Like go the X-men route of having it be the Gov't trying to put sanctions on them? (Give them all the ashanti virus)

Or more like the "Watchmen"?
Watchmen Trailer - Trailer Addict

[BrianD]

Originally Posted by Anthony

not for nothing, for future seasons they should make the big plotline something other than "if we don't stop this villain, then the world will end". the world isn't always at jeopardy in comic books, not everything is has apocolytpic ramifications. where are the companies/villains who just want to rule the world or something.

The trouble is that most TV shows tend to get more and more epic each successive season. Having dealt with the possible end of the world in season 1, they can't really go bigger and they are probably afraid of losing viewers if they go smaller. Looks like this show is goign to have to take a note from Buffy and learn the plural of "apocalypse".

[Crim]

That Watchmen trailer delivers.

[Honolulu_Blue]

Originally Posted by BrianD

The trouble is that most TV shows tend to get more and more epic each successive season. Having dealt with the possible end of the world in season 1, they can't really go bigger and they are probably afraid of losing viewers if they go smaller. Looks like this show is goign to have to take a note from Buffy and learn the plural of "apocalypse".

The problem with learning the plural of "apocalypse" is that it too grows old pretty quickly unless you can poke fun at the fact.

[BrianD]

Originally Posted by Honolulu_Blue

The problem with learning the plural of "apocalypse" is that it too grows old pretty quickly unless you can poke fun at the fact.

Very true. Fans will get tired of the world always being about to end and will start making their own jokes. Much better if the show does it first, though that would be a major tone shift for Heroes.

[Gary Gorski]

I started rewatching the season 1 dvds yesterday and what a difference in those episodes. The storytelling in those far surpasses what we get now. They had a core group of characters, developed their storylines over multiple episodes and seemingly everything had a defined purpose - even if you didn't realize it at first.

Now its like things just get thrown out there - storylines that end without any finish (like someone mentioned, whatever happened to saving Caitlin?), bombardments of new characters without removing old ones so there's too many to follow and the abuse of all powerful characters to write themselves into/out of any situation. It just feels sloppy.

It's not a great analogy perhaps but its almost kind of like pro wrestling then and now. Back then you had clear lines of good v evil and while good won in the end almost all of the time, evil had some victories along the way (kind of like in S1 with saving the world from Sylar). The storylines took an entire season/year or more to develop and when a twist happened like good turning evil it was shocking. Then at some point it had to become more "real" and the storytelling sort of stopped. It was just a collection of "powerful" guys slugging it out all the time. Sure, cool to watch for the moment but no lasting drama or intrigue, no character development, no storytelling - just action.

That seems to be the place its at now. They've "developed" the characters as much as they're going to and now its just time to let them slug it out in a free for all. I actually thought they still did a fairly good job in S2 - I'm sure things could have developed more had it not been for the strike but I for one was a big fan of the Hiro in Japan storyline. I thought that really developed Adam's character and also thought they did a good job developing Maury and even Bob and Elle. Hopefully the next few episodes slow down a little and let us catch up with everything that happened in the first two.

[MikeVic]

Nice point Gary. I agree about the wrestling parallels.

[thesloppy]

I'm so tired of them not only thinning the herd, but bringing BACK people that you thought had died. Noah was dead for half an episode. D.L. was dead for maybe two episodes, then came back, then died again. We were led to believe Sylar was dead for about 5 minutes of the season 1 finale. Nathan has died and come back twice now. We won't even start with Claire. There are like fifteen scowling versions of Peter running around. Adam and Parkman's dad's return has already been hinted at by Ma Petrelli's vision. And now we've got Linderman haunting Nathan.

They've screwed up the death AND rebirth angle so many times now, and even gone so far as to assure us that it is impossible for some characters to die, that they've managed to successfully suck ANY tension out of ANY situation, before they even happen. At this point, even if they kill off someone major and go out of their way to assure me that they're super-permanent-dead, I'm still going to expect them to pop-up, in some form or another, for every further episode.

[gi]

Originally Posted by thesloppy

I'm so tired of them not only thinning the herd, but bringing BACK people that you thought had died. Noah was dead for half an episode. D.L. was dead for maybe two episodes, then came back, then died again. We were led to believe Sylar was dead for about 5 minutes of the season 1 finale. Nathan has died and come back twice now. We won't even start with Claire. There are like fifteen scowling versions of Peter running around. Adam and Parkman's dad's return has already been hinted at by Ma Petrelli's vision. And now we've got Linderman haunting Nathan.

They've screwed up the death AND rebirth angle so many times now, and even gone so far as to assure us that it is impossible for some characters to die, that they've managed to successfully suck ANY tension out of ANY situation, before they even happen. At this point, even if they kill off someone major and go out of their way to assure me that they're super-permanent-dead, I'm still going to expect them to pop-up, in some form or another, for every further episode.

the truth has been spoken...

[Anthony]

slowly, but surely, the wheels are starting to come off and the public is starting to see the show for the farce it's developing into. i'd love to be proven wrong, though, but the writers have written themselves into a corner and there's no coming out of that. people who can't die+people who can go back in time to change events whenever they want=no tension.

[GrantDawg]

Originally Posted by Anthony

slowly, but surely, the wheels are starting to come off and the public is starting to see the show for the farce it's developing into. i'd love to be proven wrong, though, but the writers have written themselves into a corner and there's no coming out of that. people who can't die+people who can go back in time to change events whenever they want=no tension.

Yup. But you must remember there are people who will just watch and still be wondering. It is like everytime the Duke boys were in trouble, or the A-team had a tough assignment. Everyone knew they were going to get out of the jam, but people still flocked to watch. For a few seasons. Then it will die.

[Anthony]

don't get me wrong, i'll still watch. i can think of worse thing on tv, and Heroes isn't total crap just yet, it's just starting to implode on itself little by little. this happens all the time. and whereas before people took the show as Bible, nowadays there's more people willing to say "ummm, that was stupid how they handled that storyline".

[MikeVic]

I'll be giving it a few more weeks too. Hopefully it improves.

[Anthony]

i'll watch it till the end, some things i'm being nitpicky about, other things i won't be able to overlook if the show continues on its current path, but at its wortst it's still a show i can watch for an hour with my wife. heck, i'll watch America's Next Top Model with my wife sometimes. i'm not a big tv watcher, but my wife and i try to have a few shows we watch together as a way to spend some together time. i can't see Heroes ever being a show that i absolutely have to avoid, but i don't necessarily have to be the fanboy i used to be. the chinks in the armor are starting to show, that's all.

[jeheinz72]

Just watched the Premiere.

Ugh. Someone needs to fire the creative staff on this show. They stopped being creative 2 years ago.

"Look this person is going to die, only they WON'T DIE! OMG! The viewers will love it!"

"We'll put someone somewhere, have them meet someone, explain nothing and people will chomp at the bit"!

"We'll devise more convuluted ways for the Heroes to inter-mix!"

"Yeah and we can construct completely random and illogical patterns of thought and action to show off these stupid special effects to display this persons power!"

Ugh, I loved this show Season 1. I was actually ok with Season 2. I was really looking forward to a rebirth of sorts in Season 3. The premiere was whole-heartedly disappointing. I'll give it a couple more eps, but pretty soon it's going to fall into the "Record but I could care less if it gets deleted because I ran out of space"

[thesloppy]

They screwed themselves by making the scope way too epic, way too quick. We started out caring about all of these folks, by seeing how they dealt with these powers in their normal lives, but none of them have normal lives anymore, and their problems have gone from 'keeping their powers secret from their friends' to 'defending all of time and space', in a relatively short time. They ratcheted things up so high, so quickly, that there's nowhere to go no now, and instead of feeling like I'm watching something epic, it's beginning to look a LOT like GI Joe VS. Cobra, as the same douchebags wrestle over the same crap week after week.

Every character is completely different than they were in the first season. Does Claire even go to school anymore? Remember Parkman's wife? He certainly doesn't. Remember Nathan's wife? They're pretty much all acting as full-time superheroes now, and even if they do have day-jobs, they don't get any screen time anymore. Even Hiro is bored with what he's become. They're basically just the Justice League now, waiting for the Legion of Doom to get their spoOOOooky helmet-shaped headquarters built in the middle of a swamp. Not that you can't make good TV out of that...but it's a completely different show than what we started with.

[MikeVic]

You're right Mustang. I think I mentioned that I like characters and character development above mostly all else in a show, and it just seems like these characters were more awesome when grounded.

[DanGarion]

Originally Posted by Anthony

i'll watch it till the end, some things i'm being nitpicky about, other things i won't be able to overlook if the show continues on its current path, but at its wortst it's still a show i can watch for an hour with my wife. heck, i'll watch America's Next Top Model with my wife sometimes. i'm not a big tv watcher, but my wife and i try to have a few shows we watch together as a way to spend some together time. i can't see Heroes ever being a show that i absolutely have to avoid, but i don't necessarily have to be the fanboy i used to be. the chinks in the armor are starting to show, that's all.

When did you and I become so much alike?

[Crim]

Okee, I'll echo some of what's been said...

I'm not going to join the dogpile-on-the-show-because-if-it-ain't-awesome-anymore-then-it-must-now-suck-totally brigade, but still, there are some things I'll point out that are quirky/annoying.

Claire's "boo-hoo I'm not even human anymore" act is overblown. In particular, when she told her mom, "I was always so grateful for the pain, it let me know I'm still human" was far too melodramatic. And most of what she said to the camera before trying to let the train hit her? Same opinion.

And what's with Claire's birth mom showing up to help keep her safe, and igniting her hand dramatically for the audience? Couldn't think of any other way to remind the viewers that she has a super power?

Every line Mohinder speaks makes me want to rip out my own brain matter with a stale biscuit. As someone said above me, his voiceover work is quite good, but on camera he's for shit.


Here's my overall opinion (as opposed to my opinion on overalls, which is a whole nuther deal entirely): The awkward lines and occasional wooden delivery were there from the beginning of the series, but we were mostly enthralled enough with the show's concept and sense of wonder, that we forgave it, if even we noticed. Look back at our Season One thread, and you'll see that much of what is being bitched about in this thread is not new. It's just that, as thesloppy and HA, among others have pointed out, the show has now become less about who the characters are, and more about what they can do.

Oh, and yes, I'll still watch every episode this season.

And Kristen Bell remains red-freaking-hot.

[Raiders Army]

A couple points after having watched the premiere this past weekend:

1. The difference between Season 1 and Season 2 was money. Season 3 has money. You can tell by the production "values" and the number of special effects. What bothered me about Season 1 was that there were a bunch of heroes who had powers but we never really saw them. Remember it took forever to see Nathan fly and that only happened briefly when he escaped from Noah and Haitian guy. Season 2 had many more special effects and the show really became about the special effects, which ties into Crim's statement of how the show has become about what they can do more than what the chacters are. On one of the Friends episodes commentary, the writers talk about how they do an episode where it all takes place in an apartment to save costs. They said the writing for that episode and episodes like it are much better simply because the writing has to be better to hold the audience's interest. Season 1's writing was a lot better because they had to hold the audience's interest without a lot of special effects.

2. I personally like the fact that they show that each character has a propensity for both good and evil. In real life, people do things that are considered bad and good but it doesn't necessarily make them a bad guy or a good guy. Motivations drive everything and conflict occurs when two motivations come against one another. I think they do a pretty good job showing that.

[hoopsguy]

Well, I wanted some thinning ...

[Izulde]

Hmmm, not sure how I felt about this episode. I think I'm starting to get to the point where the show might be starting to lose me as there's a few things that just didn't jive with me.

1. Why was Nikki's casket still sitting there in the house with all the chairs there? I was under the impression it'd been long enough since the fire, etc. that she'd have been buried by now.

2. Sylar's sudden potential for goodness. Yes, he wants to be special and yes, being from what he would no doubt view as special parents helps establish that claim, but he's becoming too human, too fast for me and it's coming off as wooden.

3. Well, I know there's more than two, but I'm hungry so I'm going to go eat supper.

I did feel like Hiro and Ando's mistrust line was executed much better in this episode than the last one. The cracks are definitely showing and are believable.

Claire's trial by fire I thought was well done, but the whole mother-rivalry thing just seems melodramatic and over the top.

Heh, Mohinder's voiceovers are fast turning into the best part of the show for me. That's not a good sign.

[hoopsguy]

Great Mohinder episode. Best of the season, without a doubt. Ditto for Maya.

Pacing felt back to "normal", which is pretty damn fast but not quite what we had last week. Moved forward plots with Parkman and with "Nikki", gave screen time to the Haitian, and had a lot of Noah. All good things.

Hiro really needs to come up with better plans for dealing with "the speedster". Also, the friction between him and Ando seems pretty forced.

Oh, and the villains need a new gameplan for Sylar. That was less than impressive.

[ISiddiqui]

Wow... that was kind of sweet.

It seems like Nikki/Jessica/Tracy may be a clone or experiment. With each bud growing up to have different special powers. Maybe they breed them that way.

I do like that Ando is resenting being the sidekick and feels like he has to do whatever Hiro says or else he gets ylled at.

I think Sylar's progression was interesting, but he showed that he really can't change. He's still got the hunger inside of him. Sylar has always showed that he has a conflicted side (remember when he ended up killing his mother).

Sylar is way too powerful (as we know), but the character/actor is just so compelling. It may end up being, every season, how do we stop Sylar from totally messing up everything, but its hard to see him out of the show.

[Rich1033]

Count me as one that was skeptical after the premiere, but this episode was great. The pacing was much better and the stories more fleshed out and interesting.

[thesloppy]

Sylar/somebody needs to eat/kill Micah. That kid can NOT act for shit. Ditto Matt Parkman. I like the speedster chick. As cheesy and obvious as her character is, she has 'comic book flavor', unlike having someone go on some sort of vision quest, which is just gay and tired. They should drop all the ham-handed mysticism booolshit, and just fly off into space already to find the Martian Man Hunter, or Bizarro World, or Earth 2, or whatever.