Hmm.

I was surprised that the series finale was a normal length episode – I found that very odd.  I’ve heard they’re cutting back on the episode count for next season though, so maybe it’s all a budget thing.

At least one scene was really poorly done.  The whole zapping Claire out the door thing made not a damn lick of sense.  He had her completely under his control then he blasts her out the door? Were we supposed to wonder if she was him?  It was a really crappy red herring.

The rest was pretty decent all around.

Except of course the plot twist ending, which is a direct Exiles rip off.  Like, really direct.  I mean, I’m SURE this angle has been done in sci-fi or comics before, but I can’t remeber another one – at least on the Marvel side, maybe DC?  So, it seems pretty obvious where they got the idea.  I’m not sure how to take that.  I mean, it IS a good plot idea.  The difference I suspect will be that Proteus->Morph found a kind of redemption in his new memories, whereas Sylar will eventually just rehash the same old trash…maybe next season finale.  This was probably just a handy write-out so he could work on some Star Trek movies for a season or two.

That being said, I’d rather have Nathan around than him so, yeah. Whatevs.

I wonder what their angle on what Peter did to Sylar was – shapeshifters overloading each other, or did Peter finally grab another power (I was kind of hoping the president had powers! hah.).   Oh, another plot hole – Nathan’s friend the aide guy must have known about this to allow Peter to copy the President, yet he allowed Sythan/Nylar to kill him? OK dumb.

And now we’ve got Ali Larter part 3…this one as a pure bad guy evidently (although maybe she’s just after revenge for some kidnappings or something).  I guess all her shades have some aspect of evil to them – I wonder if they will bother to examine that?  THAT is actually kind of interesting – 3 (were there more?) clones, raised completely separately, and they ALL wind up on the shadow path?  That’s a PHD paper or 7 right there bitches!

The climactic fight was a huge let down – did I mention that? HIDING BEHIND A DOOR while special effects go off on the other side?  Where have I seen the scene in this clip before…

Oh right…see 3:32-3:52 in the clip below:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEGr2_m7QUg

Don’t BS a BSer!

I wonder what their angle with Hiro is…does the baby just give temporary jump starts?  Did Ando overcharge him on accident?  Is there any particular reason why Ando isn’t trying to boost Hiro’s powers?  I guess because they are binary??

Matt trying to get back together with his idiot wife who a) cheated on him and b) didn’t tell him she had a child that was his (although it would be hi-larious if it wasn’t!) when c) the love of his life just died is d) STUPID. REALLY FUCKING STUPID. I know kids change you, but they don’t make you crazy like that – at least not before the sleep loss kicks in.

I have to admit, I’m not sure how they’re going to wrap this up…the season finales are usually moderate to decent, if only because they blow their FX budget wad.  So hey, I’m looking forward to it. I may even watch it on real TV.  We’ll see if I forget or not.

Maybe Sylar AND Claire will die!

Re: Parkman – Man he’s still a horrible, shitty telepath when he has to resort to physical violence,  W T F?  Thankfully, he can’t get any dumber – the only way to go is up right?  PS Remember the shit Maury could do?

Re: The skulls – Really?  She’s going to make you dig them all up?  Then what – you just leave (dozens?) of open graves?

Re: stereotype breaking trucker: Good for you.  You went a little too far though, almost into another stereotype.  Do Texans really sound like that?  The ones I’ve met don’t – but maybe it’s because he’s a trucker.

Re: The rest – It was decent; better than last week.

• The entire Claire/Nathan thing – wicked lame
• Sylar getting more powers – an especially obnoxious one – lame
• No Parkman/Hiro/Ando/Micah – lame

It was a downtime/filler episode that was necessary to get pieces in place, I get that.   “Character focused” I guess.  Next!

1. We lose two decent characters – both get good ending.
2. We didn’t have to sit through any Claire-angst.
3. Hiro gets a portion of his powers back in a decent manner (now he and Peter are both manageable and Sylar is left as a godpowerful bogeyman again…hopefully he dies next season!  I suspect he’ll make it through his self titled season finale…)
4. A missing favorite returns, although still wet behind the ears.  No one will be surprised by Rebel’s identity.  There was no one else it could be.
5. Ando shoots some dude – with lightning!
6. Baby Parkman…heh.  Lone Wolf and Cub I guess.

Can Bryan Fuller and Greg Yaitanes do all the episodes please?

Case in point: Heroes.  Obama agrees to internment camps for powered people.  AS HE’S SHUTTING DOWN GUANTANAMO.  And going against prettttty much everything he ran on.  The publicity shitstorm this would kick up  would be insane.   Yes I know people don’t know about the powered people in that universe…but people would find out about camps & a new gov’t agency pretty quick, even if they didn’t know what it was for – and he wouldn’t be stupid enough (at least I don’t think he would) to authorize something that would ruin his chances at a second term.

Case in point: Thunderbolts. Obama allows a semi-reformed murderer/corporate criminal to run a huge government security agency (think FBI).  There would be hearings, or something.  I don’t care if he shot a bad guy and everyone loves him – no one cares about war heroes like that anymore.  Not that no one cares, but being a war hero doesn’t grant you an automatic pass.  He’d still have the media buried so far up his ass he would never make it to an appointment.
YES YES I KNOW THESE ARE FICTIONAL WORLDS.

My point is that writers really haven’t come to terms with writing an intelligent president yet.  You can’t write him like Bush, with every George, Dick & Cheney pulling the wool over his eyes.  When you’re trying to make your reality look like ours, writing Obama at 50% intelligence is a hard shock out of the disbelief I’m trying to suspend.  Flying people – sure.  Obama authorizing a second Guantanamo?  Wahuhu???  (OK maybe he will later, who knows, but the point is, at the current political juncture – uh uh).

re: The ending: Why the hell does it matter if that guy “knows” Nathan can fly?  He’s already fired. HOW DOES ANY OF THAT SHIT MATTER?

re: new id for puppet man: DOESN’T MATTER.  THEY HAVE FACIAL REC SOFTWARE IN ALL YOUR BASECAMERAS.  same with fish boy.  dumb.

re: Sylar and daddy:  So now he wants to be a bigger bad guy?  k.

I finally get that.  For a while, I thought the writers might be more crafty than this, or just sloppy – but now I’m just forced to conclude that he is written stupid.  Being impulsive once in a while is ok, we all do that – but being all impulsive, all the time means you are a) stupid b) have brain damage c) are legally retarded.  While b) is quite possible as he has been knocked around a lot, it hasn’t been specifically mentioned so I’ll leave it out for now. c) seems unlikely as Hollywood doesn’t like having retarded leads (at least not “full retards” ;) ).  So I’m left with a).  He is written to be stupid.  The writers have said many times that his defining characteristic is his “empathy” – I’m just going to chalk this up to them not knowing how to use a dictionary or thesaurus.  Cool?

OK, fine now that that’s out of the way the series makes a bit more sense.  He might want to look into a less douche-y haircut though.

The Heroes writers also love running the same plots over and over again.  I get that they are going for character consistency – but really, having HRG go back to the “deep cover” good guy has been done what, twice aready?  OVER IT. *buzzer sound*  NEXT.

What was to like about this episode…let’s see.  No Claire!  No Sylar! Yay. Nemesis is still alive (which we knew from the forthcoming episode info), but still nice as I sort of like the little Nemesis/Hero/Ando/Parkman grouping.  It’s probably my favorite little hero cluster in a while.  Parkman’s going nuts is understandable as he thinks they killed his true love (never mind his adopted daughter who was killed or something off camera by the elder Petrelli…guess she doesn’t matter anymore), but I think they could have written that stuff better.

Also..super duper duh – Parkman could have, at the simplest and very least just made the feds think they had him and caught away.  Illusions, etc.  Wtf ar the writers smoking?  They forget such basic, idiot level things.

We get a little more into Nathan’s petty little skull too – so it looks like now that he’s found out that his gifts are not God given he’s just a wee bit bitter about it.  Jealous maybe?  Somehow the fact that he’s a synthetic hero makes him feel less than the others.  Very, very petty.  Which is basically consistent with his character (as is, evidently, abandoning all thoughts of your children – would a senator seriously be able to get away with this in this day & age?).

Crazy new bad guy get’s some characterization of his lack of character.  He’s a bad guy!  A single minded bad guy!  He will get you, because he’s willing to go all the way!  Booo!! We can also safely assume some powered individual negatively impacted him in the past.  Oh, and he will soon figure out Nathan’s secret.  Wacky hijinks will ensue.

The Guantanemo schtick was TOO THICK.   Back up off of it.   Back up offa me (annnd youtube sucks for not having a Talib Kweli video for me to link there).

I think it would be more relateable if it was either lower key (rounding folks up to live in a special village or camp vs. locking them in unlit rooms with bags over their heads), or totally off the charts (X-Men: Days of Future Past).

Seriously.  We’re supposed to believe that Nathan believes that he is helping people when he is putting them in unlit rooms with bags over their heads??  And this is supposed to be contemporary with our reality – which is currently dealing with the Guantanemo fallout?  Yeah no.  Try 5 years too late, or 5-10 years too early to be a retrospective commentary.

Re: The resolution to Peter’s overpoweredness: predictiable, but clean.  Rather limitedly interesting though.  I wish the number were 4 or 5, or at least 2 or 3.  Not going to be much of a match for Sylar and his 50 jillion powers….

The Sylar & Son thing…what are the odds.  Seriously.  They’d better be related.  Of all the houses, in all the suburbs, you had ta walk into mine…

Oh.  And they totally attempt to make it look like everyone thinks Daphne is dead (at least I got that impression – did I miss a scene where they captured her?) – when episode info for just a few weeks down the road, available online easily, directly states that she’s not.  Dumb.

The whole violence scene was dumb.  Matt took over everyone’s mind, and then allowed them to take Claire back with them? And possible Daphne? WTF?  Shoddy/lazy writing.

Do I smell a Loeb?   Quite possibly…..

The weird thing is the show is still interesting and worth watching – even though I can’t stand most of the characters (Parkman & Daphne are ok, Ando might wind up being interesting).  Kind of like BSG.  I pretty much can’t stand anyone on the show, but I’m still curious enough to watch every other episode to see how it’s wrapping up.

So.

This episode was not nearly as bad as I thought it would be, because stuff actually happened…for the most part.

I have to say, if Peter is going to stick around – which he will, prettttty much forever I expect, since the writers have given several indications that they are not allowed to kill off the core cast (Claire at the very least, most likely Claire, HRG, Peter, Nathan, Sylar & Mr. Muggles – with Matt, blonde clone & Mohinder on the “probably” list)  – he might as well have his powers.  Seriously.  He’s obnoxious with or without, but at least with he’s interesting.

Nathan going stone cold bastard.  Ok sure, sure, Haiti changed him and he wanted to change the world.  Then what, he threw a hissy fit and decided to take away everyone’s toys?  That is kind of in character for his bitch ass…so maybe.  But I would think he would have just tried to save the formula, then when that failed hooked up with blonde clone and Mohinder & started over.

I guess that marine wasn’t that badass.  I was expecting extra durability too….

Haha: dead target villains, who we knew were just filler and would die eventually.

Funny/sad: 2 characters from the web/comics – iron hands man and Echo (I think!!).  I really liked Echo…so I hope that wasn’t him I saw mixed in with the bodies, but dude looked familiar.  Yeah, fuck it was him.  Well, that’s annoying.  His powers would have been pretty easy to do too, and interesting.  Iron hands guy…who fucking cares.

Silly: Claire’s whole plotline. *in really effeminate voice*: OVER IT.

Hopefully next season will focus on some other folks – I saw Micah’s pic in the pile thaht was passed to the president, don’t think I saw Claire or Peter in there.

Hiro/Ando: Hmm.  I’m bummed about Hiro’s power loss, but I suspect they are taking the smart path and doing NO MORE TIME TRAVEL.  Because it’s annoying and poorly used in the context of the show.  I also saw an interview that said (in code) that he won’t be getting his powers back next season either – so I guess now it’s his turn to play sidekick.  Ok, I can buy that.  Hopefully they stick around.  I like Ando’s power I guess.  The comic had some other people with the same ability, but his looks a bit more flexible, as he can possibly shoot electricity too (the powers were zapping stuff in the lab, and in the flashforward early in the season, he was zapping ?Hiro? with them).   Maybe he can do the reverse too so they have something else to use against

Sylar.  Who I’m SURE isn’t dead.  Duh. Even though this is his best death yet!!! The explosion probably shook the glass free.  How else is he going to go look up his daddy next season?