Heroes, Season 2: SPOILER ALERT

Plan to watch it again, but a few thoughts:

- Again, the plan was always to end this story arc during the fall. They just re-shot the ending just in case the show doesn't return in the spring due to the strike. And this arc still feels like it's barely getting started.

- Sylar continues to add nothing. His menace this season - ooh, scary! He's endangering two characters we don't give a crap about! - does not approach the sheer horror (and writers' creativity) of Villain Dude Who Slices People's Heads Open So He Can Eat Their Brains And Gain Their Powers. Yes, I'm sure his old power will return at some point, and they'll try to play it for maximum "Oh NO!!!" effect. Meh.

- West is less irritating since Claire pulled her head out of her ass and realized that daddy crusades for his family, and his family only.

- Speaking of people with their heads in their asses . . . . I had hoped this season the show would do some kind of plots where characters chose evil, and factions formed. I like the moral ambiguity of Parkman, for instance; as OOP knows, Professor X constantly talked about the temptation to use one's mental powers to yoink things from people's brains; doing so was one of the indicators that Phoenix had gone bad. But I dislike how they're depicting these factions; they're playing the "Evil will always triumph, because good is dumb!" card. Peter is doing what he feels is right, since Adam saved his brother. But Suresh is an utter moron, completely fooled by the Company. I don't get how he walked in the door as a crusader with Mr. Bennett, and now has done a complete 180.

- They FINALLY did what "Generations" indicated for me, and depicted a flashback with young Kaito and Joanna Cassidy. Why we have been wasting time with Niki/Jessica, the Wonder Twins, and One Tree Hill romance when we could have gotten some real juicy stuff about how the parents screwed everything up, I'll never know. But I think the writers didn't really have any great ideas for what to do with them, aside from alluding to the fact they made mistakes, and they experimented with viruses. There's no fleshing out of that storyline, just a hastily created MacGuffin (Virus No. whichever one Adam is after) so that a bunch of characters can have a big confrontation next week.

- I look forward to the end of this arc. By blaming its lack of interest and suspense on the writers' strike, I think we're cutting the show too much slack. This storyline never got going, and since they never planned to extend it through the whole season, it's safe to say they started off their game, and stayed that way, with the exception of a few flashes.

- I would like to see Niki/Jessica and her son be the two who die; they just seem like dead weight, and it would have been better story-wise if the family (including Shadowcat Daddy) had simply walked off into the sunset. Hell, someone should get a happy ending, right?

- I hope they don't cop out on the deaths, like when they said last year "A HERO will FALL!!!!" and it was just Eden. It would be too bad if it were Parkman; the story of a hero being tempted so strongly ny his power has great potential. But with the deus ex machina of the Adam/Claire healing blood now established, no death will impress me, sans a beheading.

 

Meh...the healing blood could probably fix a beheading, too, at this point.

I cannot even say how much I HATE that.

 

Ok. Finally watched the whole thing (I had only caught parts, including the end, because I was watching that mess of a football game Monday night).

I guess my point about the blood saving somebody from being beheaded was off, but how does Adam/Kenzei know for certain that having his head cut off would kill him for sure? Kind of a hard thing to test, unless maybe he has Juan Sanchez Villa-Lobos Ramirez explaining his powers to him.

Also, I'm wondering who Adam's help was in his attempt to steal the virus the first time around. Linderman would make sense. Maybe papa Petrelli. Mama Petrelli? Thing is, it's not so interesting unless the person is still alive.

 

Exactly what I thought of when Joanna Cassidy spent time saying "I never knew before, but that's the only way to stop you, cutting off your head" instead of pulling the damn trigger. Monologue later, eliminate enemy now.

Do you feel it, Adam? It is da Quickening!

 

As a viewer, we know that the brain is the source. When Claire fell on the stick and it jammed into her brain, she was dead for a while. It was only after the stick was removed that life returned. So, I would guess that if the brain is destroyed or broken up a person could not heal themselves.

I think it is very possible that Jessica ends up dead. She has the virus and Sylar just called from Suresh's apartment. I don't see Suresh jumping on a plain to help Jessica with a young girl in danger nearby.

 

True. I'm not even arguing that it would be the permanent way to take Adam, Claire or Peter out (though Peter did blow up. I wonder how that happened with his head staying attached to his shoulders). I just wonder how Adam would be so sure it would kill him. He even mentioned it in the past during the final confrontation with Hiro, which wasn't long after he had discovered his abilities.

 

Yep, I'm an idiot.

 

By the way, whatever happened to the mysterious eye man that freaked Molly out so badly? That whole storyline was way more menacing than the return of sylar (was it ever explained how he survived, btw? And what was the deal with the whole jungle hut thing?).

As someone else mentioned, he's spent the whole season acting menacing with only the ability to affect two characters we hate. Who cares Alejandro is dead? Hell, I obviously forgot he died before the episode even ended.

This whole season has a lot of loose ends and seems very choppy. I have to think the strike had more to do with that than the previous poster (I forget who it was) believes.

Bottom line, too many characters with storylines that aren't related to anything so far and we're at the end of the season. They need to cut down the number of characters for next season.

 

Peter blowing up… I don’t think he actually blew up. I think it was more of a disbursal of energy out of his body. I think of it more as sweating out radioactive nuclear particles as if Peter just ran a mile in 5-minutes. Thus his own body wasn’t injured by the radiation but everything around him was affected, like his brother.

Adam knowing about decapitation… I am not sure that Adam himself knew. I think it was more of a commenting guess. We, the viewer, knew because of Claire. I’m going to assume that Adam learned later on, in a similar manner to what happened with Claire, that his head was the source.

I cannot be certain on either of those, but it is how I am rationalizing the plot hole in my head.

I also need to comment on the last episode regarding something that has annoyed me. Peter seems to have become either the biggest fucking moron or the biggest fucking sap. Adam, a man he met in jail, is claiming that they need to find the virus in order to destroy it. Ok. Great.

On the way to destroying it with Adam, they run into a woman who explains to Peter what she knows. Peter, feeling that she is lying, reads her mind and learns the truth about where the virus is located. Why doesn’t he dig deeper to learn about her dislike of Adam? Why doesn’t Peter try to read Adam’s mind to make certain of his motives? For the sake of advancing the story, let’s just accept that Peter was being gullible.

Now, Peter and Adam are at the paper factory. Time stops and Hiro shows up. He knows that Hiro is a good guy. He knows that Hiro came to him on the train and explained about saving the cheerleader in order to save the world. Why is it that Peter’s first instinct is to say, “No Hiro. I can’t let you do that!” Why wouldn’t Peter ask Hiro to explain himself?

 

Bigpern, the guy that freaked Molly out so much was Parkman's father, who was later trapped in his own mind by Parkman.

Pastor, I can buy that theory on Peter blowing up. I really wonder about the trust of Adam thing. He sure seemed like he was having doubts after Adam killed the woman. But suddenly he has no doubt and he's going to protect Adam from Hiro? I don't get why he doesn't read Adam's mind, either. Makes no sense.

 

Just as a means of thinking by typing… I was thinking about what Bob had said to Suresh several episodes ago. He had said that Adam was controlling Parkman’s father. Because Parkman’s father was someone with mental powers, I don’t quite know how this was accomplished.

I wonder if something similar is happening with Peter. But what makes it weird is that Adam doesn’t seem to have any other power besides healing. The only hint that he might be able to do something else was when Bob had said that Adam could control the weather.

 

Haven't seen the whole thing yet, but saw some parts . . . .

SHOCKING ending. Oh wait . . . no it wasn't. (referring to Nathan's situation). Again, haven't seen the whole episode; is there a new development that means the Claire blood can no longer save lives?

The very end . . . . wow, they really are getting back to "what made Heroes great." Sylar is once again the baddie. The Wonder Twins are out of the picture.

What made Heroes great was quality cannibalization of good comic-book plotlines. And the fact that no character was safe. Then they let Sylar live, and introduced the Claire blood.

I swear those gunshots at the end were fired by somebody on water skis jumping a shark tank .. . . . . .