I’m doing these two together because I find some of the thematic resemblances interesting. Spoilers below:
LOST: The season opener starts cleverly enough, confounding our preconceptions of “The Others” by showing a rural setting of backyards and book clubs before the crash of the jetliner that brought our heroes to the island. Unfortunately, the season opener never quite again reaches that level of “didn’t see that coming.” Jack, Kate and Sawyer are split up and engaged in varying degrees of a mental chess match with the Others as their captors try to break their spirit and their will through various means.
Although the episode is engaging enough, and there were a few surprising moments (the flood door, for instance) ultimately it almost had a by-the-numbers feel to it. For that matter, “Lost’s” signature–the flashbacks–are starting to wear thin. What can serve as brilliantly character revelatory when done right (the Hurley flashbacks, for instance, or Jin and Sun) can also come across as needless padding, and this seemed like one of those instances…as if the producers don’t trust the mainline plot to be interesting. That’s why “Lost” reminds me of a driver with his foot on the gas and the gearshift in neutral. I feel as if we’ve had two seasons of set up, and the season opener is…more set up. I’m sticking along for the ride, but…sheesh.
BSG: This, on the other hand, is how it’s done. One hour of “Lost” that seemed to move slowly versus two hours that blasted past. Again we’ve got heroes under siege in an isolated environment, except their oppressors make the Others look like the Campfire girls. Even more: Every single character is trapped in some way, shape or form. The humans residing on New Caprica bristle under the yoke of Cylon oppression, with suicide bombers treated as heroes and necessary in a war of resistance…something that takes all our attitudes about the world around us and stands them on their ear, as the best SF does. The Cylons, meantime, are prisoners of their “good intentions,” embarking on a faith-motivated endeavor to spread the word of their one, true God. In real world terms: Cylons, the enemies, are basically human beings, while the human beings–the good guys–are what we would consider the enemy. Adama is a prisoner of his loyalties to the people of New Caprica who he’s left behind: Unable to continue the quest, but concerned that if he goes back, the resulting battle could be the end of humanity altogether. Starbuck is a prisoner of a would-be lover, Tigh is a prisoner of his rage, his wife is a prisoner of her secrets, and Lee Adama is a prisoner of frustration. All of this comes together in the jaw-dropping last two minutes in which a truly horrific trap is sprung that, I suspect, not everyone is getting out of in one piece.
Let me be blunt: Anyone who is allowing the title of this series to prevent them from watching it is, quite simply, nuts.
PAD
• 
I have read that the producers will explain how Locke was paralyzed pretty early into this season.
I tried BSG. I saw the pilot and the first episode on the urging of several friends. I hate it, and I feel SOOO alone in the SF/genre community now. I like good SF, I like intelligent stories and cool concepts. But…
I didn’t just dislike BSG, and I didn’t dislike parts of it – I simply hated it from top to bottom. I found the main visual hook (the shaky camera) took me totally out of the drama because it was so phony. I didn’t like any of the acting, which is probably the fault of the director because the actors are generally folks I like. I hated the dialog, which I found trite and obvious (even when it was supposed to be oblique). And the whole world they set up simply failed to grab me, and frankly didn’t make any sense.
Why do people like this? What am I missing that EVERYONE is seeing? What’s wrong with me?? 🙂
PS – I don’t watch LOST either, because I missed the first few episodes and just didn’t feel like jumping in late. Sounds like I’m not missing much there, thank goodness. 🙂
“Why do people like this? What am I missing that EVERYONE is seeing? What’s wrong with me?? :)”
It’s really not an easy question to answer. I agree on the shaky cam to a large extent, there’s no reason for the camera to wobble when the scene is just two people sitting and talking. I don’t find the dialog trite, and I can’t see why you would. I think someone who doesn’t know you isn’t going to be able to say why you don’t like it, simply because they don’t know what you think of as trite or what you’ve been exposed to.
Not everyone likes everything, sometimes it’s as simple as that. People act like a hit show is a universal phenomenon, but the truth is that most really big hit shows only get 10% or less of America watching them. So if you don’t like even the most popular show on TV, at least 90% of America agrees with you.
You’re right Jason – it was a rhetorical question, I guess… And not a very useful one. But I really am frustrated by my inability to get on board this thing, since I have so many friends who love it. Of course, I took a good ten years to warm up to the X-Files, so who knows!
Robert – “And how in the hëll does Skeet Ulrich know how to do everything? I was in the Army and they didn’t teach me how to do an emergency traich.”
Heck, I learned how to do an emergency traech with a ballpoint pen from an old episode of M*A*S*H! 😉
I didn’t just dislike BSG, and I didn’t dislike parts of it – I simply hated it from top to bottom. I found the main visual hook (the shaky camera) took me totally out of the drama because it was so phony. I didn’t like any of the acting, which is probably the fault of the director because the actors are generally folks I like. I hated the dialog, which I found trite and obvious (even when it was supposed to be oblique). And the whole world they set up simply failed to grab me, and frankly didn’t make any sense.
Why do people like this? What am I missing that EVERYONE is seeing? What’s wrong with me?? 🙂
Patrick – if it helps, I didn’t like it at firrst, either. Dad tried to get me to watch the miniseries and I blew him off. Then he tried to get me to watch Season One, and I blew him off. I tried, mind you – sat down for an hour of the miniseries then wandered off, board. The camera angles bugged me, and I found absolutely none of the characters compelling. The S1 episode I watched was the… third, I think, where Apollo goes up against Apollo (well, Richard Hatch, anyhow), and it was a bad episode to watch from the standpoint of it being very focused on a single character.
The only reason I gave the show another chance is that my coworker, who I shared an office with, had the miniseries with him, and we’d finished watching all our CSI episodes and needed something to kill 4 hours with (we had a very tedious job that involved staring at progress bars move across computer screens). So he put it in,… and when it was over, I went up to Best Buy to get the S1 DVDs, and we ran thru them before S2 started up.
What was missing in the show, for me, the first time was some hook, any hook, something to catch my attention. And I wish I could tell you precisely what changed my mind, but I honestly don’t know. Maybe it was my mood, maybe it was boredom, but there it was. And amusingly, when I rewatched the S1 third episode, I found myself thinking it was some of the best drama I’d seen on TV in a long time – now that I had a handle on the characters and storyline.
I think, in part, it has to do with the Galactica crew really not being immediately likeable. We’re accustomed to television shows (and I speak broadly here) having positive, happy, charming main characters. The Galactica people? Not so much shiny happy. They’re flawed, sometimes fatally. They’re broken, shellshocked, suffering PTSD and who knows what else, and it shows in their interactions. No one really becomes likeable until you start learning their narrative, their past and dreams and who they were before the horror of genocide.
This slow growth, combined with powerful statements about politics and the world, is what finally completely suckered me into the show. Which is rather amusing, since it’s probably the thing that turned me off to it in the first place.
Of course, I didn’t start watching Buffy til it was cancelled, Firefly several years after Dad tried to get me to watch it,.. same for Stargate (and I’ve gone on to teach classes built around Stargate), and just about anything else that I’ve ended up really loving. I’m kind of stubborn that way… 😉
Anyhow, now’d be a good time to give the show another shot – Moore’s said they specifically tried to set up S3 to be something new viewers could jump into and appreciate, without feeling like they have to catch up on S1 and 2 first.
And oh, mister_pj? I’m glad I’m not the only one who types Cyclons and then has to correct herself,… 😉
I hate to admit this, but I haven’t seen Lost or Galactica since their first seasons. In fact, the only shows I DO regularly see are Ghost Hunters, Danny Phantom and Martin Mystery. The last two are really just for my son. Really. They are. Wanna buy some beach front property in Wyoming? Knew you would.
Saw the first Heroes, kinda liked the tone, but I just didn’t have the time to see the second. Darn busy schedule. Although I do usually have time to watch Reba on some station with my wife. And I know, I know, I could tape all these things, but then there’s remembering to DO that, then finding time to watch them, and I just can’t HANDLE that kind of stress, man! Anyways, back to Heroes. Yeah, it’s got a grim tone, at least the first one did, but show me any hero, no pun intended, worth their salt that DOESN’T face grimness at least at some point. Show me one that doesn’t and you’ll be showing the Superfriends, and it’ll be the ones with Wonder Marvin and his dog, not the Wonder Twins. Heck, even Spider-Man and his amazing friends had some grimness. Remember the one where Aunt May was in a coma beacuse she got hit by a falling piece of building? Pretty grim stuff there, even though it was just a way to tell the origin story in a new way.
Stacie’s right. My head IS full of an inordinate amount of odd stuff.
Thomas E. Reed wrote:
> Okay, first of all, Cowboy Pete won’t have the
> chance to review Heroes. It won’t be on
> the air long enough.
Yes, it will. The SciFi Wire page of the SciFi Channel website (owned by NBC/Universal) has reported that Heroes is tied for first place in the ratings for the 18-49 age group nationwide, and NBC has given the order for a full season of episodes.
Of course, “a full season” doesn’t mean what it used to mean, and is now only 22 episodes for a network series, but that will take the program through the May sweeps.
Makes me wonder what Ron Moore was doing during the last few seasons of TREK he was involved with. BSG is showing he has grown considerably as a writer. Of course, during NExt Gen , he was in a Clinton-World… NO war, economic prosperity and no pscho killing little Amish girls.
We live in an edgier world, where people’s suffering is pawned off as “reality” entertainment, and we have a moron for a President trying to get us in another Korean War.
Just watched the new episode. Really powerful, but the part I loved is that in the middle of such a huge crisis, Tigh has he presence of mind to focus the Chief by saying that wonderful line, “the last thing your kid wants is Ellen and me for parents.”
There’s so much unsaid but still conveyed by that line and I was laughing for almost a full minute because it was so true. Tigh both reassuring Galan that they’d raise his son himself if something bad happened even though he thought they’d make terrible parents. It was perfect.
I was thinking that Sylar is either The Missing Professor(faked his death, I’m fairly sure of that even if he’s not evil), The Ex-Husband(who is also probably the blank guy from the bar), Evil Step-Dad, or Nathan(It’s basically a comic book, and all comic book politician’s have to be evil, right?). The only thing with Nathan is that I’m not sure how he would get all the way to LA and back.
Interesting theory about Peter’s power, it certainly makes sense, although most likely he is just a flier and it’s tied to self confidence.
HEROES: Okay, I was totally off-base about that cheerleader outfit. What’s-her-name is not wearing it when she wakes up on the table. Her lower body is covered in some kind of red blanket and her torso is opened up. I was just so busy looking at the the opened up chest before that my mind just filled in the red below that huge gore-fest as the skirt of her outfit. I’m still going with the theory that The Evil Mastermind(TM) has captured her and is performing experiments on her, though.
I am enjoying Heroes. I like the “grim” bit, and I think the characters are likeable enough (then again, I tend to like flawed, persecuted, troubled characters). I dig the “real world aesthetics” they seem to be going for, as opposed to Hollywood aesthetics.
But I can see why someone would think it too dark and pessimistic. There is something about stories with people gifted with superpowers: they still aren’t fully accepted by the general public. If you want the average guy to take your story seriously, and make it sure and obvious it isn’t for children and it isn’t for laughs, one safe way to make sure is making it GRIM, GRIM, GRIM.
Are they overdoing it? Perhaps. Not a trouble for me, because I like grim.
\\ The two Japs are hillarious. \\
See, I find them to be the most annoying part of the show.
// I’m getting a little tired of the stripper’s mystery power, tell us already. //
She has an evil side who comes out an takes over when she’s in trouble. Like Two Face or the Hulk only with sex appeal.
Patrick McEvoy
“I tried BSG.
…
Why do people like this? What am I missing that EVERYONE is seeing? What’s wrong with me?? 🙂 “
If it makes you feel any better, I don’t care for it either. Watched the mini and the entire first season and just never felt the need to keep going.
Ah well….
I’m glad to hear about the full-season committment. But just like the Democratic Party, I don’t think “Heroes” will go the distance. It’s amazing that the non-geek audience has gone so far with the snail-like character development. But something has to happen to make the characters take genuine heroic stands.
As was remarked on the new “Danny Phantom” episode last weekend (yes, I love the show too), by Peter David, and by most comic book writers when asked “What makes a hero?”, a real hero is not someone who winds up in danger; it’s someone who chooses to go into danger to help someone else. And that danger has to entail real risk for the would-be hero; the most risky character on “Heroes” might just be the artist whose powers require him to stay on heroin for them to work.
Peter are you going to put up a topic on the death of the Bill of Rights? I figure its something you must have been following.
“And that danger has to entail real risk for the would-be hero; the most risky character on “Heroes” might just be the artist whose powers require him to stay on heroin for them to work.”
Cheerverine desperately wants a normal life. Instead she used her powers to kill a serial rapist. Usually I wouldn’t think that killing the bad guy was heroic, but since she’s one of the girls he tried to rape, I give her a pass.
Hiro almost got blown up in a nuclear explosion, and his reaction was to toss away everything in his regular life and run to New York as fast as possible.
Plus a cop doing what cops do and several characters who are going through personal stuff but don’t even know about the real danger yet.
That’s actually a fair bit of progress for so few episodes, considering how many characters are being juggled.
While I see where you’re coming from Thomas, I have the opposite reaction. What I like the most about “Heroes” is that no one in the show is a “conventional” hero, just out to do good deeds. You see, THAT would have killed it for me, because it’s been done to death. And I suspect it would have killed it for the average viewer who is distrustful of superheroes too, because you already get superpowers in the show, you give them obviously “heroic” personalities and many people would still think it’s for children or something.
Still, there were many examples of characters risking themselves to help people out, like Jason said, and many in very archetypical “heroic” situations. Claire running into that wreck to save that fireman, Matt helping that little girl twice, Hiro and Isaac both out to stop that atomic explosion, Peter quitting his job because he wants to do something “greater”…
what does the cheerleader unifrom look like?
what is the symbole loo like?
i waant to be her for halloween!!!
i love lost butt why do the others keeep them there??
what happened to the chines woman?