So “Chuck” and “Heroes” both had their season finales on Monday. Thoughts, including frankly unavoidable spoilers, follow.
HEROES: I’ve been patient this season. Honest to God, I have. In a season that seemed preoccupied with depowering Hiro, knocking off blonde heroines, Sylar flipflopping between hero and villain (he’s a freaking serial killer of innocent people; HOW can he be a hero?), and a plotline that moved at a glacial pace (at the beginning they were busy rounding up heroes, and as of the last episode, they were…still rounding up heroes), and the snore-inducing opening and closing narration, I have stuck with it.
And what’s our payoff?
Nathan is brutally killed by Sylar, and Sylar is brainwashed into pretending to be Nathan. And it’s all his mother’s idea.
Am I the only one who thinks that’s sick? A cop out? Revolting? Borderline necrophilia? Mother Petrelli doesn’t want Nathan out of her life, and so she transforms Nathan’s killer into Nathanmania, an incredible simulation? How about she wants him dead because he just slaughtered her son and will, without question, kill again? Oh, but what will the president say if he discovers that a senator was killed by someone with powers? How about if he’s told, “This guy killed Nathan Petrelli, but we put him down like the rabid dog he is so he’ll never hurt anyone again.”
The notion that she’s keeping her son’s killer around, looking at him every day and pretending he’s her son…it’s hideous. And Peter is supposed to treat him like his brother? Claire like her father? It’s an exercise in cruelty for all concerned. It’s madness.
And what’s the outcome of the major storyline? That the president suddenly decides that heroes might be of benefit to the government and therefore the government should work with them? “Hey, guys, sorry we were rounding you up. How about we employ you instead?” They couldn’t have thought of that earlier?
Nothing worked for me. Nothing made sense to me. Nothing rang true for me. I may check it out next season, but I’ll have this series on a VERY short leash.
CHUCK: On the other hand has gone from strength to strength. Over a period of time the characters have grown, become deeper, more layered, more lovable, with some of the best cast chemistry on the air. The addition of Scott Bakula to the cast (however temporary) and the jaw-dropping revelations that entailed were nothing short of brilliant. The loopy wedding performance by “Jeffter” contrasted with the firefight in the wedding reception room was deftly edited, the introduction of a new (or expanded) villainous outfit was well executed, and if one of the key dramatic beats was predictable (you just knew Chuck had to get the intersect back in his head) they nevertheless built upon that and gave us an ášš-kicking climax that was genuinely exhilarating (not to mention worth it just for Sarah’s and Casey’s reactions. I want a t-shirt of Casey saying, “Chuck me!”
“Chuck” has had miserable ratings luck, ranging from a strike-truncated first season to a heavily promoted episode being derailed by an Obama speech. Plus the competition from “Dancing With the Stars” has been brutal. Consequently it’s iffy as to whether the show will be renewed. I sure hope so.
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Wow. I hardly ever see a spelling mistake on your blogs. You must be really angry. Did you mean “Nathan brutally killed by Sylar” ?
And I agree about the short leash for next season. Unless the prove that Mama Petrelli is insane her move was just as you posted “hideous”.
Already fixed it.
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PAD
I love Chuck so much, and I agree – it really has just gotten better with time. I’m so frustrated with NBC and this timeslot…not *just* Dancing with the Stars, but House and Gossip Girl, as well. The only other show I would watch is House, but I know plenty of twenty-somethings like myself that choose either of the other two over Chuck, having no idea what they’re missing. I think they should move the show to Wednesdays at 8, where the competition is much less stiff.
Jeffster was great – I loved the Back to the Future “watch me for the changes” reference. I’ll be so disappointed if this isn’t renewed.
OOPS. I meant “they” not “the” as in TPTB or the show’s producers.
If NBC kills Chuck they’ll have lost me as a viewer, since it is the only show I watch on the network!
I gave up on Heros at the start of the season, tried it again during the “second eclipse” and swore never to go back.
The whole Sylar as Nathan thing rings to similar to the storyline in Exiles where Proteus possesed Morph and they brainwashed Proteus into thinking he was Morph. But they had to keep the brainwashing constant because they realize Proteus could slip throug because at one point he started talking with a scottish accent.
The thing with Nathan pìššëš me off because hello. Why the hëll didn’t Noah suggest they use Claire’s blood. He was killed by getting shot in the freaking eye. His eye got messed up his skull damaged and he lost brain. Claire’s blood brought his dead ášš back and he grew a new eye!
Ugh. Also I think only Matt, Angela, and HRG know that Sylar is really Nathan. If you notice when they did a close up of the body it “looked” like Sylar. Matt was projecting the image. Claire and Peter are not in. So right now I think only Bennett, Matt, and Angela know. Next season I bet is when “Nathan” realizes the truth and Peter and Claire’s reaction that Nathan is dead and they’ve been really dealing with Sylar should be interesting.
No, it wasn’t a Matt persuasion. Noah referenced the original shapeshifter who died looking like Sylar body, and that’s what Claire and Peter saw.
Angela’s plan was being driven by the dream that she had where Matt “saved” Nathan. It’s definitely a bad solution to the problem, but she’s a little wacky by this point, so it’s not a surprise.
But why did Noah go along with it, knowing that he could revive Nathan using Claire’s blood? Simply put, because Noah doesn’t know how to kill Sylar right now. He’s hidden his one vulnerable spot away somewhere and there’s no time to figure out how to kill him. The best you can do is to neutralize him until you can figure out how to kill him.
Which is what Matt’s brainwashing has done.
Meanwhile, Nathan’s body has been put on ice by Noah — note the handy reference to fake Sylar being on ice — and Noah will use Claire’s blood to revive him just as soon as he figures out how to kill Sylar once and for all.
In the meantime, Noah has to lie to Claire. Again.
But all in the service of the greater good. Which pretty much sums up his approach to the world.
Sylar was unconscious. Matt Parkman is a telepath powerful enough to make Sylar forget his entire personality and all his powers. That buys them loads of time. They don’t have to know where the spot is, they could have cut his brain out of his head in the office and destroyed the whole thing.
Giving Nathan a blood injection from Clair and incinerating Syler = good idea.
What they actually did = bad writing to keep a character who should have died at the end of season 1.
Simply put, because Noah doesn’t know how to kill Sylar right now
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You know what? Were I Noah, I’d be willing to give cutting off his head a shot. Let’s see him regrow a head. Or dump him in a pool of acid, then take the remains and cremate them. Then take the ashes, spread them around ten different cities and flush them.
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He’s got a vulnerable spot hidden away? Here’s a thought. Put him in front of a gatling gun and start firing away. Turn him into fracking swiss cheese. Chances are that wherever the “off” switch is, you’re going to hit it. Take the pulped remains and run it over with a steam roller.
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Don’t know how to kill him, my ášš.
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PAD
Yeah, I’ve never seen what the big problem is. If you can surprise him, it’s actually not that hard to take Sylar down, at least temporarily. Lop off his head was my first thought the moment he got Claire’s healing factor. Then drop said head into the next available probe heading towards the sun. Have none of these people ever watched Highlander… or the second season of Buffy? I mean, if people could figure out to dismember the Judge and scatter him a thousand years ago… Heck, even if Sylar DID survive beheading, it’d be kinda difficult to do much of anything stuck in a big Futurama head-jar without a body.
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Of course, I also advocated a big axe being general-issue equipment to the Stargate Atlantis team from day one *shrugs*
And Chuck finally covered the problem that I’ve been wondering about for quite a while. Namely, why the heck isn’t Chuck being paid. Seems he was, but they just hadn’t told him about it (in probably a semi-evil move to keep him from realizing if the goverment will spend millions on the secret lair below the fro-yo place, he can get a major consultant gig/fee from them).
Assuming there’s a next season, I’d guess the fro-yo shop is out. In which case, I regret they never made a “cone of silence” joke there.
On the other hand, I can’t quite figure out where the relatively recent “Get the Intersect out of my head, I want to live a normal life!” attitude’s been coming from. Chuck’s life has gotten much more interesting and better since doing the “spy” (these guys aren’t spies. They’re government agents. There’s a difference) stuff, he’s met his true love, it got him his degree (which admittedly the govt. had kept him from getting although he didn’t know it), and it got him out of the Buy More. Also, he’s someone who was always trying to get more and more involved in missions and the like rather than just sitting in the car or the lair.
Chuck was the bright spot on Mondays for me as far as NBC was concerned. I’ve made it a point to watch it as soon as possible on my DVR or online. The finish made me hopeful for a renewal.
I agree with you on both.
HEROES is quickly becoming one of those shows I so desperately want to like, and admit that it does often hit moments out of the ballpark, but always finds itself veering down the wrong desert road. The Sylar twist at the end seemed shocking and creative until the next few seconds brought the very same thoughts to my mind as it did yours. It simply doesn’t work.
CHUCK is just plain awesome.
I have to ask, Pete, have you stopped watching TERMINATOR: THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES, because I’d love to hear what the Cowboy had to say about its finale.
poor nathan petrelli has been “killed” in every season finale on Heroes.
The best way to fix Heroes would be to kill Sylar permanently. Unfortunately, for some reason people still have a massive hard-on for the character. I can understand appreciating Zachary Quinto because he’s taken all the ridiculous plot garbage thrown at him and done a pretty admirable job but Sylar the character? There is nothing so annoying as an antagonist who not only never gets his but is literally omnipotent. I was so hoping when they depowered him at the end of Season 2 it would actually work out–they’ve obviously figured out that having Hiro and Peter nigh-unstoppable makes for super-boring stories–why can’t they figure out the same thing about Sylar?
So yeah, throw out Nathan, who despite the wildly inconsistent portrayal this season is a pretty interesting character but keep Sylar? They’re just being stupid at this point. At most I will peruse a few episodes next season. It’s certainly not going to be wasting any space on my PVR.
You know what, I actually kinda liked the ‘Heroes’ finale. Not in the ‘yeah, this is right’ sort of way but more the ‘holy šhìŧ, this is so sick that I have to see how they (the characters) think this will work out well’ kind of way. I liked the end more than the rest of the season, at least. This storyline was so over-the-top in it’s abuse of civil rights and common sense, that I had been saying for weeks that i really just wanted Sylar to come and kill everyone at this point. Even the characters that we grew to love in season 1 are becoming irritating. Peter had become virtually irrelevant until the end, Claire is constantly posturing despite having no offensive powers, and Hiro hasn’t grown a bit sense…ever.
I’ve never seen Chuck, but I stopped watching Heroes around the time of the “Eclipse seen in Kansas, Central America and New York simultaneously” storyline.
While extremely stupid (and you left out California), that eclipse bit was the second time they’d done it. Remember, in the very first ep it’s hitting in Japan, New York, etc.
Of course, what also bothered me about the second eclipse was that 1) not all the characters’ abilities had manifested at the time of an eclipse and 2) the older characters hadn’t had their abilities vanish during the first eclipse. So it was also inconsistent with the show’s own mythos as well as, y’know, basic science.
What truly annoys me about Heroes is their incessant mining of their own first season for ideas. Who’s the big villain at the end? Sylar. What’s his plan? Impersonate the President. They even reworked season 1’s floor painting of New York Exploding into a painting of Washington DC exploding.
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The Chuck season finale reminded me of the end of Quantum Leap. Some people didn’t like that ending because it said that Sam never went home. I loved that. After years of watching Sam whine about wanting to go home, he finally admits that he’s not helping people because he has to, but because he wants to.
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That’s what happened on Chuck. They built up the idea that Chuck didn’t believe in himself, disguised as him saying he wanted a normal life. Then he made the choice to put the intersect in himself. Not because of a last minute, crazy scheme to save his friends (as I expected), but because the world need a good guy to fight the bad guys. It wasn’t forced on him this time, it was his decision. That’s real growth, and the kung-fu was a heck of a lot cooler because of it.
I liked the second half of this season of Heroes (Jeph Loeb’s absence was a the shows gain, it seems).
And I liked the finale right up to the death of Nathan and the Sylar foolishness. At that point I started thinking about what the writers were trying to do. The characters no longer where real to me, but just entities to hang plot devices on to. I think PAD would agree this is an egregious sin in writing.
The season of HEROES was incredibly weak, from the inconsistency in characters (I agree with PAD 100% that trying to make Sylar a good guy is completely out of place) to the storylines that go nowhere (such as the gov’t rounding up heroes, letting them escape, rounding them up, etc.).
I’m also very much in favor of getting rid of Sylar once and for. Apart from having him as the villain EVERY SINGLE WEEK (the Joker’s also a homicidal psychopath, but he’s not in every issue of BATMAN), having him nigh-invulnerable from Claire and giving him open-ended powers (if they want him to do something, it’s just assumed he killed a hero with that power before) makes him too powerful for anyone to realistically defeat. Further, how many times has been unconscious or helpless around people who know his powers and crimes, yet they either let him live or get him to work with them.
As for “turning” Sylar into Nathan, that is simply an awful idea. Nathan isn’t the only person who could speak on behalf of the heroes/specials, there’s no proof that Matt’s brainwashing will stick — has he ever done this before? does he know how long it’ll stick? — and if (let’s be honest: when) Sylar’s personality comes back, he’ll not only be his old homicidal self but also more angry for having his mind switched.
Bleh.
I’m totally on board with the school of thought that thinks Nathan could have been brought back by using Claire’s blood, particularly since that precedent had already been established with HRG. It would have been much easier to accept and far less convoluted than the duplication of Nathan. Frankly, I still don’t understand how Sylar would have absorbed a lifetime of Nathan’s memories AND PLEASE, I BEG YOU, NOBODY POST SOME KIND OF RIDICULOUS RATIONALE FOR HOW THAT WORKED, BECAUSE I DON’T GIVE A CRAP!
For me, this past season of Heroes felt like the writers were plotting it out week to week instead of creating a story with a beginning, middle and end. I’m sure there are certain concessions that have to be made for network TV in order to make it accessible to new and casual viewers, but I’ve talked to a number of people who tried to jump on this season and couldn’t figure out what was going on.
I don’t know what’s going to happen with the next ‘chapter,’ but based on the tease we’ve just seen, I’m not all that excited.
In an odd way that season finale played a disturbing theme like many a Silver Age Superman story I partially remember. This one in particular; drawn by Swan and Abel, cover by Neal Adams with Supes holding his very daughter and with an arm over the grave of Lois (mother).
Long story short — the widowed/single father Supes and daughter simply switch dimensions/worlds (where Lois is still alive) with a still bachelor/not a single father Supes is now a resident of a world (with a dead Lois) wondering if Lana is still alive.
The Heroes finale set up that kind of Silver Age situation that even on the surface, even if you tried to justify it as a decision based on raw emotion, seems in the long run like a really, really bad idea.
Well, my first thought with “Heroes” was: “No!! You never Mind-Frak the villian! Didn’t any of you read ‘Final Crisis’?” ^_^
I agree it was a really stupid thing to do; but I wonder if it had something to do with Zachery Quinto having to film the new “Star Trek” movie, so they figured a ‘clever’ way to write him out of the show (he has effectively been ‘killed off’).
Like many, though, I was dissapointed in this season, and I feel its on its way to cancellation if it doesn’t pick up quick next season (although I don’t know what the ratings for this season were like).
I checked out the NBC boards yesterday to see the reaction to the Chuck finale, and was kind of surprised to see the number of negative reactions to the effects of the new Intersect. I think there’s a lot of fun to be had with that, especially since (as at least one person pointed out) Chuck doesn’t have the muscle memory to support the kind of actions he carried out.
Since he has to flash to do that stuff, he’s not going to be able to do it at will (so he can still be endangered), and since he hasn’t been training for years, he’s probably gonna be in a lot of pain anytime he’s seen some action.
I’m hoping for a third year, myself. And for Life as well.
I agree with MarvelFan that Zachary Quinto’s movie career probably played a role in the whole Nathan/Sylar “twist”, though filming of the Star Trek movie was finished quite some time ago, so it wouldn’t have affected Quinto’s participation in the current season (beyond any re-shoots or pick up shots the movie people needed him to do).
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My guess is the Heroes producers thought thusly: “Quinto’s movie career is likely to take off and we won’t be able to use him as a regular anymore. So let’s get rid of Sylar, but do it in a way that would let us bring him back if he’s available to do a special guest starring bit in a future season.”
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I’m guessing they didn’t just kill Sylar permanently, because they didn’t want to close the door on a Quinto guest starring appearance down the road a bit; and that they didn’t just have Sylar escape because they probably figured the audience would expect him to be back the next season.
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Can’t say I necessarily agree with that second point, if the power that be at Heroes were thinking that way. After all if, say, Two-Face breaks out of Arkham at the end of an issue (or storyline) of Batman that involved that character, it doesn’t necessarily mean he’ll be back the next issue; just that we might well see him again some day. The trope of _____ going away to possibly return one day is well established in comicbooks; and since Heroes is taking several pages (if you will) from the way things happen in the comics, why not take that page as well?
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For the record, I’d have preferred a “Sylar escapes at the end” conclusion or a “he’s dead (Jim) but his body’s gone” ending, like in season 1, instead of what we got. Pretty much the only way the “Sylar as Nathan” thread works is if Heroes were written and filmed “live” with no rewrites and no reshoots; and in that scenario they’d decided to kill Nathan, then changed their minds.
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Joey Connick, I’ve made similar comments to yours regarding Sylar. In the “Cowboy Pete Eclipses Heroes” thread from last December, I said:
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Regarding Sylar, I’ll ask you folks the same question I asked a co-worker. Is there a danger that Sylar will become the Joker of Heroes, the mass murderer who should either have long since been locked away for life or killed (whether by the state or someone with a grudge)? My answer is yes, especially if he’s still around in say, season 5.
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If you regard the relationship between Batman and the Joker as involving mythic archetypes and not stories meant to be set in a realistic milieu, that’s one thing; but most comics stories today are meant to take place as much as possible in the more-or-less real world (which is why we’re not likely to see such stories as the one where Captain Marvel literally fought the Earth (as depicted in a recent Showcase compilation)). And in the real world, the Joker wouldn’t keep coming back.
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Likewise, Heroes is presented as taking place in the real world. So why is Sylar still around? To use a Buffy term, he was the Big Bad of season 1 and his story should’ve been done at the end of that season.
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Or he should’ve been killed when he was powerless in season 2…. The long and short of it is that Sylar needs to be in jail or dead. He can’t keep coming back.
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I haven’t give up completely on Heroes, but it could be so much better than it has been.
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Luigi,
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Would you believe the eclipse wasn’t seen simultaneously, but that the scenes in different parts of the world were jump cuts to however many hours later it was on that spot on the globe?
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You find that hard to believe? How about when the eclipse first began, various characters were shunted to parallel worlds where everything was the same except that their particular parts of the globe were in view of an eclipse?
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You doubt that too, huh? How about an as yet-unseen “hero” who has the ability to put additional suns in the sky did just that? Except these “extra suns” only give off light, not heat; and they have negligible gravitational effect.
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No soap, huh? Then I’ll offer a totally off-the-wall “explanation” instead: Bad writing.
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One thing I did like about this season was that someone (Noah Bennett) finally explained how Sylar could still be alive when we saw him killed (permanently) last year: the glass shard melted. Could have brought that up a lot earlier in the season, but at least it was addressed.
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You know, there is a way out of this whole Nathan/Sylar mess. In a scene next season Nathan’s mistress (we know he’s been known to stray a bit, so a mistress won’t come as a surprise) wakes up to the sound of running water. The mistress, played by Victoria Principal, finds Nathan in the shower and tells him of this horrible nightmare she had in which Sylar killed him and that because the world still needed Nathan, Matt Parkman “brainwashed” Sylar into “becoming” Nathan.
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But luckily for her (and the audience) it was just a dream.
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Rick
Heroes has become a disjoined collection of “cool” moments. There is no plan, no logical flow from one event to the other, just a “wow factor” that has become boring because there is no story! They keep building up story threads that lead nowhere really and the story ends up somewhere else entirely. Even in the first season, they kept talking about an explosion that they were trying to stop. but how did saving the cheerleader help anything? how did the paintings help anything? what was the point of collecting everyone at the center of the explosion if the only person needed was nathan to fly peter away? but anyway they did change the future.but on the second season they changed the past, why did the present remain the same?claire was the catalyst at first, then hiro. and yet, when that happened, they were all like “ok, now claire is not the catalyst anymore”. what? now changing the past changes nothing for the future? or are we going the “multiverse routine”?
so far, every singe heroes “plot thread” (if there are any) is a rip off from something that has happened in the x-books at some point. the exiles example mentioned before is the most recent one that comes to mind, though there are many many more.
i probably will keep on watching it though but only because i start learning from it what mustn’t be done when you write a story. and also for the “wow factor”, sometimes mindlessness is somewhat pleasant
While I agree with many of the comments I’ve read, I will defend the show on one point-I don’t think Angela’s action with Sylar is out of the realm of possibility.
For example, the show Caprica has as a main point the death of a character’s daughter, and his attempts to “bring her back” by creating a robot. Or, another example, how many times in science fiction has a character tried to clone a person-hoping that they would have their loved one back, even though they will not have had the same experiences or personalities?
I agree with the person who asked why they didn’t use Claire’s blood-and that is a point they could have dealt with just by adding a few words to the script-for example, the blood would only heal someone who is still alive, and Nathan was dead (maybe HRG still had a pulse when they used Claire’s blood), or Sylar’s cut went through the “sweet spot” that can’t be healed.
I wonder what’s going to happen next season, when either Peter touches his brother, and absorbs Sylar’s abilities, or “Nathan” tries to fly, and falls to the ground”.
Fred
HRG had a bullet through the brain. They said he was dead. Then the dragged his body off somewhere. Then, sometime later, they put Claire’s blood in him and he stopped being dead.
He was very definitely dead for a few hours at least. Dancing around that with a few clever words would have seemed like just as big a cheat as forgetting it entirely.
While I agree with many of the comments I’ve read, I will defend the show on one point-I don’t think Angela’s action with Sylar is out of the realm of possibility.
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I don’t think it’s out of the realm of possiblity so much as that it takes it out of the realm of causing me to care about the characters. It’s possible that Mom Petrelli is so bugnuts crazy that she engages in this extended dance of maternal necrophilia. It’s possible that it doesn’t occur to Matt to turn to Mom and at least TRY to think at her, “You really don’t want to do this. You want us to kill Sylar” so that she can say, “On second thought, screw it, let’s kill Sylar.” It’s possible that Noah would stand there and go along with this stupidity rather than say, “No way. No way does this bášŧárd walk. Get me a chain saw, a wood chipper, and a bucket of battery acid. Let’s get this done.” It’s possible that all that could occur.
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But it brings the characters to a point where you find yourself saying, Why the hëll should I care about any of these people? And once you hit that point, it’s the beginning of the end.
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Oh, I’m pretty sure that Noah does want to put Sylar through the wood chipper. I just don’t think he’s got the resources available to do that before Sylar wakes up from the sedative. And as far as powers go, what’s Noah got available to work with at the moment? Peter’s on shape-shifting (although he might be able to grab something more useful from unconscious Sylar), Claire’s defense only, Angela’s useless, and that leaves Matt.
Bill, of course Noah has the resources to do it. He has Matt Parkman.
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Matt Parkman is so powerful, he made Sylar forget *his entire life*. If Parkman had just made Sylar forget the last few years, they’d have been left with a guy named Gabriel who was good at fixing watches. That guy would be a lot easier to tie up and drag out to the wood chipper.
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After that, they didn’t even need Nathan anymore. All they needed was for Parkman to walk into the Oval Office and spend a couple minutes reprogramming the President. Perhaps not even reprogramming, he could just make the President think that Noah is Nathan while they talked.
I just don’t think he’s got the resources available to do that before Sylar wakes up from the sedative.
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Sure he does. Matt’s standing right there. If you’re going to contend that he has the power to command someone to forget who they are, surely he has the power to command someone to stay asleep. Plus, what, the drug they used to knock him out is in short supply? Just keep giving him another shot every hour or so or however long it takes. There’s plenty of ways to keep him down for the count long enough to take his dámņëd head off and turn the rest of him into mulch.
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To me, this was one of those nail-on-chalkboard moments. That’s how it always sounds in my head when we’re watching characters made slaves to the plot, rendering them either helpless or stupid or acting in defiance of all logic and common sense in order to accomplish a goal that the writer wants to get to.
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PAD
First of all, I have to say that Mondays are the only NBC fare that I watch. Chuck is consistently fun and wonderful. A bit overly melodramatic at times, but the characters are always true to who they are. I would miss Chuck if it didn’t return. It really is too bad about Dancing being opposite it, because it appears to be fairly popular with the female audience that probably does switch over to ABC when Dancing with the Stars is on.
Heroes, on the other hand, I tend to enjoy…enjoy…enjoy…and then get really mad because the writers screw something up in such a major way that I want to throw things at the TV. Unlike Chuck where the characters always act like themselves, Heroes is the exact opposite. The writers, I think, are trying to make the characters unpredictable and exciting, but what a terrible way to go about it. Most of the time, they just substitute randomness for actual dramatic turns in the story. The characters have to have motivations to their actions that are believable. The only characters that I think have been evenly handled are Hiro, Ando, Peter, and (with the exception of a few off-moments) Claire. Heroes should be so much better than it is.
One more thing about Heroes. Can anyone tell me what the point was of the trip out to the desert? Seriously, that added up to nothing.
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They had the big buildup about how important it was. They had the gigantic coincidence that Mohinder finds some papers that have been in the basement for three seasons at the perfect time to meet them there. They pulled a long lost family member out of their ášš.
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For what? It had no affect on what came afterward.
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I don’t think I would have minded so much if they hadn’t gone on that journey because of a prophetic vision. When a character sees visions of the future, that implies that the trip is of vital importance. Mom could have had a dream about her sister hiding in the desert decades ago, there was no particular reason for it to happen now.
I finally saw the last two eps of Chuck last night.
While I want it to be renewed, I won’t be upset if it didn’t..it more or less ended well for all the characters.
The final two were very strong episodes, so that’s good, but it has had a bunch of weak stories that just squandered idea after idea (the dark intersect, and what it meant for Chuck to have that in his head as well, was never touched on, Chuck’s flowchart went nowhere, the search for his Dad was a bust for months til Sarah finds him for Chuck). Every time they tried to focus to much on Chuck at the store (which I liked) or the workings of the Government structure, it bring up Tyg’s points about Chuck not getting paid.
But, like I said, we had a good ending, especially with Chuck, as Sarah pointed to, accepting that he is a hero, and choosing to take back the intersect.
(And Bakula was back..he appeared to be enjoying himself more in the 3 episodes here, then in the 4 years on Enterprise!)