Let's Talk Heroes

But first - I played in the LPR game last night. I came in late as the 3rd player... why is nobody showing up? Is it because nobody knows it's actually at 10:00 ET? Anyway, I made short work of Tragedy and Osssssuuuuuuuuuuuuuu and took home my $28 in about 24 minutes. I rock.

Wait... math time. $10+1 entry. $2 KO bounty. 3 people... one place paid. $10-2=8. 8x3=24 (first place). I knock out 2 people for $4 in bounties. What the hell happened to MY $2? Since I don't get knocked out, should I get that back? So, in fact, shouldn't 1st place be $26? I do believe I got ripped off. Fuckers.

Okay, Heroes, season 3 started tonight. Just in case you didn't catch the 3000 ads being run on every NBC network for the past few weeks. I skipped the (I'm assuming) lame pre-show. This is a show that wowed me in the first season, and easily had the best hour of TV that year for the episode where Bennett flashes back to his early days in the Company. But it ended with one hell of a whimper and left me disappointed for the summer.

Season 2 was a disaster from the get go. Terrible new characters, the asinine idea of stripping all the cool characters of their powers so we could be reintroduced to them or something. LAMELY killing someone in flashback who they LAMELY saved at the end of the 1st season. Throw in possibly the worst romantic subplot ever written, and Season 2 is best forgotten.

So, after the creators apologized for season 2, would they finally rediscover the magic that made 90% of season 1 so great?

They certainly tried. The first 15 minutes once again felt like an hour of any other show... in a good way. The fact it was 2 hours long was boding well. They answered questions from season 2 immediately, without drawing out the "suspense". Everyone was still themselves, and even Sylar was getting back into form. They had some shocking moments, deaths, and some surprises. They even had a little bit of sexy. So far, so good.

But then Mohinder showed up.

I was one of the people that liked Suresh in the beginning. Great, they had a guy who DIDN'T have powers trying to discover the secrets of these people. He was naive, but brilliant. But he developed a stupid streak comparable to Claire's. He'd be moving right along and then do some brain-dead, makes-no-sense thing that derailed any momentum. He and Claire were the fall guys for "we need to move the plot along, so we'll sacrifice the character we've built for this implausibly stupid thing they need to do because we can't write ourselves out of this corner."

He still is. My GOD he's a tool. It took me out of the show with how stupid he was. Even Claire seemed relatively even-keeled this time, Suresh goes and does the moron-boy cliche thing.

And Hiro does something EVEN MORE idiotic... this is the best way the could move his story forward? He's shown naïvité in the past, but this was outright idiocy, followed up with paranoia.

There were also some pretty blatant rip-offs. I realize the mutant story is somewhat limited, but could your pyrokinetic maybe NOT have Liz Sherman-like blue flames? And a villain with control over magnetism? Well, Kring wanted that in season 1. And I get the feeling David Cronenberg could sue for one developing storyline.

Seeing Bruce Boxleitner and William Katt was cool though. Alan Bradley and The Greatest American Hero in the same show... awesome.

*spoiler*
Really? Did they think nobody saw The Fly? Mohinder has super-strength and agility, and can seemingly stick to walls. I was thinking direct Spider-Man rip-off until he started peeling skin from his back. Then it was obvious that Jeff Goldblum wasn't available.

The return of Lindermann was surprising for about 2 seconds, when I realized he wasn't really there, and very likely a figment of Nathan's psyche. Or he's being caused be someone else.

And Nikki's new character is kind of boring. But now that she's learning about her forgotten past, and has freezing abilities, she could grow. Although why'd she have to kill Katt??? WHY???

So in the end, there's a lot of promise here. They've got some villains (which I'm pretty sure will be a maguffin and wrapped up fairly soon). Some heroes in interesting positions (again, these will be wrapped up I think), and another end-of-the-world plotline. But there's still the HUGE problem of seemingly intelligent people doing completely out-of-left-field STUPID things, which if it continues, will turn me off this show permanently. Also, the totally unsubtle product placement is still grating... will Sprint be this season's Nissan Versa or Rogue?

For the plot and start of the season, it gets high marks. For originality and stupidity, it gets low ones. So I guess that puts it in the middle.