I am still getting over Heroes, that is, coming to terms with the fact that everything I loved about the show have been accidentants and lucky coincidences. I am drawing way too many parallels to breaking up with one’s partner… The same clichés apply: He’s changed! This is not the man I fell in love with! We have nothing in common anymore! He is cheating on me with a lot of blonde women! But sometimes, in weak moments, he’s… he’s still so hot… and he promises you he won’t beat you again! Next season, everything will be alright, and he’s learned his lesson! Right.
Even more accurately, it’s like accepting that your beloved boyfriend has been turned into a vampire. He may still look like him, and have some memories of your time together, and still displays the occasional all-too-familiar personality trait, but in the end, he’s just a monster wearing your boyfriend’s dead, abused body, and he’s a blood-sucking demon who will destroy you and all you love, if you can’t finally accept that your boyfriend is dead and this monster has to be brought down.
I’ve been going through the states of grief in no particular order, and have now arrived at State 6: Roflbot.
Stage 1: Denial
Stage 2: Anger
Stage 3: Bargaining
Stage 4: Depression
Stage 5: Acceptance
Stage 6: CRACK!
Or maybe “your plotholes are full of cheese”?
23 responses so far ↓
Simone // November 15, 2008 at 7:08 am |
LOLOLOL. The Five Stages of Grief through pictures of cute animals. That totally made my day. XD
I have yet to reach acceptance, though. I keep going through all the other four over and over again, then I wear myself out, and then once I recharge I get back to “Anger.” D:
And LOL, WORD to all the ex-boyfriend metaphors. I keep making those myself. It’s vair sad.
Alicia // November 15, 2008 at 7:44 am |
sooooooooooooo cuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuute ;____;
Judging from your banner, you didn’t go through the phrase of blaming just about everyone, including the actors? I went through that last night and was almost losing respect for them …
Simone // November 15, 2008 at 7:53 am |
@ Alicia
I went through that last night and was almost losing respect for them …
I went through that after watching 3×08! I was like, “Why didn’t Sendhil point out that it doesn’t make any sense for HRG to get into his cab if Sylar hasn’t killed his father yet?!” But… that’s a bit too extreme, and I’m not gonna let this stupid season mess with my Sendhil-love. I think I’m over it now.
Alicia // November 15, 2008 at 8:51 am |
Yeah, I went through a little bit of it after 3×08, but Anna kept quoting KBell gushing about s3 at me yesterday, and it just … became way too much. I was THIIIIIIS close to losing all respect for Zach, and had to be reassured that hey, Zach has been keeping quiet about s3 so far while he’s always been rather opinionated in the past, which does seem to indicate he just prefers to not say anything atm, doesn’t it?
I’m currently really curious what these actors will say once they get killed off or leave the show. We keep saying Sendhil is a liarpants, but he’s actually not very *good* at lying, and will snark when the opportunity arises (see: Eclipse). Or maybe they’ll be too loyal to the creators, even then. It’s going to be interesting.
Anna // November 15, 2008 at 11:12 am |
Simone, yes, the anger will probably never go away. I can hold grudges, and I know I will never trust Tim Kring again, and I’ll be suspicious of any other writer, producer, and NBC as a whole. Doesn’t even matter if Volume 4 turns out to be made of awesome. Once trust is lost, it’s lost. But I hope we can eventually understand just who or what is to blame. Until then, I blame Kring, because it is his show, and no matter what the guys above said, he should be able to produce a show that still makes sense within itself. Other showrunners manage, and I doubt they’re under more pressure.
The man just lacks vision.
Oh, by the way, maybe I should note for the record that I’ve actually never had a boyfriend, so what I am writing about how it must fel like to break up with one… yeah.
Alicia…
Now, Ando is one of the few still in-character and fun to watch! Same for Angela and Maya… and Sendhil does his best with his bug storyline, I am sure. X_x We know he wasn’t thrilled about it… I guess I actually think these four are among those who are least to blame?
Yes, I hope, too, that someone will decide to fuck this shit and say things as they are.
Maybe at Eclipse 2? Most of those who attend have been written off.
Anna // November 15, 2008 at 12:24 pm |
Oh, Simone,
I went through that after watching 3×08! I was like, “Why didn’t Sendhil point out that it doesn’t make any sense for HRG to get into his cab if Sylar hasn’t killed his father yet?!” But… that’s a bit too extreme, and I’m not gonna let this stupid season mess with my Sendhil-love. I think I’m over it now.
Remember, interview from late September:
Ramamurthy: I never wanted the character to have powers. Again, you’ve got to understand, as an actor, it’s not like [creator and executive producer] Tim Kring calls you up during the hiatus and is like, “Hey, we’re going to give Suresh a power. What do you think?” You get the first script and Suresh has a power. You’re not really consulted.
But as an actor you just go with it. That’s kind of the life of an actor. You do what you can with what you’re given. And I was extremely skeptical. There were a lot of emails back and forth, and phone calls with Tim about it, because I was very unsure. I still am unsure; I don’t know how I’m going to react.
Alicia // November 15, 2008 at 1:41 pm |
But you fail to mention he followed it up with this:
The audience reaction at Comic-Con was unbelievable. I think it works, and I never thought it would. I really didn’t. I told them, “We’re going to be in trouble here.” As it’s progressed, the way that they’ve done it, it really works, surprisingly. And I’ll be the first one to admit that I was wrong, because I didn’t think it would work.
But that can be interpreted to mean that the audience at Comic-Con responded well to the first hour, and he trusted the fans’ reaction there and then over his own judgement. But then it went downhill …
Anna // November 15, 2008 at 2:32 pm |
That’s how I interprete it, cautiously.
I also wonder how much he would have noticed, during filming, how the scenes would come across in the episodes, and how it’s just handled as a sideplot to the Petrelli Show. Because that plays a huge factor.
The Comic Con thing is weird, because the first episode didn’t have the mutation stuff yet. That’d worry me most, as an actor. Or a writer. A human being with a brain?
Episode 1 had only… slightly questionable behaviour. “I’ve always wanted powers! Rly! I never said they could be dangerous! Cure? Never been interested. Nope. Tim said so.”
Alicia // November 15, 2008 at 3:04 pm |
It’s difficult to know for sure what Sendhil means by “works”, yeah. I think, after careful reading, that he means “works with the audience”, and if he sees that as the ultimate goal (or one of the goals) of entertainment TV, he’s certainly not wrong. And Mohinder did have a power in episode 1; they showed it at the end, right? I can only assume Comic-Con audiences didn’t object to that development.
I kinda do think Mohinder’s storyline works. It’s one of the few storylines where I’m willing to fill in the blanks of motivation myself to see where they take it. It’s what I did in episode 2. I still like him. As long as they let him snap out of it in the end, and acknowledge that he HAS been acting in a way that he has never before and probably won’t again without provocation, I’m okay with Mohinder.
But yeah, I do wonder what he thinks of The Petrelli Show … he used to be a player in an ensemble show, now he’s a side-character to the Petrellis. Bleh.
But I should stop second-guessing Sendhil. It’s not really fair.
Anna // November 15, 2008 at 7:06 pm |
He had the power in episode 1, but not the side effects.
To me, they are what’s the problem.
Introducing “people physically mutating into cockroach monsters” into the mythology as late as in Season 3 is just a bad idea.
Alicia // November 16, 2008 at 9:54 am |
It does make you wonder what’s wrong with Niki and Tracy and Nathan.
Seemingly? Nothing.
Yay!
Anna // November 16, 2008 at 10:32 am |
LOL, yeah, but that’s why Mohinder came to Arthur, because his formula obviously worked without side effects, never mind now Arthur suddenly claims he doesn’t know how to make it work.
Is that a plot, or a plot hole? D:
Simone // November 16, 2008 at 11:33 pm |
The Comic Con thing is weird, because the first episode didn’t have the mutation stuff yet.
I think that he was probably referring to how a bunch of people in the audience were screaming “Do it! Do it!” when Mohinder was contemplating whether he should inject himself or not. For the record, I was not one of those people.
Honestly, I still don’t really know how I feel about his storyline, and I don’t think I will until it’ll be wrapped up. I guess it all depends on how things will turn out in the end. I just hope that Mohinder will come out of this powerless, because I think that this show will lose a lot of its humanity if he doesn’t (and that’s just about the last thing they need). I kind of see Mohinder as the window that allows the audience to glimpse into the inner workings of the series; they can connect with him—an outsider and an unpowered participant in this universe—and by identifying with him, can better relate to the show as a whole. Sure, it has other powerless charcters—like HRG and of course, “Unspecial Ando”—but unlike Mohinder, Ando doesn’t have his own story arc. He’s merely a secondary character in Hiro’s storyline, and Bennet is a badass company agent who Always Knows What To Do—Mohinder, on the other hand, is just a regular guy who got swept up in this strange and crazy universe, and has no idea what he’s doing 99% of the time (much like any normal person would, if they lived in a world where people had superpowers and they had to do things like spy on ~*~Evil Organizations~*~), he’s just doing his best to get by. I’ve always found that to be one of the most appealing things about his character. He’s not a superhero, he’s not 007 like HRG, he’s just a geneticist. He’s not really equipped to deal with these things, but he tries anyway. That’s what I love about him, and if they turn him into just another superhero or supervillain, it’s gonna gonna destroy one of the main things that made me fall for him in the first place.
Also, LOL @ the formula thing. This season has more plotholes than I can count. *facepalm*
Anna // November 16, 2008 at 11:51 pm |
Ahh… interesting. I definitely would not have called for Mohinder to do this.
I agree with you absolutely: I like my Mohinder “normal”. I like seeing people struggle, and find solutions that don’t include brute force and simple, sheer physical strength.
I find that more inspiring, more fascinating, more fun. It’s also definitely not the direction that Heroes has been going in lately.
I still kind of want to make a list of all plotholes. How did Maury make Nathan hallucinate before the Level 5 outbreak? Nevermind that he was supposed to be caught in this dream that Matt trapped him in, and even a power outage shouldn’t have made him wake from this.
And why choose Linderman of all people to appear to Nathan – or to Daphne?
Simone // November 17, 2008 at 12:22 am |
I find that more inspiring, more fascinating, more fun. It’s also definitely not the direction that Heroes has been going in lately.
Definitely. And I think that’s at the heart of what’s wrong with this season. It’s no longer a show about ordinary people with extraordinary abilities. It’s a show about ~*~Superheroes~*~ and ~*~Supervillains~*~ and the Big Epic Adventures that they have. They’ve lost sight of what made this show so relatable. It wasn’t the characters’ Quest to Save the World, it was their own small, individual journeys, and the human connections that they made along the way.
Season one worked because of how organic it was. It was an accident, plain and simple. They weren’t trying so hard all the time, they just did their thing and it developed beautifully. The relationships that they created in that season became so overwhelmingly popular because they weren’t planned. They didn’t come off as forced and contrived. They need to get back to that and start simplifying things again. I don’t understand why they insist on overcomplicating things so much, when they could just work with what they already have.
And why choose Linderman of all people to appear to Nathan – or to Daphne?
… Because the writers like Malcolm McDowell.
Anna // November 17, 2008 at 12:30 am |
Agreed sososososo much on all counts, and -
I like Malcolm McDowell, too! Best villain I ever had in Wing Commander IV!
I would never have killed him off in Season 1, I think. He would have escaped, and remained a looming threat.
Rose // November 20, 2008 at 7:58 pm |
“I’ve always found that to be one of the most appealing things about his character. He’s not a superhero, he’s not 007 like HRG, he’s just a geneticist. He’s not really equipped to deal with these things, but he tries anyway.”
Call me fluffy but I’ve always felt that Mohinder’s greatest strength is his heart and that’s why I adore him. He often gets in over his head but his intentions are moral and he always tries to do his best in a hectic situation.
Kring is putting Mohinder through such a mess. I heard in an interview prior to season 3 that Sendhil said he’d think it cool to see Mohinder “become evil”. I was keen on the idea of Mohinder becoming a confident, cold, and calculated “mad scientist”. But a poorly written script is making him into the “sad scientist” who is remorseful but won’t stop using humans as guinea pigs. Here’s to hoping we get the season one geneticist back: the man with the poetic mind, protective of Molly, hateful of Sylar, and searching to unlock life’s mysteries.
Miraculously, season 3 doesn’t remove my affection for Sendhil Ramamurhty. If anything, I’m impressed at how he’s taking this all in stride and doing the best he can.
Anna // November 20, 2008 at 11:06 pm |
I am worried about the “hateful of Sylar” part. Sylar has been changed and retconned so much that I don’t know whether it would be fun anymore to watch a scene where he’s confronted with his crimes.
Miraculously, season 3 doesn’t remove my affection for Sendhil Ramamurhty. If anything, I’m impressed at how he’s taking this all in stride and doing the best he can.
<3 Good. Yes, he’s an actor, doing the best he can. There was an interview at the start of Season 3 where Sendhil (diplomatically) mentioned that he was not sure about the script, and made a lot of phonecalls to Tim Kring about it. Kring was probably annoyed because he doesn’t give a crap about the characters, but it speaks highly of Sendhil’s dedication to the character, I think. It seems like the actors are trying to know/understand their characters, rationalize their behaviour in the script somehow.
If all fails, Season 3 is Sendhil’s demo tape.
Rose // November 21, 2008 at 3:35 pm |
“I am worried about the “hateful of Sylar” part. Sylar has been changed and retconned so much that I don’t know whether it would be fun anymore to watch a scene where he’s confronted with his crimes”
Well, I do have a weakness for Mylar *snickers* so I call it a love/hate relationship between the characters. They were really at each other in “Parasite”. ^^ But as of season 3, good guys are doing bad things and evil Sylar is acting all emo. It’s screwing up our season 1 perspective of the characters. No wonder I feel so frustrated.
Sendhil has made his character into a popular icon on “Heroes”. Regardless of ratings, I’m sure he’ll move on to better things when the show ends. I look forward to his next performance on the screen with great interest. Did he say he’s accepted a part in an upcoming movie?
Anna // November 22, 2008 at 5:17 pm |
He said in September that he was hoping to get a leading role in a movie, but no one has ever asked him about this again afterwards. There are so many interviews with him, and few of those ask him any actually interesting questions…
Vejiicakes // December 10, 2008 at 8:20 pm |
O HAI THAR–lurker, late the post, etc. Came for the Mohinder outfits, stayed for the snark.
Re: S3, I’m going to tentatively suggest that after 3×10-11, it /looks/ like the writers may be trying to fix all the crazy retconning they’ve done, /particularly/ in regards to a certain former serial killer. By writing the “former” part away. Gleefully. I really feel they’re trying to pretend that the entire early/middle part of S3 just didn’t happen.
Cautious optimism!
Anna // December 20, 2008 at 8:08 pm |
Hi cakes!
It does cheer me up a little that they made Sylar evil again, but now it’s become obvious they’re going to pretend Claire is his biggest enemy, the one who’s suffered most from him and hates him the most, and the one he’s most fascinated with.
I am going to miss Mylar. I know ZQ and Sendhil are missing it, too. And the audience.
Rose // January 14, 2009 at 4:29 am |
Then there’s only one thing to do….duct tape Sylar and Mohinder together!! They’ll never get out of each other’s arms!