Heroes: Season 1, eps 1-2
I watched the first few episodes of this some time back because of a number of recommendations and my being a comic book geek. I was bored. Then a coworker watched the last several episodes of the season a few weeks ago, and I half-watched them and found them to be much more interesting, so I decided to give it another chance. I find these episodes rather unimpressive, but the perspective of having a good idea where they end up makes it more interesting.
The series is about mutants people who are learning they have special abilities in a world that hates and fears them doesn't know they exist. Except for the ones who are hunting them down, of course. There's a cheerleader who can heal herself from any injury, including fatal ones (s\She supposedly lives in Odessa. I will now remind myself that I am only familiar with the parts of Odessa my 4 uncles and my cousin live in, and tell myself that nonono really, the rest might look like that-if people in NYC, DC, Seattle, Chicago, etc. can manage it, then so can I!) and drug addict who paints the future, a telepathic cop, a single mother who either has a split personality or literally has another person living inside her (actually, I don't know which it is, even having seen the end of the season) a nurse who dreams of flying, and whose brother may actually fly, and a comic book geek in Japan who can teleport and time travel. Plus and Indian scientist whose father was killed investigating these people, and a serial killer who eats brains cuts people's brains out, but officially Does Not Exist. (I do know his deal, actually. At least in the first season.) And the cheerleader's father, who is Bad News.
This is, I think, a series where the storylines characters are involved in are more interesting than the characters themselves. While the characters are doing interesting things and interesting things are going on around them, they themselves...aren't. The only character in these two episodes who feels like a realized, interesting character is Hiro with all his faboying. Yet, from the end, I know what interested me the most was the story between the brothers and Claire and her father, and Niki beating her demons. All the elements for why I liked them in the later episodes are laid out in these two episodes, but the characters themselves aren't overly interesting yet.
The main drawback is that it's clearly being written for the DVD set, just like comics are being written for the trade. For those who don't know, I've been a comic book geek since I was 12. If Marvel and DC hadn't started annoying me with their Events and I hadn't stumbled across Blade of the Immortal, I probably never would have gotten into manga in the first place. Some time back, Marvel and DC took a look at what was selling and noticed the popularity of manga, and so they left off with even thinking about making individual issues be able to stand alone, and started writing for collected editions. Never mind that people who buy the individual chapters of manga instead of waiting for the tankoubon are buying magazines that feature a number of other series, so there's a lot more for them to read per installment. And then TV looked at Buffy with it's season-long plotlines and decided that was the way to go and started writing some series to we seen in chunks of episodes, not per episode, never mind that Buffy had independent stories per episode so that each episode was a complete story as a part of the whole. And so Lost was born. The thing is that while it's annoying to spend seven-to-ten minutes reading something that doesn't stand alone, it's a lot more annoying to spend 45 minutes watching something that doesn't stand alone.
The show also suffers from Making Sure We Get It. (Honestly, 2 episodes in and they're so devoted to Making Sure We Get It about Claire not being able to die that I'm starting to be amazed the girl lived long enough to develop her powers.)
If I had watched these two episodes again without having half-seen the end of the season, I'd call it quits. As it is, I know the later part is worth the slow beginning.
Please put comments with spoilers for later in the season/later seasons under the spoiler code. Everything between here and the last 6 or so episodes is a black hole for me, and I only saw and half of those episodes.
Spoiler code: Spoilers here.
The series is about mutants people who are learning they have special abilities in a world that hates and fears them doesn't know they exist. Except for the ones who are hunting them down, of course. There's a cheerleader who can heal herself from any injury, including fatal ones (s\She supposedly lives in Odessa. I will now remind myself that I am only familiar with the parts of Odessa my 4 uncles and my cousin live in, and tell myself that nonono really, the rest might look like that-if people in NYC, DC, Seattle, Chicago, etc. can manage it, then so can I!) and drug addict who paints the future, a telepathic cop, a single mother who either has a split personality or literally has another person living inside her (actually, I don't know which it is, even having seen the end of the season) a nurse who dreams of flying, and whose brother may actually fly, and a comic book geek in Japan who can teleport and time travel. Plus and Indian scientist whose father was killed investigating these people, and a serial killer who eats brains cuts people's brains out, but officially Does Not Exist. (I do know his deal, actually. At least in the first season.) And the cheerleader's father, who is Bad News.
This is, I think, a series where the storylines characters are involved in are more interesting than the characters themselves. While the characters are doing interesting things and interesting things are going on around them, they themselves...aren't. The only character in these two episodes who feels like a realized, interesting character is Hiro with all his faboying. Yet, from the end, I know what interested me the most was the story between the brothers and Claire and her father, and Niki beating her demons. All the elements for why I liked them in the later episodes are laid out in these two episodes, but the characters themselves aren't overly interesting yet.
The main drawback is that it's clearly being written for the DVD set, just like comics are being written for the trade. For those who don't know, I've been a comic book geek since I was 12. If Marvel and DC hadn't started annoying me with their Events and I hadn't stumbled across Blade of the Immortal, I probably never would have gotten into manga in the first place. Some time back, Marvel and DC took a look at what was selling and noticed the popularity of manga, and so they left off with even thinking about making individual issues be able to stand alone, and started writing for collected editions. Never mind that people who buy the individual chapters of manga instead of waiting for the tankoubon are buying magazines that feature a number of other series, so there's a lot more for them to read per installment. And then TV looked at Buffy with it's season-long plotlines and decided that was the way to go and started writing some series to we seen in chunks of episodes, not per episode, never mind that Buffy had independent stories per episode so that each episode was a complete story as a part of the whole. And so Lost was born. The thing is that while it's annoying to spend seven-to-ten minutes reading something that doesn't stand alone, it's a lot more annoying to spend 45 minutes watching something that doesn't stand alone.
The show also suffers from Making Sure We Get It. (Honestly, 2 episodes in and they're so devoted to Making Sure We Get It about Claire not being able to die that I'm starting to be amazed the girl lived long enough to develop her powers.)
If I had watched these two episodes again without having half-seen the end of the season, I'd call it quits. As it is, I know the later part is worth the slow beginning.
Please put comments with spoilers for later in the season/later seasons under the spoiler code. Everything between here and the last 6 or so episodes is a black hole for me, and I only saw and half of those episodes.
Spoiler code: Spoilers here.