Casting coach

[trinityvixen]

So far this season, Heroes has not been awful. I credit much of this to Robert Knepper and the uber-creepy inclusion of the Carnival. Everything is better with circus freaks. Everything. Of course, this will all change in another few episodes and I'll regret saying this, but I'm even enjoying parts of this season. (My reviews at Pink Raygun for

Comments

[trinityvixen]

I had no problem with writing a brand new character for Ali Larter. There are instances of this sort of thing in comics, and after all where would we be without the evil twin? The problem became that the show forgot that Nikki had a twin, and that if there are several girls running around with Ali Larter's face, there needs to be an explanation for why two of them went to one family, while the others were spread far and wide. (And if they were engineered, as seems to be the case, how come the creators didn't get pissed when Jessica was killed by her "father"?)

Point is, they set up an evil twin narrative for Ali Larter, then decided to expand it and thought that no one would notice that they threw all the other history over. The fact that they tried to just make Nikki have even more names on her brain--"Gina" that one time--just shows how badly they had no idea what to do with her.

However, it's all moot since despite the fact that Tracy is now floundering just as badly, and they still don't have any plan for her. You would have thought that they could have figured out an idea by now.

[viridian]

But two of them didn't go to one family, did they? I got the impression that "Jessica" was just Niki's own way of coping. She didn't ever actually have a twin - she was just bugfuck crazy.

[trinityvixen]

That's the thing--she did actually exist. There's a tombstone for her when she died as a little girl, and the father who was responsible admits to it and says he felt guilty. Jessica in Nikki's head was based on one who existed. They've just forgotten that she did.

[viridian]

Huh. For some reason I thought that was conclusively retconned and that we were supposed to get that there was never any Jessica.

[trinityvixen]

The fact that they don't bother to forcibly retcon things is probably why this show is so egregiously bad: if you want to rewrite the past, at least make an effort.