Heroes "Landslide" 5.14.07

[IUGrad03]

Wow, so many deaths. I'm really concerned about HRG (Jack's) storyline right now. Does anyone know if he has re-signed for next season? It wouldn't be the same show without him.

I've got to say that I have been a big Sylar fan (mainly because Zachary Quinto is a fantastic actor...and absolutely hilarious), but after the death of Ted, now I'm ready to see him go. I've got to believe that Sylar's storyline has to be coming to an end, except that I think Zach will be back next season. In an interview with Matt Grunberg (Parkman), he said the last five minutes of the finale were actually the first five minutes of season two...not sure what that is going to mean for the characters.

But all in all a good episode. Wonder who all will make it through next Monday's episode?

[JDSBlueDevl]

Great episode, great setup for the finale. I'd just like to see what's in store for next season to top this. If the bomb goes off, how does it distinguish itself from the X-Men universe? And if Sylar is killed/defanged, what then? Still a Mutant Registration Act?

[JasonEvans]

I didn't think it was that good an episode-- yet another "filler" as we await the finale. I think the whole "see the future/change the future" theme has been a real problem for this season. Really, since the opening episode we have known where the show was going (how do we stop the bomb from blowing up in New York?) and despite some little twists and turns in the road, that is where things are still going. Frankly, not much has really happened since HRG turned on the Company a half dozen episodes ago.

So, last night Sylar got Ted's power (which we knew would happen for at least 2+ episodes) and Hiro's dad turned out to be a good guy who has a power, but did not tell us about his power. What?!?! Where did that come from? "I'll take random plot twists for $400, Alex" And are we supposed to think that Hiro and his dad trained for 30-minutes, an hour, 4-hours?? Regardless, how could it be enough time for Hiro to have learned anything that matters? I guess Samurai training is really, really easy.

I hated them killing Linderman-- and doing it in such a dull, matter-of-fact kind of way. There was a ton more that could be done with him and his storyline. I mean, he reveals that he arranged for DL and Nikessica to meet and fall in love and then we kill him off only moments later (the fist phase to the brain was a cool way to go though)?!?! Are you kidding me? And what kind of uber-powerful, super-rich, bad guy does not have a single henchman around to protect him from the phase-shifting good-guy and his split-personality wife?!?

The rigging of the election is a joke. He's 10 points back in the polls and suddenly they are going to have him win with 65% of the vote and we are supposed to think that no one is going to look into this?!?! Puh-lease!! I mean, was Linderman's plot to have Micah rig a bunch of individual machines to cast all their votes for Nathan? Riiiight, because no one is going to notice that. I mean, can we please make this thing even a tiny bit realistic. Don't even get me started on what appeared to be 4 people running for Congress, not a single one of them being an incumbant. Also, it listed Nathan as a DA and all the other candidates were nobodies. How was he trailing in the polls if he was not running against an incumbant?!? What kind of lousy poltician/campaigner is he? Don't forget that he has huge campaign contributions from Linderman helping him out (even though that would be against federal election laws). The entire election plot is just godawful.

I am glad that if they killed someone off that it was DL, as his character was never all that essential. I am not even sure that Ted was a character. We barely knew him and I doubt anyone shed a tear when his brain was eaten. I am sure some more characters will die next week. Aside from Hiro, I am not sure anyone matters to me.

I could go on and on. The writing and storytelling on this show have gone waaay downhill since the middle of the season. At one point, the story was carrying the horrid acting. At this point, that is certainly not happening any more. It is just so medicore.

-Jason "the entire season has been about one storyline-- stop the bomb-- and I guarantee you the bomb will not nuke NYC-- it may go off but it won't kill millions or even hundreds of people" Evans

[BlueDiablo]

Wow, so many deaths. I'm really concerned about HRG (Jack's) storyline right now. Does anyone know if he has re-signed for next season? It wouldn't be the same show without him.

I have it from a very reliable source that HRG will, in fact, be back next season.

[Udaman]

I thought this episode was only so/so at best. Just too many things that don't really make sense, and sort of seem made up at the last minute.

The Hiro training scene? Uh, it takes years of practice to get good at sword play (or at least months - see The Last Samurai). Plus once again we have that this gene mutation isn't something new (I guess they could argue that it occurred once and now is occurring again at a much faster clip - whatever).

Ando running off to kill Syler himself? Contrived and totally unbelievable.

Making the election from being 5 points down to winning with 64% of the vote? See Ando running off to kill Syler.

The end with Linderman - a letdown.

The speech by Nathan - what the hell was that?

There were a few really good moments - I liked that HRG killed his boss. I liked it when the illusionist mentioned that she was fat in real life, and when she morphed into an older black woman asked "What if this is really who I am"

But now the show has cornered itself into a wall. If they don't blow up New York...where does it go from here? If they do...then what was the point. Also, Syler is way, way, way too powerful.

The amazing thing to me is that back in February this show was white hot, and I repeatedly said it was better than Lost. But the last 5 weeks that has changed, and changed big time. Lost has turned it up a notch, and as Jason says the acting simply blows this show away.

[alteran]

I didn't think it was that good an episode-- yet another "filler" as we await the finale.

This was my impression as well. We have essentially come nowhere, although we've got a few more setups for the REAL finale.

And most of the stuff they gave us were things we saw coming. Sylar getting Fission Ted? Duh. Ditto Ando getting loose and into a position to get picked off by Sylar.

I think this might have played better as the first hour of a two-hour finale-- rather than making us wait another week with virtually no advance in the plot. In fact, I wonder if this was the original plan, but the network got greedy.

And there were a number of elements of unforgivably bad writing. I'm pretty cynical about the media's ability to even care about election fraud, but even CNN is up to catching a 25-point discrepency ;-). Although 12 points I would have bought.

The Hiro/Sulu/Ando scenes were just unforgivable:

1) Ignoring Ando for hours. Hiro/Sulu trained a whole afternoon without Hiro coming out briefly and telling Ando, "dude, my dad's cool with it now. Why don't you go get a Snapple?" And Ando couldn't hear the wood swords banging in the next room?

2) The sword training. Does it really take half an afternoon of kendo with Sulu to become a Samurai? Awesome-- I know what I'll be doing THIS Saturday. Maybe Sulu's talent is training people though. ;-)

but most importantly...

3) How much sword training do you need when you can FREEZE TIME?

I'm generally a pretty forgiving audience, but it's getting to be a bit much. Almost all of these glaring writing problems were easily fixable-- it's like they're insulting me now.

Still, I'm hooked for the finale. Hopefully the final show will make up for some of this stuff.

[Mal]

Exactly, Alteran! The fact that it would be sooooooo easy to fix the glaring issues in the plots they're throwing together is becoming offensive. They're not even trying. Hiro was shocked that after something like four hours Ando had left? They could at least make it look like Hiro and his father froze time and trained for months on end, so when he walked back into the storeroom it was only three minutes after he had left or something. Your raising the issue of not needing mad samurai skillz when you can freeze time, reminded me that to my knowledge there's still no explanation for how Sylar overcame that time freezing last episode. And why he didn't just cut into Hiro's skull while he was at it and basically become God.

The Jessica/DL/Linderman scene was hardcore lameness. Just like that, Jessica/Nikki is whole and in full control of her powers and emotions? Lame. Linderman's dead with no fight? And no explanation of how he ever got his tons of cash, or what he plans to do after blowing up NYC? Lame.

But the election was the most annoying for me also. I mean, come on, writers. It's not [U]actually[U] a comic book. There are people older than 12 watching the show; people who know how elections work in reality. Jason laid out the myriad issues there. I don't care so much about who was running or details about the campaign, really - that stuff was always peripheral at best (although I hated the bold, full front page headlines in the election day local papers about it being a close race - like people care that much about a House raace). But Micah's overriding the entire system to create a landslide is a massive insult to reality. Like Linderman wouldn't have a better plan than to have the kid show up and skew the polling at a dozen precincts? Like Candace would be stupid enough to encourage him to make it a landslide? Without even asking Micah, age 10 or whatever, if he even knew what that meant? It could have been Nathan with 90% of the votes.

Best part of the episode was Parkman and HRG, and Molly Walker getting her power back. "What am I thinking now, Parkman?" "Your last thought." That was actually pretty cool. Under HRG's tutelage, Parkman is becoming a redeemable character with a pretty useful power.

And where is Claude, for crying out loud?

[OZZIE4DUKE]

The Hiro/Sulu/Ando scenes were just unforgivable:

1) Ignoring Ando for hours. Hiro/Sulu trained a whole afternoon without Hiro coming out briefly and telling Ando, "dude, my dad's cool with it now. Why don't you go get a Snapple?" And Ando couldn't hear the wood swords banging in the next room?

2) The sword training. Does it really take half an afternoon of kendo with Sulu to become a Samurai? Awesome-- I know what I'll be doing THIS Saturday. Maybe Sulu's talent is training people though. ;-)

but most importantly...

3) How much sword training do you need when you can FREEZE TIME?

Perhaps Hiro froze time while he got the training from Sulu. But then when would/how could Ando have left?

I really wanted Sulu to make a Star Trek reference, but alas, I missed it if he did. His limo license plate (NCC-1701) last time we saw him was way cool.

[Dukerati]

I will chime in with the naysayers and say that this episode sucked big time. I understand that this show is escapist-fare and science-fiction but even make-believe shows need strong underpinnings in reality (or at least strong acting). Jason and Alteran have already done a fantastic job pointing out the blatant (don't they run it by a test group first, or a common sense guy, how can stuff like this get through everyone? on a major network no less!) impossibilities they tried to spring on us and I echo their sentiments.

I am mildy relieved that they didn't reveal Hiro father's ability as the writers have been introducing heroes and powers at a dizzying rate (out of laziness IMHO). The potential and possibilities are getting comical with all of these new heroes and abilities. I mean, Sylar can do anything and be anywhere. I wouldn't be surprised if he could listen to a conversation halfway across the world and magically appear three seconds later. Same goes with Peter. What situation is out of their element? Something has got to give with them. I hope Heroes next season stops introducing new heroes every episode and works on character DEVELOPMENT with the actors they have now.

[DevilAlumna]

What's up with the plan to move to middle-of-nowhere Nebraska? Like that gang wouldn't stick out like a sore thumb in a town of 15 people?!?!


As for the election/ballot, I assumed it was an open seat (no incumbent); it's not all that rare to have a couple extra fringe-party candidates for house races (hence the 4 people), and IIRC, one of the candidates was listed as attorney general, which was probably the other 'real' candidate running against Nathan. But, from 5 points down to winning 64% of the vote? Definitely would trigger an investigation into voting fraud. Well, I hope it would, but who knows these days...

[bird]

with the "What am I thinking now, Parkman?" "Your last thoughts" lines, Linderman's facial expression when his brains were pulled out, and Syler's last scene.

Syler is officially our family's favorite Heros character. Syler must live!

Hiro has been demoted over the last few episodes. Hiro's naive enthusiasm, and thrill with his power, has evaporated. As an enthusiast of the better Japanese samurai flicks (The Seven Samurai, the best film ever made IMO), I was offended by the training sequence. The swordplay was banal and unrealistic at best, and the premise absurd. One major point of samurai swordplay in film is the back story of the intense and lengthy training that separates posers from authentic samurai (both good and evil).

I continue to hate Jessica/Niki -- much hope she meets her end in the bloodbath to come.

[TheGodfather]

And are we supposed to think that Hiro and his dad trained for 30-minutes, an hour, 4-hours?? Regardless, how could it be enough time for Hiro to have learned anything that matters? I guess Samurai training is really, really easy.

It's been mentioned more than once that Hiro has sword training. Two episodes ago he claimed to be a Battojutsu master. Sword play he knew, it was killing he had yet to learn. Remember he didn't ask his father what he knew about swords but what he knew about killing.

Hiro had just faced his enemy he knew in his heart had to be killed, yet when the moment came he hesitated because he wasn't strong enough. While physically Hiro and his father were practicing killing strokes Hiro's father was working on him mentally. It was his father who reminded him, through the story of Kensei and the Dragon, that to save the ones he loved he must be strong enough to cut out his own heart. That was the lesson of the afternoon and what will make Hiro a stronger Hero.

I hated them killing Linderman-- and doing it in such a dull, matter-of-fact kind of way. There was a ton more that could be done with him and his storyline. I mean, he reveals that he arranged for DL and Nikessica to meet and fall in love and then we kill him off only moments later (the fist phase to the brain was a cool way to go though)?!?! Are you kidding me?

DL and Nikessica (nice!) discovered they were arranged in the previous episode while in Vegas.

And what kind of uber-powerful, super-rich, bad guy does not have a single henchman around to protect him from the phase-shifting good-guy and his split-personality wife?!?

Linderman is a strong believer in a predetermined future. He has told Nathan with conviction that he can't stop the bomb, no one can. So that leaves some possibilities. He either knew what was coming from DL and Nikessica and accepted it as inevitable, he discovered the hard way that the future is changeable, or his last line of defense is having a powerful illusionist/henchman put images in DL and Nikessica's head.

The rigging of the election is a joke. He's 10 points back in the polls and suddenly they are going to have him win with 65% of the vote and we are supposed to think that no one is going to look into this?!?! Puh-lease!!

The newspaper headlines the day of election said the race was too close to call. Was it really that distracting during the episode that Nathan ended up in a landslide win? I certainly agree that the results would be suspicious. I'm just unsure what exactly some viewers were expecting to happen. Maybe police catching on within moments of the close of polls and raiding Nathan's victory party? I would think people would question the results and there may be an investigation but that wouldn't be instantaneous, would it? Keep in mind Linderman and Nathan both know a bomb is going to destroy a large part of the city the next day. I'm positive they counted on this being more than a little distracting.

I am not even sure that Ted was a character. We barely knew him and I doubt anyone shed a tear when his brain was eaten.

No tears but I do love it when Sylar tells his victims he's there to help before killing them. Plus the end scene of Sylar standing above the entire city learning his new ability was awesome.

[JDSBlueDevl]

I thought about the issues regarding the landslide, but I have a feeling Linderman and Nathan thought that the bomb would be a Reichstag-fire incident that would serve to cut off any possible investigation into the election rigging. And of course, we haven't seen any protests from the opponents yet, so we can't just concede that they conceded.

[IUGrad03]

I have it from a very reliable source that HRG will, in fact, be back next season.

Thank you!!! That is great news.

[Jumbo]

And are we supposed to think that Hiro and his dad trained for 30-minutes, an hour, 4-hours?? Regardless, how could it be enough time for Hiro to have learned anything that matters? I guess Samurai training is really, really easy.

The funny thing is that "time" should be the least of Hiro's problems.

The rigging of the election is a joke. He's 10 points back in the polls and suddenly they are going to have him win with 65% of the vote and we are supposed to think that no one is going to look into this?!?! Puh-lease!! I mean, was Linderman's plot to have Micah rig a bunch of individual machines to cast all their votes for Nathan? Riiiight, because no one is going to notice that. I mean, can we please make this thing even a tiny bit realistic.

Even stranger, CNN's exit polls had him winning with 80% of the vote...

[Exiled_Devil]

This was my impression as well. We have essentially come nowhere, although we've got a few more setups for the REAL finale.

And most of the stuff they gave us were things we saw coming. Sylar getting Fission Ted? Duh. Ditto Ando getting loose and into a position to get picked off by Sylar.

I think this might have played better as the first hour of a two-hour finale-- rather than making us wait another week with virtually no advance in the plot. In fact, I wonder if this was the original plan, but the network got greedy.

And there were a number of elements of unforgivably bad writing. I'm pretty cynical about the media's ability to even care about election fraud, but even CNN is up to catching a 25-point discrepency ;-). Although 12 points I would have bought.

The Hiro/Sulu/Ando scenes were just unforgivable:

1) Ignoring Ando for hours. Hiro/Sulu trained a whole afternoon without Hiro coming out briefly and telling Ando, "dude, my dad's cool with it now. Why don't you go get a Snapple?" And Ando couldn't hear the wood swords banging in the next room?

2) The sword training. Does it really take half an afternoon of kendo with Sulu to become a Samurai? Awesome-- I know what I'll be doing THIS Saturday. Maybe Sulu's talent is training people though. ;-)

but most importantly...

3) How much sword training do you need when you can FREEZE TIME?

I'm generally a pretty forgiving audience, but it's getting to be a bit much. Almost all of these glaring writing problems were easily fixable-- it's like they're insulting me now.

Still, I'm hooked for the finale. Hopefully the final show will make up for some of this stuff.

I agree whole-heartedly that this should have been the first half of a 120 min episode. Right now, the interesting part of the show is 'how do they resolve the vision/non-vision options? There can be no real cliff-hanger this week to next.

I agree with many assessments here - the attention to detail was seriously lacking all over the place. My nits to pick:

*Does NYC really put people's jobs on the election ballot? If we are going to focus on a screen for so long in the scene, lets have a legitimate looking screen.

*How did Sulu know where to be in order to track down and train Hiro??? We all seemed to overlook this in the shadow of the training montage afternoon. Is there only one sword repair shop in all of NYC? (are there any, really? however, in NYC, if there is 1, there is as likely 32).

*How does Mohinder sneak up on a telepath? Is Parkman the most arbitrarily useful/useless character there is? Preview seem to show him bleeding in the hallway - I can't say that I would miss him.

*Where is the Haitian? and invisible dude? In our great reunion of all who have passed across the tv screen, how do they leave out one of the most intriguing characters - one who was instrumental in the only capture of Sylar. I would want the Haitian around all the time if I was trying to fight Sylar. Invisible dude can show up anywhere, anytime. That's legit - he's invisible.


I still care - I'm still hanging on. But they do seem to have the anti-Lost serial - poor attention to detail, little character development and an unlimited supply of new characters. It can still be good like that ( I think), but its lost its status as Lost-caliber. Of course, I am a fickle viewer and Lost could completely mess up in the last episodes. And then I will be left reminiscing about Firelfy and arrested Development

Exiled

exiled

[JasonEvans]

I still care - I'm still hanging on. But they do seem to have the anti-Lost serial - poor attention to detail, little character development and an unlimited supply of new characters. It can still be good like that ( I think), but its lost its status as Lost-caliber. Of course, I am a fickle viewer and Lost could completely mess up in the last episodes. And then I will be left reminiscing about Firelfy and arrested Development

Here is where I stand now-- I have almost no faith at all that the folks behind Heroes will come up with the sharp writing/storytelling to redeem themselves from the mess they are in. At the same time I have complete faith that Lost will not falter from its steady/brilliant course. We have a long history of stellar episodes of Lost upon which to base our faith. Our history with Heroes is shorter and much more spotty.

And, as a random aside... if you have not seen the movie/DVD for Serenity (the Firefly movie) then you are making a real mistake. I never watched a single episode of Firefly but I thought Serenity was one of the best sci-fi films I have seen in years. Brilliant plot, great acting, strong storytelling. This is a must-see for any sci-fi fan. Again, I never watched Firefly but had no problem at all enjoying and following Serenity.


-Jason "I have such a negative vibe on Heroes now-- it is getting close to 24 in terms of characters acting stupid and doing implausible things" Evans

[Dukerati]

Godfather stated that the show had mentioned Hiro's sword training previously. That does not seem keeping with his character as a happy-go-lucky naive office drone-turned-hero but even if they had thrown small mentions of Hiro's ability, it certainly was not enough to justify that drippy sword scene.

I thought about Linderman for a little while yesterday and I have decided that he is not dead. He is too compelling of a character and the writers have cloaked him in too much power to let him die in a regular episode. If Linderman goes, it will be on a season finale. My current theory is that who DL killed was really Candice (that's the illusionist's name I think... ) who will reveal her true fat form right after DL and Nikki leave. Linderman will come in and heal her and that will be that. Of course, this would be sloppy but that's the way the writing has been going so why not?

[JasonEvans]

I thought about Linderman for a little while yesterday and I have decided that he is not dead. He is too compelling of a character and the writers have cloaked him in too much power to let him die in a regular episode. If Linderman goes, it will be on a season finale. My current theory is that who DL killed was really Candice (that's the illusionist's name I think... ) who will reveal her true fat form right after DL and Nikki leave. Linderman will come in and heal her and that will be that. Of course, this would be sloppy but that's the way the writing has been going so why not?

Just so we are clear, a human fist was insterted into Linderman/Candice's brain and then pulled out through the back of his/her head. If Linderman can heal that... well, WOW!

On the other hand, did he bring a flower back from the dead? I wonder if his powers to heal extend to resurrection?

-Jason "Linderman's end was not at all satisfying, on that we agree" Evans

[Dukerati]

On the other hand, did he bring a flower back from the dead? I wonder if his powers to heal extend to resurrection?

-Jason "Linderman's end was not at all satisfying, on that we agree" Evans

I think it would be right in line with the show's mantra of "anything is possible". Having Linderman be able to revive people would then allow all characters to always be in play. The powers on this show are already waaayy too ridiculous, what's one more?

Still, I am firmly hoping against this power as this would just increase the length of proverbial rope that the writers can hang themselves with for plot development. Why can't dead people just be dead?