Monday, April 23, 2007

Pretty Impressive Heroes Tonight

A lot of ground was covered in sixty minutes (minus commercials), including the first mention I've picked up on that the previous generation(s) of superpowered individuals may've been a force to reckon with. Shades of the Golden and Silver Age!

Linderman's notion that a catastrophe striking New York City is "what the world needs" seems awfully Watchmen-esque to this comics fan, though. The writers must know that a sizable portion of their audience are comic geeks, and Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' masterpiece is one of the most-read, and best-loved, examples of the genre, after all. Do we take this as a tip-of-the-hat in their direction, or a ham-handed swipe? And considering the number of people who - in my opinion, mistakenly - had issues with that aspect of Watchmen, how will they react upon seeing it re-used in such a popular TV show? I'm forming my own theory that NYC's really going to be destroyed, but that possibly Hiro teleports everyone out of the city before it happens. After all, in the vision Peter had of that event, there didn't seem to be anyone in the city except the superpowered variety, right? That would still count as the city being devastated, after all, as the headline in tonight's episode predicted.

I thought it was interesting that we learned Linderman's power - now can he do that with dead people? - but not Grandma Petrelli's! The way HRG used Parkman's power was impressive, especially as compared to Peter's feeble attempt against Sylar ("I know.. I'll turn invisible and then just stand here!"). Vicki correctly predicted that Claire would pull out the piece of glass from Peter's head, but neither of us picked up on why 'Jessica' suddenly changed her mind about letting Linderman use Micah... "insurance policy" indeed!

NBC's policy of letting the show run past 10:00 is annoying when you're watching it recorded, as we were tonight (actually just buffered a few minutes). The last thing we saw was Hiro and Ando seeing the timeline, hearing a sword being drawn, and then seeing future Hiro arrive. Future Hiro says, "You..." and our Hiro says, "Me...?" (I think) and then it cut out. Did anything happen after that?

Boy, what a comic geek's wet dream this show has become!

6 comments:

Mike Marsman said...

other than clips of next weeks episode, that was it.

Anonymous said...

At least Sylar did him the courtesy of turning his head away so he might have lost track of where Peter was standing. Clever trick with the glass though; I'm not sure PP would've been in much better shape had he moved.

Count me in with Ando and the "huh?" to Hiro's powers of logic.

Anonymous said...

Picked up the Watchmen vibe and also started to think about the possible fan (and your) reaction.

If Linderman wants to unite the world, how would this happen if only New York blows up? I know the answer, meaning US TV is only concerned about US ratings, but still- for a show with Indian settings and characters, that's kinda a big oversight.

Wild Ass Guess - Linderman is Petrelli pere. I may have missed an episode explaining the Petrelli family tree, but it did seem to tie into Gramma P talking about the old days, and it would be a second minor nod to Watchman.

Anonymous said...

Worst. Fight. Ever.

Kimota94 aka Matt aka AgileMan said...

So someone's just tried to kill you by telekinetically removing the top of your skull. And you have the ability to turn invisible... I'm thinking you'd wink out, immediately rush at your attacker from an unexpected direction, knock him down, grab a heavy object and bludgeon him to death!

At least, that's what I'd do in that situation...

Pagan Mnemosyne said...

You know, I hadn't even twigged to the Watchmen thing until I read it here. But you're right. Although, I would want a giant squid alien to drop onto NYC instead of just a boring old nuclear explosion. You can only have so many of those before they get old hat.