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Heroes
My one-sentence review:
Not bad, but not as good as I'd hoped.
My slightly longer review: unfortunately, I could tell that it was created by the guy who created "Crossing Jordon", which is a show that I absolutely hate. Not because it purports to be set in Boston, but is about as authentically Bostonian as a Philly cheese steak (although that does annoy me); no, the problem with "CJ" is that it's patronizing.
I'm not sure how to put this...there are shows in which you feel that intelligent, creative people are trying their best to make something good. Perhaps, even, something meaningful. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't; it depends on just how intelligent and creative the creators are.
But there are other shows which simply try to manipulate the audience. That demonstrate a contempt for the audience on the part of the creators, much as they might try to mask it. "Crossing Jordon" has that in spades.
Does "Heroes"?
It's too early to say. But I will say this: there are definitely a lot of "Crossing Jordon" touches in the pilot. You can definitely tell that it was created by the same guy; he clearly has a limited repertoire, stylistically. Other than that...damn it, now that I think of it there was at least ONE moment that felt manipulative, in the worst "Crossing Jordon" sense. It was (hidden due to spoilers, select all to view) when the stripper was being forced to strip by the mob guys who'd caught her. That's just cheap sensationalism, included solely to manipulate the audience and pump up ratings. I originally typoed that last line; it came out "pimp up ratings". And that would have been accurate too.
And the pilot was too damned predictable. For example, take (SPOILERS) the indestructible cheerleader : the first second that I saw her standing in front of the sink, I KNOW that she was going to stick her hand in the garbage disposal while it was on. I HATE it when I can see stuff like that coming. It disappoints and bores me.
Am I being too hard? Too unrealistic? Do I expect too much artistic purity? Maybe. But there have been a number of shows, even highly commercially successful ones, that have succeeded artistically (in my opinion) without demonstrating their contempt for the intelligence of the audience.
Which way will "Heroes" go? I don't know. I'll give it a few more tries. But I fear that I may once again end up being one of very few people who hates some popular piece of modern genre culture, making me the perennial odd man out.
You know what I was hoping for? Something much more like M. Night Shyamalan's "Unbreakable". That was a much more believable and intelligent approach to the "what if super powers were real?" question.
One note: I think that the actor who plays "Hiro" (the best character in the show, in my opinion) looks like a Japanese version of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
klyfix. And I think that's great. 
Not bad, but not as good as I'd hoped.
My slightly longer review: unfortunately, I could tell that it was created by the guy who created "Crossing Jordon", which is a show that I absolutely hate. Not because it purports to be set in Boston, but is about as authentically Bostonian as a Philly cheese steak (although that does annoy me); no, the problem with "CJ" is that it's patronizing.
I'm not sure how to put this...there are shows in which you feel that intelligent, creative people are trying their best to make something good. Perhaps, even, something meaningful. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't; it depends on just how intelligent and creative the creators are.
But there are other shows which simply try to manipulate the audience. That demonstrate a contempt for the audience on the part of the creators, much as they might try to mask it. "Crossing Jordon" has that in spades.
Does "Heroes"?
It's too early to say. But I will say this: there are definitely a lot of "Crossing Jordon" touches in the pilot. You can definitely tell that it was created by the same guy; he clearly has a limited repertoire, stylistically. Other than that...damn it, now that I think of it there was at least ONE moment that felt manipulative, in the worst "Crossing Jordon" sense. It was (hidden due to spoilers, select all to view) when the stripper was being forced to strip by the mob guys who'd caught her. That's just cheap sensationalism, included solely to manipulate the audience and pump up ratings. I originally typoed that last line; it came out "pimp up ratings". And that would have been accurate too.
And the pilot was too damned predictable. For example, take (SPOILERS) the indestructible cheerleader : the first second that I saw her standing in front of the sink, I KNOW that she was going to stick her hand in the garbage disposal while it was on. I HATE it when I can see stuff like that coming. It disappoints and bores me.
Am I being too hard? Too unrealistic? Do I expect too much artistic purity? Maybe. But there have been a number of shows, even highly commercially successful ones, that have succeeded artistically (in my opinion) without demonstrating their contempt for the intelligence of the audience.
Which way will "Heroes" go? I don't know. I'll give it a few more tries. But I fear that I may once again end up being one of very few people who hates some popular piece of modern genre culture, making me the perennial odd man out.
You know what I was hoping for? Something much more like M. Night Shyamalan's "Unbreakable". That was a much more believable and intelligent approach to the "what if super powers were real?" question.
One note: I think that the actor who plays "Hiro" (the best character in the show, in my opinion) looks like a Japanese version of
klyfix. And I think that's great.
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Athough "The figure goes" is certainly an odd translation.
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Kiralee
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(Anonymous) 2006-09-27 05:03 am (UTC)(link)There's a little bit of not quite translating in "Heroes"; note that when Hiro is talking to his friend about Indian yogis and Australian Aborigines he clearly says "Dreamtime" (an Australian concept) but that's not in the subtitles. And if I'm not mistaken earlier they didn't subtitle when Hiro's friend called called him "baka" (idiot) as he was preparing to watch the one woman's net strip show; while folk like me of course know the word (and several others of course) a lot wouldn't. Might almost be intentional stuff for the Japanophiles.
It occurs to me that Hiro is appealing largely because, unlike the other folk with the powers, he's a geek. A comic book and SF fan who also had figures of anime girls on his work desk who wishes he could be a hero; actually, I've seen the type more or less in some anime series. He's our kind of guy.
I took a guick look-see over at the Usenet SFTV group and noticed mostly positive comments but several negatives (and nit-picks about the comments about the superiority of cockroaches and the whole "We only use 10% of our brain thing) also. Was amused to see the comment "It's a better copy of "Lost" than the other "Lost" copies this season"; there certainly are similarities to "Lost" although to be sure many new drama shows are at the least following the ongoing storyline ("serial) format that "Lost" made cool.
Now, I'm really positive about the show, but fear that it'll go bad quickly because, well, it's easy to go bad with supers. The big pitfalls of supers stuff are kinda at opposite ends; on the one we have Camp where the people making the show/film/whatever have pretty close to no respect for the original material and at best it ends up as comedy (see the Adam West "Batman") and on the other it gets lost in overseriousness and pretense (umm, don't really have a good example at this hour of night). This could easily go on the pretentious end.