Battlestar Galactica: The Woman KingI've posted thoughts
here about this week's
Battlestar episode.
Veronica Mars: Postgame MortemBest episode since the hiatus. More thoughts at the
Television Reviews Blog.
Heroes: RunI think the producers are finally getting the idea that the audience is along for the ride and they don't have to throw everything and the kitchen sink into these episodes to keep our interest. The last two weeks have been a lot better because the storytelling focus has narrowed a bit. Maybe part of it is that we finally have all the characters in play and now their storylines are crossing more. Whatever the explanation, I'm happy to see that
Heroes is becoming better, though it's still not close to delivering as consistently on its promise as I'd like.
Any time you can take the plotline that until now I found a distraction and rather useless to the show and make it actually relevant and interesting, you've done something. I refer to the Jessica storyline, which crosses the Matt Parkman storyline in an interesting way. Matt's hired on to be security. He gets paid more if he carries his gun. His first assignment is protecting a guy who is apparently up to no good and has crossed the mysterious, never-seen but often alluded to Linderman. Linderman is so annoyed that he's sending Jessica to take out the guy--and Matt is in the way.
And suddenly, this plotline is interesting. Watching Niki plead with Jessica in the reflective surface of mirrored floor sign was great. As I watched the episode, I was interested that Matt could both Niki and Jessica talking. I am guessing not everyone can and does hear this (the show has given us no indication of this up to this point), so Parkman's ability is an interesting one.
Meanwhile, the show takes another character who I'd lost interest in and makes him interesting as well--namely, Mohinder. Mohinder has the list and is trying to make contact with the various heroes on it. He gets a call back from one and heads out to meet him. This guy's power is making things melt into blobby puddles of goo...how this is exactly useful, I'm not exactly sure. Thing is we don't meet the guy long enough to find out. The one strain of credibility in this plotline comes when Sylar somehow magically gets there before Mohinder, pretends to be him and kills the guy. Sylar now has the power and passes himself off as melty things guy to Mohinder. All the while, the dead body is out in the kitchen. Luckily Mohinder never wanders out there so it leaves the door open for Sylar to join the crusade and have access to the list. Now, that's a potentially very interesting plot development. Especially if Mohinder figures out that Sylar forced Eden to kill herself.
Elsewhere, Claire wants to see her birth father and find out her birth mother is on the run. Is it because of her powers? We're not really sure. This plotline didn't exactly thrill me, but I did find the twist of there are consequences to the Haitaiin wiping your mind to be a nice one. It also continues to reinforce to us the growing rift between Claire and Mr. Bennett, as he slowly takes away all the things in her life she values.
Want to know the ironic thing about this week's episode? The one plotline I usually love is the one I cared about the least. I'm finding the Hiro's storyline is going no where fast. I'm not sure exactly why we went down this sidepath, except maybe to give Ando something to do besides be the sidekick. But I feel as if this storyline is spinning its wheels a bit this week. We need to move somewhere closer to the sword and restoring Hiro's powers soon or else this plotline could easily derail.
So, an enjoyable Heroes and no Christopher Ecceleston, which should have annoyed me more than it did. But when you've got at least two other interesting plots unfolding, I can see why you'd sideline the Claude/Peter plotline for a week. Which it should be back next week, though I don't know since I've been avoiding the previews for
Heroes like the plague. Better to not know what's happening in the last three minutes before the episode starts.
Labels: battlestar galactica, heroes, tv shows, veronica mars
posted by Michael Hickerson at 2/15/2007 10:33:00 AM |
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