If you’re looking for a well informed and almost guaranteed to be amusing live blog of the final episode (possibly ever) of Heroes you might want to go check out Topless Robot. He’s been doing the whole live blog thing for a while and I’m pretty much just ripping off his gig by doing this.
Thing is, I’m sick as hell and I’ve spent four hours today watching this wretched wreck of a season and I’m feeling snarky. I’m likely to want to bitch quite a bit as I watch the final episode tonight but I figured I’d do it here to prevent spoiling it (and boring the shit out of my followers who don’t care).
If you care, the details are behind the cut.
8:42 PM EST – While waiting for the episode to start I’m watching an episode of Good Eats about chocolate. Krystalle is making me a mug of hot chocolate. This is probably going to be the last thing I enjoy for the next hour and a half.
8:53 PM EST – Alton is making truffles. I’m almost hesitant to change the channel because they look awesome. Fortunately I’ve seen this one before.
8:57 PM EST – Huh. Adam Baldwin is on this Chuck show. Who knew? I suppose this teary/smoochy ending might make sense if I actually watched the show.
9:00 PM EST – And here we go…
9:01 PM EST – Amusingly enough Krystalle is watching this with me. She’s watched maybe one episode of the show. She may very well understand what happens tonight more than I do.
9:02 PM EST – “Buried alive…live…live…live…” </Khan>
9:03 PM EST – “Peter is trying to rescue Sylar in my basement. I need a snack!”
9:04 PM EST – King of the Hill is a much better show than this, Sammy.
9:05 PM EST – Worst. Inspirational. Speech. Evar.
9:07 PM EST – I wanna kick a baby seal every time I see a Kay jewelers commercial.
9:09 PM EST – Gee, Sylar kicked multiplying dudes ass. What a shocker.
9:12 PM EST – “That sounds like a plan I’d have come up with back in the day.” Well, Sylar old buddy…that might be because they keep repeating the same story line over and over again. Maybe. I’m just speculating.
9:14 PM EST – Parkman finally drops a sack when it’s completely inappropriate. Great timing, Matt.
9:15 PM EST – Ok, I didn’t see the aged Charlie thing coming.
9:19 PM EST – So when did the puppet master guy learn how to play the Cello, anyway?
9:22 PM EST – No offense, Pete, but you really don’t have a track record of being the best judge of character.
9:25 PM EST – Hey Noah! Don’t worry, dude. If you die Claire’s blood will bring you back. You know, like it did when you had your brains blown out. Ahhhh, nevermind.
9:27 PM EST – “I hope you can swim.” WHAT?! Ok, wait…Wait…How the HELL does being able to turn into water give you the ability to transport 2 people through 30 feet of dirt???
9:28 PM EST – This Kay Jewelers storm commercial makes more sense than that. I still wanna kick a baby seal, though.
9:32 PM EST – Ewww…you were just swimming in Traci.
9:33 PM EST – Oh FFS…Hiro obviously learned a lot by putting himself on trial in his brain. Oh, and none of the carnies noticed HRG and Claire getting dropped off in a helicopter?
9:36 PM EST – If I get a Sprint phone can I call Flav-A-Flav?
9:37 PM EST – Ok…That E-Trade commercial just had a baby womanizer that was cheating on his girlfriend, didn’t it? THIS IS NOT AN ACCEPTABLE USE OF BABIES.
9:39 PM EST – There’s maybe 10 minutes of show left in this episode and somehow this is all going to wrap up in a reasonable way. I have faith in that. </sarcasm>
9:42 PM EST – Oh, gee. As much of a shocker as old Charlie was, the “I built a life and don’t want to give that up” was so not.
9:45 PM EST – Ok, I could do without seeing this Boots Shuffle commercial ever again. Oh, yeah…Heroes…Umm…is it just me or does Sylar still sound like an evil bastard when he says he wants to be good?
9:51 PM EST – Prediction : Sylar and Samuel die with each other.
9:53 PM EST – Krystalle – “What is this? Pete Wentz vs. Adam Ant?”
9:54 PM EST – Yes, Hiro. Supercharge. You know? That power that Ando originally had before the writers decided they needed him to be lightning guy?
9:56 PM EST – “My Name is Claire Bennet, and I cannot die.”
10:00 PM EST – Apparently Claire learned absolutely nothing about what happened in all the different alternate futures where specials were outed. Sigh.
Ok, that’s it. I’m spent. Thanks for playing the home game (if you even did).
“What is this? Pete Wentz vs. Adam Ant?” Best quote ever. And it wasn’t even part of the show =Þ
Word word word Mike. All of it. To be fair, though, they get points for one (and only one) thing: The casting of old-lady Charlie was freaking perfect. Well done casting people.
Y’know, I found myself remembering past characters and storylines… All that stuff with Malcom MacDowell, when Noah was a mysterious figure, Hiros’ father, Papa Petrelli… there were some really interesting and occasionally surprising storylines early on — it was almost LOST-like. Even later… what ever happened to Mama Petrelli’s crazy lost sister in the desert? Like so many other threads, they built that one up and then just abandoned it. I don’t know what happened. They seem at some point to have chosen to dumb it down (it was already exactly the right amount of dumb), and to focus WAY too much on Sylar instead of letting him stay dead (at least for a season or two) and coming up with another worthy villain, which they never could manage (a whole season about Samuel? Really?)
And as you point out, the complete willingness to ignore/alter characters’ powers without explanation. (Besides abandoning Claire’s miracle blood, I was always made slightly crazy by “Mama Petrelli’s dreams are visions of the future that always are true and cannot be prevented, except when they can.”) That more than anything points to a writing problem. Good writers use constraints to their advantage, to force themselves into creative solutions. They do not simply ignore inconvenient backstory.
All signs point to cancellation. I’m getting an extra hour in my Mondays now — gonna write that symphony.