The Racialicious Roundtable for Heroes 3.8
Hosted by Special Correspondent Arturo R. García
“Villains” was possibly the flattest episode yet for Heroes this season – and the 4% ratings drop from the prior episode only underscores the series’ continued collapse. But, that doesn’t mean we’ve run out of things to say!
Let’s start by discussing Usutu. If he is, in fact, dead, and this isn’t a cliffhanger, as was suggested in last week’s recap thread, what more can you say about about the way he was handled? Also, if this is just a cliffhanger, is it me or does the natural sense of trepidation as a viewer get trumped by the way the series has taken to handling its’ POC characters?
Erica: Even if this is a cliffhanger, that would mean it’s part of Hiro’s dreamwalk. If so, at some point in the future he and Ando and Usutu will be hanging out “somewhere in Africa” until Arthur shows up, and Usutu will die then. (But of course I’ve been fooled when I tried to apply logic to the show before.)
I’m not bothered by the manner of his death, but there’s a caveat with that. Violence happens to everybody in the show, and gruesome murder has been the fate of all ethnicities. (Indeed, the ONLY person who died of natural causes was Shaft Charles Devaux.) It isn’t so much a terrible death for Usutu that is problematic — I am angry about the continual decrease of plots as well as creative development for non-white characters. Even Hiro and Mohinder are far dumber this season, ignoring all their lessons learned. Heroes is a violent show, and all characters are impacted by that; however, the characters of color (COC?) aren’t getting a fair share of happy moments or personal growth. Usutu’s death is problematic because he is simply being written out and we know he won’t be back.
Mahsino: I can’t say I’m surprised that Usutu was killed- although I would like to have known where exactly he died, but I have to say I’m a little disturbed at the fact that the Petrelli men’s favorite form of homicide for most characters of color seem to be some sort of gruesome decapitation (Isaac and Maya’s brother had their heads sliced open, as Usutu was decapitated). Although, I have to agree with Erica that Heroes has a tradition of killing off their COC in the most gruesome way possible.
Hexy: Ah, Usutu. Finally named, post-mortem, but all that proved to me is that Hiro is slightly less of an asshole than the rest of the characters (and writers). His death was shocking in its gore, but not surprising in the least. Sad as it sounds, I’ve gotten to the point where I expected POC to die quickly and horrible, without even a moving death scene. The only way for Usutu to surprise me would have been for him to last the rest of the season and achieve something by and for himself. See how ludicrous that sounds?
Best case scenario suggests he’s killed “in dream” and we’ll get to see him again, however briefly, before he dies “for reals.”
So, this week we were supposed to learn about all the Villains — yet we didn’t hear jack squat about Knox. Weird, no?
Mahsino: No. not weird, expected. At this point I’m waiting to see how they marginalize and eventually kill off all of the characters of color, I’m guessing we’re supposed to forget all about Knox. This way, when (or if) we see him again, we aren’t supposed to have any emotional reaction to the fact that he’s killed. For the most part, all the characters of color in Heroes are one-dimensional: they’re usually either completely good or completely evil. yes, D.L., Isaac, and Simone had some slight shades of gray to them, but there was nowhere near the complexities that they’ve given to Flint- a character we’ve only seen for two episodes. And if you follow the pattern of the show, this makes perfect sense- why bother giving a character any depth when they’re just going to get killed or written off at a later date anyway.
Hexy: I didn’t find it weird, but then he’s been so incredibly one dimensional that I don’t think an origin story would have been all that interesting. For it to fit in with the way he’s been depicted so far, it would have been him walking around announcing that he was a perfectly normal human, then announcing that he’d discovered he got strong from fear, then continuing to announce that other people’s fear made him strong because, you know, he gets strong from fear. Repeat until present day.
The only flashback to a year ago that would have fit in with that would have been one that showed him becoming angry and vengeful as everyone in his life got the shits and left him over his constant narration and addiction to the “Are you scared yet?” game.
Erica: Knox definitely needs exploring. We know only slightly more about Knox than we know about Usutu, yet his face was included on the group portrait of villains Hiro will face, along with Arthur Petrelli, Sylar, and Flint. And this week, we learn all sorts of things about Arthur Petrelli, Sylar, and Flint. With all that time spent pointing out how stupid Flint is, one would think we could fit in a little time for Man Who Gets Strong From Fear.
Open Mic: Likes, dislikes, good chicken soup recipes …
Erica: Don’t you mean good Italian lentil soup recipes? Nana Petrelli probably regularly poisoned people with her lentil soup. On that note: Angela Petrelli portrays “vicious and calculating” quite well. “Sentimental and motherly,” not so much. It was disconcerting watching her to swing back and forth between the two this week. I’m happier when they aren’t trying to pretend she’s a sympathetic character.
Anybody else laugh at Super Emo guy? Oh, sorry, I mean Trevor. I expected his super power to be that he was very angsty, not that he could shatter things. Super Emo guy: he won’t save you, but he’ll feel really bad about it for you.
The Haitian showed up to block Arthur’s mind-control power — surprise! Half-man, half-furniture. Place it wherever creepy spousal abuse is likely and power-blocking is needed! Håïshøn: now available from IKEA.
All my physics prof husband’s physics friends (and he) thought this week was a great episode. I’m not sure what is wrong with these guys (aside from being physicists), or whether they are particularly representative of the majority of Heroes fans — but I thought this week was annoying.
Mahsino: I’m more of a stew person myself. I’ve realized that I like to play a little game called Count The Blondes while watching Heroes. This week’s count: 3 (Meredith, Elle, Claire). POC Count: 3.5 (Hiro, Ando, Usutu — the writers have made it clear that the Haitian isn’t so much of a person as a convenient companion- much as a pet would be).
I gotta say Angela Petrelli is one of the main reasons I watch the show now, so that segment of the show was interesting.
When I came in on this episode I was all: oh wow, another episode when the men either mentally or physically abuse women, and then my good ol’ standby character, Angela Petrelli came in and kicked some ass. Manipulative as she is, I have to say I love Angela’s character because she’s a woman in charge- not some helpless woman who needed to be instructed by a more powerful male. I could really go without this whole sympathy business. I mean, it was cool that Mama Petrelli metaphorically, took her power back after she learned the truth about her husband- and was unapologetic about it, but the whole thing as if it was supposed to be a new take on a domestic violence situation. It was almost as if Angela Petrelli “killed” Arthur as a result of some sort of battered-wife syndrome. I am, however, a little pissed that it she used the traditional female method of homicide: poison. I expected something a little more extraordinary from her.
And, am I the only one who thinks “cabana boy” or “house boy” whenever I see Angela with the Haitian?
Another bright spot in this episode: minimal amounts of Claire and Peter!
Hexy: I’ll chime in with the Angela Petrelli love! At first I found her attempts to portray loving and functional a little… off… but it began to make sense when the reveal about her Stepford-wife programming occured. By the time she was displaying the bitter and single-minded Angela we know and love, I was pleased at the lead up, and found her all the more appealing with a bit of backstory to her ruthlessness. Still, though, she must be getting a little impatient waiting for Peter to “become a great man” once his powers manifest.
The family powers thing is starting to shit me. It worked with the Parkmans and the Petrelli men (to a certain extent) but I preferred when we were given the impression these were the minority. That anyone who manifested powers could end up with anything. Now they’re cramming minor characters we’ve seen ONCE into the dynasty, and using their powers to reaffirm the suggestion that powers run in families. It’s got two effects for me, neither of them positive: the first, undermining the unstated idea that ANYONE could have an ability, which was part of the appeal of the first season, and then secondly, setting up these stupid families as being the centre of everything. The latter may have been deliberate, but the show suffers for it in my opinion. Now, when seeing a new character, the first thought that jumps into my head is, “Oh, his power is like Blah Bennetrellis. He must be part of that family.” And that’s crap. I really found myself without much to say this week. I was glumly expecting an episode where they retconned the hell out of the series to make it fit in with the bizarre changes they’ve made in series three, and we didn’t even really get that!
Character bios and images courtesy of HeroesWiki.
Previously:
Racialicious Heroes Archive
Carmen Van Kerckhove is co-founder and president of 
Cara wrote:
sad to say, but i am sooooo over heroes…:o(
Posted 17 Nov 2008 at 1:48 pm ¶
Teabag wrote:
The last episode had more plotholes than you can shake a stick at. Everyone I know who’s still been watching Heroes has given up in frustration after this episode.
They retconned a lot. They made Elle into a sweet, normal girl, instead of the sociopath she’s been since her childhood according to Season 2.
They downplayed (or downright denied) the involvement of Chandra Suresh in Sylar’s origin story.
They messed up their own timeline by making Mohinder drive a cab in New York at a point in time where his father hadn’t even died yet.
There’s a LOT of backlash against the episode, even in the comments on producer Greg Beeman’s blog, with a lot of complaints about the treatment of characters of color. Looks like people finally can’t take this anymore.
Posted 17 Nov 2008 at 2:08 pm ¶
Clara wrote:
I was late with getting my responses in to Arturo (oops!), so hope nobody minds if I post them here in the comments:
Usutu- Well, I’m glad the writers spared Usutu some snarkiness. I was a little surprised that they killed him off before the season finale (I was hoping he’d be in a showdown). But, I shouldn’t have been surprised. You could say, at least we found out what his name was. But, the manner in which it was written in was sloppy. If Ando hadn’t been given subtitles with “Usutu” blaring across the screen, I think audiences would have missed it. I wondered why Ando needed subtitles since he was just saying Usutu’s name, not speaking in Japanese necessarily.
But, I guess it was needed since this is the first time we’ve actually heard Usutu’s name spoken outloud in this season, so I don’t think we would have connected Ando’s dialogue to the character. It’s as though the writers thought, “Well, fine, we’ll throw in his name!” and did it in a half-assed way. I’m sure his name has probably shown up visually in a file– Daphne did show Hiro a file with Usutu’s face on it, and presumably it had his name on it. But honestly, just flashing a file on the screen isn’t going to make the name stick out, so that’s no excuse for not mentioning Usutu’s name before he was offed.
On villains and the lack of Knox- Meredith is Claire’s biological mother with Nathan Petrelli. Because of these relations, I consider her something like a member of both the Bennet family and the Petrelli party, in a way. In light oif Stephen Kring’s comments on which families he values more, this is why I was not surprised to see the spotlight on Meredith for this week’s flashback episode. I thought it would have been really fitting to go into Knox’s background, since he seems to be the Baby Villain Of The Season, but, guess not.
Open Mic- This is kind of shallow, but I was pretty amused to see all the old hair styles back! Here comes Peter Petrelli’s hair flop again! Oh, how the fangirls have missed it. There’s Claire’s blonde, curly mess. And not hair related, but Sylar’s watch-repair glasses! I wonder if they shot some of the footage in the first season, couldn’t use it, and then decided to us it for this third season.
And, Angela Petrelli love! It was really disconcerting to see her act like a subservient wife, without any agency. But, she is still able to kick ass, although it isn’t without the help of Linderman, though. I am also quite amused that Linderman ended up just being Arthur Petrelli’s minion, that’s one twist I actually liked.
I’m a little confused about the Sylar/Elle scenes, mostly because I don’t remember seeing any indication in earlier episodes that Sylar and Elle had interacted before. Perhaps I just missed it.
Question for all- Apparently, Heroes’ ratings are much lower than NBC would like. Some blame it on the overpowering slump and strigma from the Writer’s Strike, but some just think the writer’s aren’t working hard enough to recover from the Strike. ET even wrote an article on how to “fix” Heroes. What do you all think about this? Could it be that the rest of the US is finally noticing how crappy the POC characters are and have started to boycott the series as a result? (Just kidding about the last part.)
Posted 17 Nov 2008 at 2:11 pm ¶
jen* wrote:
I was just wondering, how come Hiro could never sneak up on Usutu, but Arthur Petrelli could?
Posted 17 Nov 2008 at 3:07 pm ¶
Mary wrote:
They downplayed (or downright denied) the involvement of Chandra Suresh in Sylar’s origin story.
That made me so freaking angry. I think Chandra Suresh has one of the most interesting stories on Heroes, even though it’s mostly only been alluded to: he suffers the loss of his beloved daughter, and immediately throws himself into researching her superpowers. This costs him his relationship with his remaining child, destroys his professional reputation, and eventually leads him to Sylar. Sylar finally validates his life’s work and proves he’s not crazy, but at the terrible cost that Sylar corrupts his work and finally kills him. That’s the stuff of Greek tragedy, man! And Erick Avari’s a good actor, he could have killed it!
But nah, let’s focus on neurotic blonde woman of the week.
Posted 17 Nov 2008 at 3:41 pm ¶
Mary wrote:
Whoa. You are not kidding.
Posted 17 Nov 2008 at 4:04 pm ¶
Erica wrote:
@jen — Arthur also has the super ability to hide behind super plot holes, thus preventing common sense to find him
I agree with Teabag and Mary’s sentiments. Rewriting Sylar to have Elle and The Company play a role in his development is ignoring the critical factor that Chandra played — awakening Gabriel’s desire to be special, and crushing it when his power wasn’t obvious, thus inspiring him to kill somebody to gain something impressive (telekinesis). That was deep and thought-provoking. Now, we have a Sylar who returned to evil because a hot chick was impressed with another superpower guy. Not very deep.
Posted 17 Nov 2008 at 4:37 pm ¶
LTP wrote:
@ Mary – couldn’t have said it better.
The twists in the first season were so superior to the platonic drivel that’s been hanging around lately. Heroes has begun to feel like average programming that you tune into out of habit rather than something you honestly look forward to every week. I’ve missed the last three episodes when they aired (having to grab them instead from surfthechannel or torrents) because the desperate need to see the next installment was completely nonexistent.
I’m hanging around in hopes it gets better, and because I honestly do (did?) love some of the characters… I have an attachment to them I based out of their season 1 antics (and season 2 for Hiro, I grew to love him a lot then even though the plot was inferior) so I hold out hope that at some point it’ll start coming back. But I seem to be the only one.
Posted 17 Nov 2008 at 5:19 pm ¶
LTP wrote:
My husband and I were just talking about a comment I read over on the Beeman blog about “Forcing on viewers that Sylar is a really nice guy damnit –” and wanting desperately to keep him on the show, since he seems to have become a watered-down, sad version of what he was in his prime.
My husband and I are long time Trek fans. Or rather… were, until the whole franchise went to hell in a handbasket. ZQ is going to be Spock in the new movie coming out next year (a “before the original series” thing). Taking that into account, my husband asks, “Maybe they’re keeping him on in hopes the series will get a bump in a year [when the new Trek comes out]?”, wishing for a wave of new fans to start watching for the sake of ZQ.
As pathetic as that sounds, I can absolutely buy it. :-/
Posted 17 Nov 2008 at 5:35 pm ¶
mahsino wrote:
I went and read the Greg Beeman blog and all I can say is- damn. Those comments were kinda cold. Absolutely right, but cold blooded nonetheless. Hopefully they can take away from this that their audience of color, and some of the white viewers, have noticed how they treat COC and they’re leaving.
Posted 17 Nov 2008 at 8:52 pm ¶
Reiter wrote:
Dammit, they just had to literally make Hiro take a hundred steps backward in his character progression and actually make him REGRESS into a ten-year old boy (at least, mentally). The ol’ amnesia routine is old before it even got started. At this point, the badass Hiro of the future is just a sick tease the writers pulled on us.
Posted 17 Nov 2008 at 11:30 pm ¶
Mary wrote:
I feel pretty bad for Beeman sometimes. His blog is such a nice, cheerful extra for the fans, but it’s also the closest thing the fans have to a direct line to any of the producers. So I understand why people go there to express frustration: they want to be heard! And I will say that even with the harshest comments, they mostly come across to me as genuine and non-trolly. Still, for Beeman it’s got to feel a little bit like no good deed going unpunished.
Posted 18 Nov 2008 at 12:47 am ¶
Ike wrote:
Since the writers don’t want to specify “where in Africa” Usutu is from, I’ll go ahead and make my own analysis. Judging by his name (it’s probably zulu) and accent, I’d place him in South Africa.
Also… where the hell is Micah and his mimic cousin Monica?
Posted 18 Nov 2008 at 3:17 am ¶
Ike wrote:
Is it just me… or is Hiro the most annoying character on the show. He’s like a real life anime character. He acts like a Japanese school girl… why can’t he be some Japanese bad-ass?
Posted 18 Nov 2008 at 3:20 am ¶
Mr. Noface wrote:
I don’t even care about this show anymore. Seriously, a whole group of people are gone with no explanations while another group is killed off just because! The plot is not even trying to make sense anymore (like the creators are sending us the audience a big FU). I don’t think that this show is going to make a return next season (and the sad part about that is that I won’t even care).
Posted 18 Nov 2008 at 12:38 pm ¶
Madame Zenobia wrote:
I regressed myself, like Hiro, and actually watched this -ish last night. I can honestly say that I felt absolutely nothing one way or the other. It’s clear with the parting shot that our ‘teams’ have been assigned. The Heroes vs. the Villains and betwixt the two (or on the perimeter of all, however you want to look at it) lies those ‘extra characters’ that are only there to ‘exist’ for the sake of either side.
Oh and also, had an eye-rolling moment with Peter and Claire and almost popped my eyes out of my sockets when Claire realized that SHE was the catalyst. Yeah…uh-huh…didn’t see ‘that’ one coming. *insert all kinds of snark and sarcasm here* Just another ploy to keep this annoyingly annoying character (in my opinion) relevant.
My choice for catalyst: ANDO.
Now how awesome would ‘that’ be? What a twist that could’ve been? He finds out not only is he the ‘key’ but he’s also has some sort of power that doesn’t reveal itself until that moment!
*sigh*
Instead he’s playing au pare to Hiro’s regressed self. *weeps inwardly*
Posted 18 Nov 2008 at 1:05 pm ¶
Amused0472 wrote:
@Madame Zenobia: It made me smirk when the blonde cheerleader automatically assumed she was the catalyst. Look at me! Look at me! Whatever. I hope the new head writers have sense not to go down that predictable rabbit hole and put Claire in her place.
Posted 18 Nov 2008 at 8:40 pm ¶
hexy wrote:
To whomever mentioned the Trek connection: I completely forgot to include in my review that I cackled like a madwoman when the dramatic uplighting on Angry Glasses Wearing Gabriel/Sylar produced two very Spock-eyebrow-like shadows on his forehead. I HOPE that was deliberate!
Posted 19 Nov 2008 at 6:56 am ¶
Ishtar wrote:
@ Ike
I’m from South Africa and Usutu’s accent does not sound South African to me. If he showed up here we’d peg him for a foreigner.
I’ve never heard the name Usutu (or something similar) here and I assumed it was a made-up name (could be totally wrong about that of course).
Posted 20 Nov 2008 at 5:46 am ¶
Ike wrote:
@Ishtar:
I agree, Usutu doesn’t sound like a “true” South African, it sounds like some Hollywood attempt. I think the name was made up as well. It reminded me of “Ubuntu” (the operating system) which derived from the zulu word “ubuntu.”
Posted 24 Nov 2008 at 1:49 am ¶