The Racialicious Roundtable For ‘Heroes’ 4.1 + 4.2
Hosted by Special Correspondent Arturo R. García
Why does Ando look so shocked? Probably because he saw the ratings.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Heroes placed fourth in its’ time slot, with a 46 percent drop in viewership from the Season 3 premiere. Start the deathwatch!
Meanwhile, the Roundtable invites you to join us in wishing a fond farewell to one of our charter members, Erica, who is about to embark on the most perilous of journeys: teaching middle school.
jen*: Good luck, Erica! My mom taught middle school and always said it takes a special person to work with middle school kids. I think she’s right.
Mahsino: Yeah, good luck Erica and may the patience you have had watching Heroes aid you in dealing with middle-schoolers.
jen*: As for the show? I can’t even articulate how much I hate Parkman. Teh stoopid must have rubbed off of Mo and landed on him. In fact, everyone I know hates Parkman
Mahsino (raises hand): I don’t hate Parkman. I kinda feel for the guy in the same way I feel for Ando and Hiro, he’s not a Benetrelli so it’s not like he’s gonna get any shine.
Arturo: Parkman’s decision-making process crystallizes one big problem for this group of characters: they clearly know they’re the only ones around who can understand and deal what they’re going through, yet they insist on not relying on each other. So it makes Big Matt look like a child not to tell anybody Sylar is in his head – especially with Angela asking for his help.
jen*: Mama P is getting the shakes from thinking about SyNate’s unraveling, and she totally deserves it. In fact, I’m still ready for the Benetrelli’s to take a swan dive and pick up where the writers left off when Carnivale ended. I liked that show. But I don’t remember them ever visiting Japan. I think the show would get a shot of adrenaline with the darkness that accompanied Carnivale – and maybe that’s what they’re going for here. It doesn’t make any sense for these folks to just show up with The Company not know anything about them, but hey – we gave up on logic intersecting with Heroes back in Season 2, right? [btw - talk about HRG slipping - could they have been any more blatant about the compasses only working in the hands of someone with 'abilities'?]
Diana: Sorry, guys, I was mopping up water in my home from the Great Atlanta Flood of 2009 and had the show on, but wasn’t paying much attention. All I remember is Sylar chasing Parkman around, asking for his body which was rather annoying and insipid. And was Parkman at an AA meeting trying to get help for his power? Lame. And Peter giving chowder from Legal Seafood to everyone? Lamer.
Mahsino: I mean really, wasn’t the Company an international operation? I would think that weirder than normal carnies would raise some red flags, or would they?
Arturo: Okay, it’s a totally bad idea and it’s going to bite Hiro in the ろば, but, how about Ando finally getting the girl? And as a follow-up, I guess it’s settled: Kimiyo has no superpowers, and that’s kinda disappointing.
jen*: I love Ando getting the girl. Love it. And I don’t think we necessarily have to rule out Kimiko getting/having powers, do we? Of course, not having blonde hair, she’d end up dying – so let’s leave her regular.
Mahsino: I don’t know, I don’t like Kimiko. I want to, but she seems annoying.
Arturo: The thing with Kimiko is, she’s always been positioned as the stick-in-the-mud opposite Hiro. But she’s not wrong in calling the boys out on spending company cash on Dial-A-Hero. I’d like to hope she gets some actual development to go with her “new” romance with Hiro. But I’m not exactly optimistic.
jen*: Which reminds me – with carnie-tatt-girl we have another blonde girl in some kind of dubious relationship with grody-carnie-tattoo-artist Samuel.
Mahsino: Dubious is putting it mildly, don’t you think? That whole relationship, from what I can tell, is her being stabbed in the back while she speaks only when spoken to. Not in a consensual way, but in an incredibly awkward, fearful way. It’s uncomfortable.
Arturo: I don’t know if the creators think they’re gonna reach the Hot Topic demographic with the whole “dark brooding yet emo-hot” angle with these two, but I did get a laugh out of Samuel correcting Edgar when he referred to Hiro as “Chinese.” Funny Sam works better for me than Mysterious Sam.
Arturo: Moving on to Claire-Bear, I got a bad vibe out of the way Annie and Gretchen’s characters were drawn – the former was such a stereotypical “overachieving b-tch” it was difficult to care that she was killed and the latter is way past quirky and into Single White Female territory. At least Claire is twigging to Gretchen’s weirdness, but Tim Kring is already digging himself a hole here.
jen*: I thought I heard them say that Claire-bear was at Yale. Which had me doing a triple take. And then I was like – who does AP into a college algebra class? Shouldn’t that be calculus?? But I have to admit – I kinda wondered if they were gonna give Claire straight A’s for the semester since her roomie took the dive. Maybe that’s how she’ll get/have time to pledge a sorority in her 1st semester. [Although, once again, never got the impression that Yale was a big Greek school, though I could be wrong.]
So, I miss all the brown people that made this show fun and interesting. Seeing The Haitian was nice, but not getting to hear him speak/see him with an actual name, I’m remembering the bar is set too low on this show. I liked the ep overall – I thought it was more than the ho hum of last season, but it *did* feel long.
Mahsino: Do they think we’re stupid? I mean honestly, Heroes starts with the same damn formula every season. Peter and Claire are trying to be normal, good people until the big bad of the season finds a way to bring them together. Ando and Hiro somehow get tangled, Matt gets dragged into it, Mohinder runs tests. They all meet in the middle and in the end. That’s it. Every season. I think I’m more mad at myself for having expected differently.
Carmen Van Kerckhove is co-founder and president of
Renee wrote:
I can see how they are beginning to create a lesbian relationship for Claire. I think it is so tired and over done. This is not to say that I have a problem with lesbian love but that I have a problem with writers and producers turning to that after the ratings begin to plummet. It makes it seem s voyeuristic and sick. I am not feeling that at all.
I am going to continue to watch the show to the bitter end because I am hooked but I have really stopped expecting much awhile ago.
Posted 29 Sep 2009 at 11:13 am ¶
Lisa J wrote:
Nice roundtable guys. The show is still meh, first episode wasn’t so, so bad, 2nd ep (which I won’t go into here) was really, really a bowl of stupid.
jen, are you sure they said she is supposed to be at Yale? They said Arlington, VA on the little location title when they first showed the campus and there really aren’t any colleges except for a community college and a few satellite schools in Arlington. Maybe he meant a Yale-like school that people think just magically appeared in Arlington, VA? Or maybe Tim Kring thinks we are all crazy enough to think someone can get into Yale with GED scores (no matter who Grandma is) unless they did some serious work at another school first, had straight A’s before leaving HS, AND had top SAT scores and/or that we are crazy enough to think that Yale was somehow magically transported to Northern VA. Who knows with those people? They seem to have lost their ability to write plots and characters so why not their geographical knowledge of what school is where. I predict this will be the last season of Heroes although I’ll keep watching as long as I can for Arturo’s reviews and the roundtables.
Oh and hats-off to Erica and good luck on her new job. Hopefully she can covertly “subvert” some young minds towards anti-racism and inculcate them with the notion that there is more to the world than the US and Europe and those other places have interesting histories, cultures and customs that are important to learn about but not to fetishize.
Posted 29 Sep 2009 at 1:06 pm ¶
Tamara wrote:
Great roundtable. Can’t wait to hear what you have to say about last night’s episode.
There’s so much here but I like Maschino’s summation. It really IS more of the same.
Posted 29 Sep 2009 at 1:38 pm ¶
jen* wrote:
I totally forgot about the lesbian thing. I couldn’t understand why they’d do that – but after last night’s show – I get it. This show is so stale, they’re jumping at anything now.
Posted 29 Sep 2009 at 1:49 pm ¶
Rob wrote:
Yep, I stopped watching mid last year and while I kept it on my DVR hoping to finish it out over the summer I eventually just deleted them as I just thought it was too far gone. I still haven’t removed the subscription from it, and I haven’t seen any of this season yet due to comcast screwing with cable in my area and completely confusing my recorder, but I haven’t really cared.
I’m just wondering what will be considered the jumping the shark point now.
Posted 29 Sep 2009 at 2:27 pm ¶
PPR_Scribe wrote:
1) I hope Claire’s new friend/potential love interest does not turn out to be a murderer. Really not interested in the whole tragic/psychotic lesbian storyline.
2) Is that a new Baby Parkman? That’d be potentially fun and interesting: Each episode they could change the baby into an obviously different one, sometimes, perhaps even substituting a baby of color. Whole drinking games could be developed to go along with that aspect of the program…
3) LOOOOVE Ando and Kimiko as a couple. I agree, though: I hope this does not mean she will meet her demise.
Posted 29 Sep 2009 at 3:08 pm ¶
jen* wrote:
And Lisa – I have no idea if I heard correctly or not – cuz there hasn’t been any corroboration. And it certainly doesn’t seem like an Ivy school, so I dunno.
But yeah – I have to keep reminding myself not to be worried with logic when I watch this show.
Posted 29 Sep 2009 at 3:45 pm ¶
Titanis walleri wrote:
That is an image macro waiting to happen.
Posted 29 Sep 2009 at 8:22 pm ¶
JC wrote:
OK, I think I am going to drop Heroes. It’s getting really boring and I actually turn the TV off half-way. But in relation to Racialicious – Isn’t Masi Oka the resident Japan expert? He could not talk them out of showing a FRIGGING AMERICAN-STYLE COUNTRY FAIR in the middle of Tokyo? Why not use one of millions of Summer festivals in Japan? Japan has NEVER had anything which look remotely like the darn Puyallup Fair in Washington State. It just totally killed my suspension of disbelief. I mean last season’s Western style funeral was bad, but this is the last straw. I can’t watch this crap anymore. Oki-san, maybe you should just die and quit the show ASAP. They are obviously not listening to you anymore. Screw white mainstream TV – I’m out.
Posted 29 Sep 2009 at 11:09 pm ¶
jen* wrote:
In Oka’s defense, JC, that was all in the way of getting the Carnivale-type carnies together with Hiro. It didn’t make a lick of sense, but in that way – the writers are consistent…
Posted 30 Sep 2009 at 11:33 am ¶
Erica wrote:
A 46% drop in viewership, daaaaaaaamn… and only a tiny fraction of that can be blamed on me! I initially expected to regret watching very little television, but honestly, I don’t miss Heroes AT ALL — just the snarking about it. And I still get most of the satisfaction from reading Rountable Reviews
Posted 30 Sep 2009 at 11:57 am ¶
AJ Plaid wrote:
Tee-hee…I saw this over the weekend while I was packing my belongings for my move. If I had to say anything about the season premiere….
…well, the bedroom I moved into is bigger than some NYC studios. And cheaper, too.
Posted 30 Sep 2009 at 4:56 pm ¶