Premiere Watch '08: Heroes

Heroes: "The Second Coming" and "The Butterfly Effect"

Well, here we go again. I'm not going to lie and say I was at all bothered by the forced 8-month hiatus of Heroes. I took notes on tonight's 2-hour premiere episode for the sake of taking notes, but we all know that the only reason I'm still watching this show at all is because of actors I've loved from other, better shows: David Anders (Alias), Kristen Bell (Veronica Mars), Greg Grunberg (Alias) and now Francis Capra (Veronica Mars).

• Why did Claire think she could shoot Peter with a regular gun? Was she born yesterday?
• Eew, one Peter is enough. I don't need two.
• Ahh, Hiro, I have not missed you at all. Geez, Hiro acts like a 5-year-old. It's ridiculous. "My father left me a DVD before he died. It's about my destiny!!!!" Gag.
• Sylar: "That's all behind me now, like a long night after a bad taco."
• Wait, Maya still here? Crap.
• Mohinder: "I just hope I did the right thing." (I'm sure you didn't.)
• Hiro's dad: "In the wrong hands, this secret could destroy the world." Ok, yeah, great idea then, giving it to Hiro. If his aren't the wrong hands, I don't know whose are.
• Holy crap, this stuff is even stupider than when he was stuck in feudal Japan.
• Yep, Hiro has the precious formular for all of 10 seconds before it gets stolen. That's the very definition of "the wrong hands."
• Is future Peter shorter than present Peter?
• Wow, Mohinder just solved the whole mystery of why some people have powers in 10 minutes? The mystery his dad was working on for years and years? Please.
• Eagle Eye will never look as good as it does right now when it's held up next to Heroes.
• Eew, I so don't need to see Sylar digging around in Claire's brain.
• Hang on, if the cheerleader isn't like the other and can never die, why'd we spend the whole first season trying to save her (to save the world)? I guess that was a huge waste of time.
• Kristen Bell? Are you here? KB?
• Why does Future Peter talk like an 80-year-old Italian man?
• Now poor Grunberg's stuck in the middle of nowhere... (career metaphor?)
• I think I like Future Ando, what with stabbing Hiro and all.
• Is that Weevil?!
• Mohinder has super strength? My butt, he does.
• After one hour: Can't we call it a day? I so do not need to see another hour of this show.
• David Anders!!!!!!!!!!! Looking gorgeous as usual. With that 5 second clip of him, Heroes just bought themselves another hour of my time. Grrr.
• Mrs. Petrelli (to Peter): "You never were as smart as you thought you were."
• Oh, for crying out loud! Old Mohinder was hard to take, but New Mohinder is downright insufferable. Put on a damn shirt.
• Maya is falling for Mohinder's "I'm-not-wearing-a-shirt-and-can-climb-on-the-walls" act? She's even dumber than I thought she was.
• LOL at Grunberg going all bobble-heady in the dessert.
• KB!!!!!!!!! KB!!!!!!!!!! There she is!!
• Somebody needs to remind Hayden and Milo that their characters are supposed to be related. It's kinda getting gross.
• Nathan (sees Nikki): "Speaking of sin."
• OMG--Veronica and Weevil in the same scene!!! And she walked right past him! No, KB, help Weevil! You owe him. Or he owes you. It's hard to remember...
• Wow, watching Weevil/Peter yell at Sylar to leave Veronica/Elle alone seemed strangely fitting. If I shut off my brain just enough, it was almost like I was watching another, far superior show. It was nice.
• If Peter permanently turned into Weevil, I'd like Heroes a lot better.
• What are you supposed to do now, Elle, you ask? Find that "Peter" fellow, move to Neptune, buy him a motorcycle, and start solving crimes!
• Bet you're going to want to keep your shirt on now that your skin's melting off, Mohinder.
• Oh, thank goodness Grunberg didn't really just read the turtle's mind. I was about to turn off the TV.
• Hey, another guy who can paint the future, which is convenient because they killed off the other one of those.
• So Nathan is being haunted by Linderman now? That's just aces.
• I don't think there's been a scene with Claire yet that hasn't left me rolling my eyes.
• So Sylar's Mrs. Petrelli's kid too, huh. Trying to decide if I care. Um, nope, I don't.

Premiere Rating: 3.5/10 (and all of those points were delivered by KB, Weevil, and the 5 seconds of David Anders)

TV News Roundup

What I'm paying attention to:

• Based on a behind-the-scenes Gossip Girl feature I saw on Access Hollywood a few days ago, it seems like Blair Waldorf has spent her summer vacation figuring out how to turn Chuck Bass' name into swear words. So far she's got: "Chuck Basstard" and "mother-Chucker."
• Uh oh. Art imitates life as Scott Michael Foster (Cappie) drinks too much, gets in trouble. Evan Chambers is going to have a field day with this...
• Wildfire's Kris Furillo is hooking up with one of Rory Gilmore's ex-boyfriends on Supernatural! Genevieve is seriously brave to sign on for this job, as Supernatural fans have been notoriously harsh critics of some of the show's past female characters. I'm kind of missing Kris and the Wildfire gang, though, so I might tune in for this even though I don't watch Supernatural. Wildfire, Junior, Matt, and the wind turbine are all going to be so jealous though.
• Speaking of the Wildfire gang, Nana Visitor (still can't believe that's her real name) a.k.a. Jean Ritter is in the soon-to-be-released film Swing Vote (you have to scroll down the list to find her). I know about this because she delivers what seems to be a fairly important line in the trailer.
• Even after spending a year working on Private Practice, Chris Powell is still hilarious. Is it just me, or does he seem pretty serious when he's comparing the rest of PP's cast to a group of elderly people who need someone young to reassure them that they're still attractive?
• Grunberg comes dangerously close to admitting that he thought the second season of Heroes sucked too.
• My favorite season 2 Chuck Bass outfit so far.

Heroes Musings...

Random musings about a Heroes episode (does it really matter which one?):

• If the Heroes execs think that in a show down between Milo and Kristen Bell, the audience is going to root for Milo, they are extremely misguided.
• Whoa, Grunberg expecting Nathan to carry him and fly to Philadelphia is asking a heck of a lot.
• It's not good when the politician is more badass than the cop.
• Matt has to be reminded to read minds when he's looking for answers? For crying out loud...
• It's kind of a shame that Heroes can apparently only afford that one roof top set...it's getting a bit overused.
• Yep, Micah doesn't understand Nikki's power either.
• Despite being telekinetically transported into this prison, Matt still seems to think that he's in an actual real world prison...stupid.
• I do enjoy watching two of the Heroes beat the crap out of each other. Any two will do.
• Could David Anders have a smaller part on this show? Come on. Even KB isn't getting all that much.
• Micah's cousin says, "I'm just looking for some answers," and Mohinder shows up one minute later and says "I have some answers." Oh jeez.
• Milo needs to TONE DOWN THE FACIAL EXPRESSIONS.

Premiere Watch '07: Heroes

Hmm, I had a joke all prepared for tonight's episode of Heroes. I was going to say:

"Well, at least it was better than last year's finale...but, well, that's not saying much. Heck, today's episode of Days of Our Lives was better than last year's finale."

But, here we run into a problem: was tonight's episode better than last year's finale? And were either of them better than today's Days of Our Lives? Luckily for Heroes, today's DOOL was pretty darn bad.

Here are my two main complaints about Heroes (tonight, and in general, I suppose):

There is no dramatic structure to an episode of Heroes. It starts plotlines for 10 different people, then furthers them a little bit, then, instead of providing any sort of conclusion, it just starts plotlines for 5 other people and calls it a night. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

And it's sooooooo over-dramatic! Like, could Ando's facial expressions be any more over the top when Hiro's dad fell off the roof? Umm, yep, they could have been Peter's facial expressions when he found himself chained up in the Irish truck. Come the heck on, people! Tone it down a bit; you're not in a silent movie for crying out loud. And those Latino twins...oy vey. The scene of them talking while hiding in the doorway almost made me barf.

My praises for tonight's Heroes:

Well, they begin and end with David Anders. Wow, he's hot. Even when they make him wear that ridiculous Japanese feudal warrior outfit. It takes one hot boy to rock that outfit and not look completely ridiculous. I was extremely glad when Kensei and Hiro realized they both spoke English, because I was having a hard time keeping up with their rapid-fire Japanese while being horribly distracted by David's beauty. And I was also glad to have my favorite beautiful British rogue criminal back (well, kind of anyway). What I was not totally getting was why they decided to have Kensei turn into Jack Sparrow, but whatev. It could be worse, and it lead to by far the best moment of the night (and possibly the entire Heroes series) when:

David punched Hiro in the face!!!! Oh my gosh, I've been waiting so long for someone to punch Hiro in the face just to shut him up for a while. His constant cheerfulness has become so grating... Thank you, Kensei!

Other observations:

• Nathan's politician hair is ridiculous. Oops, I spoke too soon. His politician hair was no where near as bad as his new hairdo and beard! Yikes. He looks like the uni-bomber.
• Yeah, I wouldn't go hear Mohinder give a lecture either...
• Sorry, folks, Grunberg is still not badass. Elaborate NYPD training exercise they've got there, what with the immediate fake blood, etc. Umm, if all the "hostages" and "captors" were acting, wouldn't they both be thinking, "I'm acting"?
• Claire's grades are going to suffer if she can't raise her hand in class. Some teachers give a class participation grade. Not talking is going to make her stand out for being the weird blonde who never talks.
• Ando's hair is pretty awesome today.
• Great, a weird, recurring symbol. Because we so loved that on Alias and Kyle XY.
• Someone is taking out the older generation. That's fine by me. I can actually recommend some characters from the younger generations that I could do without too.
• Think there's any way that Mr. Bennet's career in the paper business can lead to a cross-over episode with Dunder Mifflin and The Office?
• Ha, the guy from "the company" who was on Dweebs (wow, that's a random reference) has the Midas touch! That's a fun power.
• He he. Grunberg's scared of a little girl. Like I said, he's so not badass.
• Oh, great, these Spanish-speaking kids mean more subtitles to read...fantastic.
• Where is the teacher supervision during Claire's gym class? And why didn't she put her hair in a pony tail to play badminton?
• There are 9 first generation people left. Ugh, this plotline is going to take forever.
• Maya's power is making people bleed out their eyes? That one sucks.
• Hunter from The Office a.k.a. "James Van Der Beek" a.k.a. West (seriously?) can fly. That's cool. I bet he could do a back tuck off that platform without hurting himself. My sister wonders if he's related to flying Nathan, and thus related to Claire. Wouldn't it be fantastic is Claire fell in love with another one of her relatives every season?
• Ok, it's official: no one in Hollywood can do an Irish accent without sounding ridiculous. At least no one on Heroes or Days of Our Lives anyway. I have no idea what just went on in that last scene but I was too distracted by trying to figure out why that one guy looked so familiar and by the accents (the one guy said "turd" instead of "third"....just saying).

Premiere Rating: 5.5* / 10

* 5 of those 5.5 points are for David Anders being ridiculously hot, which Heroes has nothing to do with. I'd give it a 10 just for David, but I don't think that's fair, so I'm setting the maximum number of points that any one actor can earn for a show at 5. Interestingly, if Kristen Bell had been in this episode, she could have earned it another 5 points and Heroes would have gotten a 10 despite being kind of a crappy hour of television.

Premiere Watch '07: Chuck

Well, Chuck was the second Josh Schwartz pilot to debut this fall (read my take on Gossip Girl here), and--not surprisingly--it was pretty darn good too. Chuck is certainly less likely of the two to garner comparisons to The OC, but, for the record, there were several fights, a party, and a trip to a Bait Shop-esque club.

Anyway, Chuck was delightful. Namely because of, well, Chuck. What's not to love about a character who is a little bit Seth Cohen, a little bit Jim Halpert, and a little bit Ed Stevens? That's a pretty unbeatable combination in my book (see? I still subconsciously quote The OC).

But, here again, Josh has created another "nerd" or "outsider" that is just too darn adorable to be a nerd or outsider (just like Dan from Gossip Girl). I was beside myself to understand why Chuck doesn't have women lined up around the block to go out with him--his date behavior was so cute. I suppose the secret to Chuck's isolation is that he never puts himself out in the world, as he still hasn't recovered from his college girlfriend dumping him for his roommate Bryce. (Speaking of the college girlfriend, can that please be who Rachel Bilson is going to play when she shows up for a multi-episode arc? That would be fantastic!)

Of course, the premise of the show is that Chuck accidentally absorbs all of the government's intelligence secrets into his head and unwittingly finds himself caught up in the dangerous world of spies and secret agents. The spy stuff turned out to be a lot of fun too. I loved how when Bryce was trying to escape, he did everything in the most complicated way possible (sliding under the table, going through the window above the door, etc.) ...because, seriously, how many times did Sydney Bristow make things harder on herself than she needed to? The ridiculousness continued when Sarah showed up dressed in black and was able to throw Chuck's computer in the air, beat everyone up, and still easily catch the computer. I guess the CIA has begun to recruit rhythmic gymnasts.

Another way Chuck spoofed previous spy shows was in having all the intelligence people speak in as many hard-boiled cliches as possible. This was really funny at first, but my concern is that the agents may have been a little too cliched. It looks like Sarah is well on her way to sprouting more of a personality (since we saw that Bryce was her boyfriend), and I hope that at least some of the other intel people become a bit more multifaceted.

Random question: do NSA agents really run around killing CIA agents willy-nilly? That seems kind of wrong. And is Sarah even allowed to be doing any of this spy stuff in the U.S. because my understanding was the the CIA can only operate outside of our borders? And why did Bryce clandestinely download his own government's secrets? Didn't the CIA already know that stuff? Ok, I realize that hardcore fans will tolerate some loose-ends when watching spy shows (see Rambaldi's "endgame"), but Chuck should maybe make more of an effort to not lose us all right off the bat.

Like The OC, much of the charm of Chuck is in the little witty comments, such as:

• Chuck: "Pedal safe!"
• Harry: "Do you know what 5 minutes is in Buy More dollars?"
  Chuck: "I didn't know we had our own currency."
• Chuck to the 'ninji' robbing his house: "Please, not the computer!"
• Chuck's coworker hypothesizing that the break in might be some sort of "ninji vendetta" and Chuck's response: "That's super. Thanks for thinking outside of the box on that one."
• Chuck asking the LargeMart employee to get "the guy at the front who's checking receipts" to come help. (I hate it when they do that at Circuit City!)
• CIA guy: "Nice guys aren't sent government secrets."
• NSA guy: "Don't puke on the C4."

And my other favorite parts and random observations:

• Was that the clip of Ryan carrying Marissa after her overdose in Tijuana in there amongst the other pictures encoded with government secrets? It sure looked like them. Does that mean that we were absorbing dangerous secrets while watching The OC? Because if it does, I'm in trouble.
• I loved that Chuck calls his sister's boyfriend "Captain Awesome."
• Is Agent Scardino (from Lois & Clark) Josh Schwartz's new best friend or something? First he showed up in The OC finale, and now he's the dad who didn't tape his daughter's ballet recital on Chuck. He's become the Greg Grunberg to Josh's J.J. Abrams!
• How smart was Chuck to use the porn site virus to crash the computer hooked up to the bomb! See, nerds make good CIA agents.
• The episode featured some good music: "Cobrastyle" by the Teddybears and then The Shins.

Premiere Rating: 8.0 / 10

(image from nbc.com)

YEEEEEEAAAAAAA!!!!!

David Anders a.k.a. Julian Sark a.k.a. my heart is coming back to TV (in a show I already watch anyway, which is 'super' helpful).

According to the Hollywood Reporter:

NBC's sci-fi drama "Heroes" is casting a wide net for next season, tapping Barry Shabaka Henley, Holt McCallany, "Alias" alum David Anders, Japanese pop star and actress Eriko Tamura, Lyndsy Fonseca and Dianna Agron for recurring roles.

Anders will play the most intriguing part, that of the ancient samurai warrior Takezo Kensei, Hiro Nakamura's (Masi Oka) childhood hero. While never seen during "Heroes' " first season, Kensei played a key part in the show's plot. Hiro spent most of the season trying to get ahold of Kensei's sword, which he hoped would help him in his quest to save the world.

OK, I will take David Anders any way I can get him (seriously... any way) but, um, he's playing an ancient samurai warrior? I'm at a loss. Would not one expect an ancient samurai warrior to be Japanese? I guess not. I hope this doesn't mean that he'll have to speak Japanese the whole time. I don't want to have to read subtitles when my Juls is on the screen because I'll totally get distracted by his devilish good looks and miss all kinds of pivotal dialogue.

I hope that David's character's being ancient and Japanese and all won't keep him from having some scenes with Greg Grunberg. I want an Alias reunion!

The Future Looks Grim

Heroes:
A pretty good episode tonight. Stuff happened...which is always a plus (Desperate Housewives, I'm looking at you). I gotta say though, the future does not look too good. Actually, it looks at awful lot like The Matrix. Especially when Peter put on the long black coat and Sylar started morphing bodies. One good thing about Heroes is that while they really confuse you, they then do kind of try to explain it in a fairly timely manner. Which is nice and unlike Lost which just does whatever it feels like and then maybe three years later will slip in some tiny explanation.

Random observations:

Greg Grunberg is not a badass. No one is buying it. He didn't pull it off on Alias and he's still not fooling us. He just too big and adorable. So stop making him punch Hiro. It's just silly.

How did Nikki get that ridiculously long, fake pony tail under her short stripper wig?

So Peter can explode and put himself completely back together, but cannot fix the huge scar across his face?

The death count

• (before Hiro and Ando showed up): Micah, D.L., Candace, Nathan, Ando
• (after Hiro and Ando showed up): Mr. Bennett, Claire, Future Hiro, the Haitian

...and we don't know what happened with the Peter/Sylar fire-hands battle in the hallway. Actually, I guess everyone who was not dead at the beginning of the ep probably was by the end. Except Nikki. Because she was living in denial. I think there's a lesson there.

How could present-Hiro and future-Hiro both be holding the same sword at the same time?

I loved the anecdote about the kid in the middle school who sucked all the oxygen out of the air. That, friends, is a pretty stupid superpower. I'm ranking it below being able to access the internet with your mind, but above melting kitchen appliances with your brain. I still feel bad for that kid from Gilmore Girls whose power allowed him to melt toasters--not only did Sylar kill him, but he had the Worst. Superpower. Ever.