I'm not really someone that goes for primetime television drama. Back when I worked in the ER, I always had an irregular schedule, and we didn't even have a water cooler to gather around to discuss who the girls on Desperate Housewives had been fucking. Well, I guess that's not totally true; there was that dark period in my life where I was hopelessly addicted to the O.C. The girl that I was dating at the time got me hooked on it, and while I first started watching it just to see how the writers would work in why the surly kid in the wife beater was punching someone in the face this episode, I gradually became sucked into the lives and times of those crazy, narcissistic teens. Fortunately, it got moved to a night where I was always working, and I was able to prevent the complete transformation of my penis into a vagina.
Now that I have a more regular schedule, I still try not to get too addicted to shows, mainly because I feel that structuring my night around watching fictitious people and their problems isn't healthy. I've actually had friends that have said "Dude, I'd love to hit up that stripper party that Dave is having. But I can't, gotta watch The Office tonight. It's so like my job! Ha ha ha!" These friends don't get laid very often, but if they do have the opportunity to meet members of the opposite sex, they can totally impress them by telling them how the Hanzo symbol showed up on a shark's ass in Lost or whatever.
The one show that I've recently made an exception for is Heroes, on NBC. If you haven't seen it, immediately stop whatever stupid activity you're engaged in and go watch it. Seriously, right now. Why the fuck are you still reading this? Go! Download it on Limewire or BitTorrent or something, or if you have some kind of moral compunction against pirated TV shows, 1.) You're a huge pussy, and 2.) I suppose your only other option is to build some kind of kickass time-travel device, find a wacky sidekick, and go to the future to get the whole series on DVD, having hilarious misadventures and trying not to meet your future self on the way. If they still have DVD's in future, that is; I'm kind of hoping by then all visual stimulation will be beamed directly into our brains by awesome cyborg implants. Let me know about that when you get back.
The premise of the show is that for as-of-yet unrevealed reasons, a group of ordinary people have been gifted with amazing powers. As there have only been about five episodes so far, there's still a lot of mystery about what exactly is going on. When I first heard about the show, I was kind of skeptical about any network being able to pull off a cool, realistic show about superheroes. I know that special effects wouldn't really be a problem in today's world of CGI everything; I'm pretty sure I flipped to Sesame Street the other day and saw Big Bird engaged in a visually stunning laser space dog fight against The Evil Vowel Empire, and lord knows PBS doesn't have the money for really top-line digital artists.
I was more worried about the actual powers the people would have, and if they would be presented in a relatable way. Let's face it, it's pretty much impossible to come up with an original superpower anymore. I mean, Superman alone has like 20, and if he doesn't, he can always claim that the way the angle of Earth's yellow sun was hitting his alien skin at that moment gave him the ability to turn into a helicopter or whatever other ridiculous plot device happened to be called for. And nobody wants to watch a show about people with lame superpowers. That was something that always bugged me about the X-men; they had all of these racial themes of being hated and persecuted because they were different, but they were all actually gorgeous white people who just happened to be able to shoot ice beams or turn to metal. If they had been born with the amazing mutant ability to smell like cheese, or constantly secrete acidic ear wax or something, I might feel bad, but it's hard to pity a beautiful redhead who can move stuff with the power of her mind.
So how did the creators of Heroes do? To find out, I'm going to go through all of the characters, and give them a rating showing numerically how effective their powers would be against both normal, everyday crime, like a crack addict with a knife trying to steal your shoes, as well as super-crime, like when Dr. Nefarious tries to use his orbital death platform to reverse the polarity of the Earth. A rating of one will be the lowest, and will be compared to the lamest superhero I can think of, who of course is Aquaman. I mean, honestly, I'm sure being able to talk to fish is cool, and they have lots of interesting things to say, but it's really not that useful if someone's trying to shoot you. Unless you're talking to flying fish, and can somehow convince them to suicidally throw themselves into the path of the oncoming bullets. And everybody knows that flying fish are dicks, so that's not likely. A rating of 10 will be comparable to having the best superpowers that I can think of, which would be the ability to control the very matter of space and time itself so that you're constantly surrounded by naked supermodels and chocolate pudding.
So without further ado, here they are, the champions of Earth and defenders of liberty! Evil-doers beware! Annnnnndd....Roll call!
(Disclaimer: I'm notoriously bad with names, to the point that I can barely remember what to call my friends and family without the notecards I keep in my back pocket, so I'm never able to remember character's names on TV shows. Unless it's something like Jerry Seinfeld, who starred in "Seinfeld". See, that's easy. So instead, I usually just make something up incorporating an aspect of the person's physical appearance and/or demeanor. I do this in real life, too; you might meet me at a party and say "Hi! My name's Jessica!" but then five minutes later, you'll be known as "Stupid Haircut" in my mind. It's a character flaw, and I'm working on it. Fuck off.)
Unkillable Hot Cheerleader!
She, as her name implies, is both hot and a cheerleader, which pretty much supersedes any superpower she could possibly have. She found out that she couldn't die by accident, and then, because I'm assuming she's mentally imbalanced, proceeded to attempt to kill herself in horrific fashions multiple times, all while having her gay friend videotape it. The only real application that I could think of for her miraculous not-dying ability would be that you could choke her as much as you want during sex and not have to worry about accidentally killing her.
Rating against Crime: 4
I guess you have the element of surprise. If somebody shoots you and steals your wallet, you could pretend to be dead until they're not looking, then sneak up behind them and hit them with a brick or something. But I mean, she's still a 17 year old girl, I don't think it would be too hard to incapacitate her while you're robbing a bank or stealing a car.
Rating against Super-Crime: 4
It's pretty much the same thing; being able to not die is kind of useless unless you've also got super strength or something else to go with it. You're still not going to be able to hurt Rampage, The Rampaging Man after he's torn you in half and you've regenerated yourself.
Shady Politician!
This guy has the ability to fly, and while you don't actually see him do it for the first few episodes, it's pretty fucking cool when he actually does. He's running for some kind of political office, and while I know that I would immediately and unhesitatingly vote for any candidate that could launch themselves into the air at the speed of sound, he, for some reason, is trying to keep it a secret. He also has the super ability to lie to his crippled wife with a smile on his face about the hooker he slept with in Vegas, which while not as cool as flying, is still a good trick to know.
Rating against Crime: 7
At the very least, you can just up and fly away when somebody accosts you, unless they've broken into your house at night and tied you to your bed. Then you're pretty much fucked.
Rating against Super-Crime: 6
You'd have to get a little creative when battling supercriminals with only the ability to fly. Maybe your costume could incorporate several pouches filled with rocks that you could drop on your opponent's heads, or even balloons filled with your own urine if you were in a particularly bad mood. You could call it your "Urine of Justice", and it would be known and feared by the criminal underworld.
The Amazing Junkie!
The Amazing Junkie has powers that are, quite possibly, worse than Aquaman's. He's an artist, and has the ability to paint portentous events of the far-distant future on his canvas. But, get this: only when he's fucked up on heroin! I guess a drug addiction probably costs less than having to keep up the maintenance repairs on your Iron Man armor or Spidermobile, but it must be embarrassing to have to tell other superheroes that you can't go out and fight crime today because you couldn't score and are locked in your Heroincave shitting yourself and crying.
Rating against Crime: 10
He's a junkie, so this automatically protects him from most street-level crime. I mean, if you're going to rob someone, are you going to rob the rich looking guy with the nice suit and the expensive watch, or are you going to go for the guy with the tattered clothes and the uncontrollable shaking? Nobody robs junkies; they never have anything worth stealing.
Rating against Super-Crime: 0
Honestly, this guy is fucking useless. There was one scene in the show where he and another character dramatically stated that they had to go rescue someone, and I really wanted the other guy to turn to The Amazing Junkie and ask "Oh, we're going to go save someone? What are you going to do, draw a picture of yourself getting your ass kicked and then huddle in a corner and vomit? Why don't you just stay here and wait for your dealer to call, then you can go over and blow him for your fix."
Emo Haircut!
This guy is actually the brother of Shady Politician, and is embittered over his brother's success and uncaring attitude about their mysterious powers. He broods a lot, and is constantly flipping his 1990's skater hair out of his eyes, which gets really irritating. It's first implied that he has the same power of flight like his brother does, but later revealed that he can copy the abilities of any superhuman in the area when he manages to finish one of The Amazing Junkie's future pictures.
Rating against Crime: 1
Being able to mimic the abilities of superpeople isn't very useful when there aren't any superpeople around. I guess you could find a midget with all kinds of cool powers and then just kind of keep him strapped to your back all the time, but that would probably get inconvenient. Otherwise, this guy is pretty much fucked whenever the frat guys get drunk and decide to beat him up for reading poetry and smoking cloves at the coffeehouse.
Rating against Super-Crime: 8
This sort of depends on how creative you are; if you're fighting someone with super-strength, it just comes down to who's actually better at throwing cars and smashing people through walls. If you're fighting someone who has x-ray vision, you're going to get punched in the face, because while Count Optical is already acclimated to his powers, you're going to be distracted checking out all of the girls that are walking by to see who's wearing sexy underwear.
Fat Cop!
Fat Cop has the ability to read minds and hear the thoughts of others. He really hasn't used his powers in any appreciably cool way yet; the closest he's come has been to mind-rape his wife and figure out all of her favorite things so he could give her a night of chubby, sweaty passion that she'll never forget. Then he went to go buy ice-cream, which I thought was pretty funny. He also has a tendency to pass out when using his powers; either due to the unbearable mental strain they put on him,or because he's diabetic, and had just eaten a bag of donuts or an entire pie in the previous scene.
Rating against Crime: 5
Being a cop that can read minds isn't that handy; I know that whenever I'm pulled over, I'm universally thinking the same thoughts about how much I hate the police, and trying to concoct ways to push the officer out into traffic so that an oncoming semi-trailer can hit him. I'd imagine most everybody else thinks this too; it must get kind of depressing for Fat Cop to realize that everybody he pulls over for speeding wants him to die.
Rating against Super-Crime: 4
If you can only read peoples minds and not directly influence their actions, or fire powerful psionic beams into their brains to make them think they're monkeys or something, it's pretty useless. I guess it gives you a heads up before whatever supercriminal you're fighting shoots his death shurikens at you, but knowing you're about to die 10 seconds before you actually do isn't that much of an advantage.
You're going to have to wait until next week for the exciting conclusion, because I don't think I've ever typed this much in one sitting even in college, and my fingers are starting to bleed. But rest assured, gentle readers, next weeks episode will be just as action packed and dramatic, featuring the superhero styling's of Shiny Indian! Afro kid! Hot Psycho Girl! Soulful Black Guy! Hiro! And many more! Stay tuned!
No comments:
Post a Comment