Television: Change is good

[alexxkay]

kestrell and I got caught up on *both* Heroes and Veronica Mars recently. Minor spoilers below:

I'm liking Heroes more and more. It's still got ludicrous 'science', but the characters remain fascinating, and I never know wha's going to happen next. (Although I do have a feeling that Mr. Bennett is going to get a lot meaner now.)

Promising news from the show's creator, courtesy of SCI FI Wire: "Volume One comes to a conclusion at the end of episode 23, and Volume Two starts with the opening of season two. And Volume Two is a different story." I'm a big fan of both closure and ongoing change. Series where they always hit a reset button really bug me. Heroes doesn't seem to have a reset button, because their status has never been stable. I'll grant that they sometimes spin their wheels for a bit, but the general trend towards definitive forward movement is something I really approve of. Cliffhangers can be fun, but they grow tiresome when the heroes never actually fall off the cliff, nor do they move away from the edge.

In semi-related news, kudos to Veronica Mars for being willing to kill off a regular in-the-opening-credits cast member 2/3 of the way through the season. It was a very unexpected development, but promises to push several of the remaining cast in some interesting directions.

I'm also glad that they have been using the supporting cast more in the last few episodes. I know the producers thought that they went too overboard with the supporting cast in Season Two, but I think they've overreacted somewhat with the current season. Not that I mind watching Veronica herself, mind you. But more Mac can only be a good thing :)

Comments

[hungrytiger]

I'm with you on the Yay for Heroes comments. I'm still following Lost, which is still better acted and written (IMHO), but the complete lack of forward movement is really painful in comparison. OTOH, the interesting thing about Lost is that the non-plot driving character episodes are becoming the best part of the show. The Lost mythology has little to no hope of making sense at this point, so I'm just hanging on and saying yay for the Hurley, Charlie, and Desmond episodes that explore the lives of characters that the writers have really gotten me to care about. And the recent Desmond episode, in which they did a very clever tweak to the flashback formula, was sharp and fun, even if it barely advanced the story.

Back to Heroes though... While it has been great fun of late, I really didn't need the gratuitous Stan Lee cameo and I'm really unhappy with their latest stunt casting (not George Takei, who I thought was _excellent_; even more so when the character showed up the second time - which really startled me). I won't discuss it in case you haven't seen the latest ep. yet, but there was a name that showed up in the opening credits that caused me to groan because I'm just so tired of him playing yet another cartoony variation of the same character he's been playing for years.

The biggest thing I love about it so far is the way they've been continually throwing curveballs at the viewer by taking characters that we thought were just background and having them turn up in unexpected places in the plot. As a LARP-writer, I used to doing that with my characters, but as a TV-viewer it really catches me off-guard.

[alexx-kay.livejournal.com]

They made Desmond interesting? Go figure. Part of what pissed me off about Lost Season 2 was that both Charlie and Hurley had all of their season 1 character development reset to their starting conditions. Can't say as I miss watching the show.

I indeed haven't seen the latest Heroes ep, so will not comment on the casting.

The show does turn out to have a dense web of character connections worthy of a LARP, now that you mention it.