Heroes 1x07 Nothing to Hide

[oyceter]

As a side note, I was in the airport and saw the EW issue with Hiro, Claire and Nathan on the cover! Eeeee! Hiro! Claire! I am somewhat surprised (in a good way) that it's the two of them and Nathan, usually my favorites aren't necessarily the popular favorites. But I am so glad Masi Oka is getting the attention, and ditto for the actress who plays Claire, because I really like them.

Also, I didn't realize the show was a surprise hit type thing, so that makes me happy as well, particularly because of all the people of color in it. And it makes me triply happy that one of the more popular characters seems to be a Japanese not-heartthrob who doesn't even speak English for most of the show. Take that, network execs!

Hiro! Hiro saves people! I should probably keep Hiro squee to a minimum, since it's largely the same every week, but I just love the shots of stopped time. It is SO COOL. And I love that Hiro quite obviously thinks it's cool as well.

I adored Claire arguing with her brother. On the one hand, yikes, threat to security. On the other hand, the way Claire freaked out and was hitting the car and yelling at Lyle was so real. And the YouTube comment rocked.

The twist with Nathan's wife was rather unexpected; I thought she was going to be played as the bitchy politician's wife. This is more interesting. And while the Petrelli storyline usually bores me, the family brunch was pretty fun, and I actually liked Peter for a change! He is way more interesting when he's being snippy and childish than when he's being emo and earnest.

Speaking of which, am still not interested in the Simone-Peter thing at all.

And Micah! Micah is fix-it kid! Micah so knows about his mom!

Alas, no Mohinder, unless he came in near the end. For some reason, Tivo has been cutting off the last few min. or so, and given the cliffhangers of the show, this is very irritating. I have now changed the recording options.

I guess Isaac is off with perky girl?

Oh yeah, I nearly forgot about telepathic cop's storyline all together. I figured something like that with his wife, and it still totally creeps me out that he seduced her with telepathy. EW. Blond FBI agent reminds me of Starbuck for some reason. Radioactive man was cool, but the whole communication with coma patient was a little too sappy for me.

Comments

[oyceter]

Yes! You should! I keep thinking about Heroes in light of your casting posts, particularly in terms of colorblind casting and/or deliberately attempting to cast more PoC and how it works for Heroes.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

In Lost the Korean-speaking characters are subtitled in flashbacks but not in present-day on the island. Unless the audience happens to know Korean, this positions them as Other in a way that Hiro is not; Hiro's language difficulties are also the English-speakers' difficulties, as the audience knows perfectly well what he's saying. On Lost the positioning is that the problem is that the Koreans don't speak English, not that the Americans don't speak Korean.

I have a problem with one finger so typing is difficult, so this could be a while (No, no idea what happened-- maybe overuse) but could also add in Homicide and talk about gender issues too, as there is a gender issue that has a great deal of relevance to the race discussion, which is that (in my opinion, and assuming that movies/shows entirely about or dominated by POC and/or women are not under comparison here (because hello, where are they?)) it may be better to have fewer minority characters who are better handled, central to the story, and control its action (ie, are not objects) than more who don't.

That is, one female homicide detective is better than three female love interests; four heroes of color out of nine (Isaac, Hiro, DL, Mohinder) in a show about heroes is better than every person in a movie about Africa being African except the white protagonist.

On a side note, Heroes really is an ensemble show. I cannot pick out a single protagonist at all. So far I think that Niki, Claire, Mohinder, the Petrellis, and Hiro have gotten more screen time than Isaac, DL, and Telepathic Cop, but the show's been on for such a short time that that could change in the next three episodes.

[oyceter]

I really, really like the ensemble nature of Heroes, and I think it helps a lot with the multi-racial bit because there's more opportunity to focus on all the characters of different races.

Also, you make a really good point wrt the decision to subtitle foreign languages or not and how that affects the audience perspective. I haven't watched Lost, largely because JJ Abrams annoys me, but I hadn't realized that the Korean couple isn't even subtitled on the main island! That's so much lost information, and it completely cuts out their POV so that they only look like people stumbling with a language.

On a side note, in Y: The Last Man, there was this bit with a Russian woman talking, and she was given really halting English dialogue, but once she switched to Russian, we saw her being very fluent, which was nice. I only wish that they had done the same thing with the person she was talking to; instead, they were fluent in both English and Russian.