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

[almeda.livejournal.com]

I have to give my husband the TV-Psychic props for the night; he called in the apartment-search the potential for Radioactive Man to be the earth-shattering kaboom in mid-November.

[ide-cyan.livejournal.com]

Blond FBI agent reminds me of Starbuck for some reason.

Clea DuVall was the invisible girl in S1 of BtVS.

[matt-ruff.livejournal.com]

Clea DuVall was the invisible girl in S1 of BtVS.

Also one of the stars of Carnivale, (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0319969/) which if you haven't seen it yet, you should.

[oyceter]

Yeah, I only thought of that way after! That would be cool.

Though not so cool for Radioactive Man...

[oyceter]

Go fig! The one Buffy episode I have never seen!

[oyceter]

I've actually heard a lot about Carnivale, but I'm a little scared to watch it because I have a low, low tolerance for scary things. By which I mean: I closed my eyes through most of Sixth Sense.

[matt-ruff.livejournal.com]

It's been a while since I watched it, but my recollection is that while there's plenty of tension, there aren't many out-and-out scary parts.

[penmage.livejournal.com]

I have zero tolerance for scary things (I closed my eyes for most of Signs, and made my friend tell me what was going to happen for the rest of it before I was willing to watch it) and I loved Carnivale. (Heck, I shut my eyes and ears during the scary movie previews at the theatres.) Granted, there are a few moments that made me back away from the screen, but overall, it's worth it. It's far more brilliant and fascinating than scary.

If the ultimate horror wimp (me) can watch it and love it, so can anyone.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I spontaneously cheered aloud when Hiro appeared in the road. I know he's not a traditional heartthrob type, but he does seem to be more of a popular favorite than the actors who are.

I have now greatly warmed to the Petrelli brothers and their Brunch O' Dysfunction.

[oyceter]

Hiro is awesome. I am so, so glad that he is a popular favorite, and really happy for Masi Oka as well. Popular Asian actor on TV! What a notion!

The Brunch O' Dysfunction was excellent, as was the wheelchair reveal.

[racyli.livejournal.com]

Yea, I'm not so enchanted with the Parelli brothers storyline either. Both of them just annoy the heck out of me.

Though on the first show, I thought they had better chemistry to be ex-lovers...

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Some day I should do an analysis of the casting of actors of color in Heroes and Lost, as the latter did a lot of the same things as the former (Asian actors speaking Asian languages, Daniel Dae Kim and Naveen Andrews as popular Asian hotties, starting with stereotyped roles and developing from there, etc) but I think Heroes is doing a much better job of making the white and of-color actors equal in terms of the storyline.

Jack, the white doctor, and to a lesser degree Kate, the white criminal/love interest, will always be the protagonists and heroes and mover-shakers and get the most screentime on Lost forever and ever, world without end. Who's the protagonist of Heroes? It could as easily be Hiro as anyone else.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

And despite the lack of numeric representation of women, Claire could be a protagonist/hero in a way that Kate never really has been-- as Claire is a hero in her own right rather than a love interest.

[oyceter]

They annoy me a lot, particularly early in the show, but the Brunch of Dysfunction was interesting enough to overcome that. Plus, then they were actually trying to be annoying, which was more interesting.

[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.