Well another excellent episode, I think! Actually, I don't know if this will be much of a review because this seems to be one show that charms me into complete edge-of-my-seat submission every week. I cannot view it objectively; I have too much inane love for it.
Though by no means a comic-book fan (despite really enjoying Watchmen, V for Vendetta, and The League of Extrordinary Gentlemen.... and possibly having travelled to one or two conventions in 'past lives'), I find the medium works really well translated onto screen. A more literal example would, of course, be Sin City. Though Heroes doesn't use the same graphic embellishment or storyboard techniques, it certainly has the feel of a comic book.
Anyways, I love all the characters and am consistently intrigued by the developments and plot twists. I totally saw the time thing coming at the end of this episode... and was rather disappointed that they won't leave the wacked-out painter dead. As intriguing as I found his story, there's nothing I enjoy more than a good old main character death (especially shocking this early in a show).
Oh and by the way, apparently the story line is eerily similar to a 1981 novel. See the details here. Creator pleads innocent.
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So... many... comments.... fighting to get out!!! :-)
OK, so first off: It's very interesting to me that you find this show so engrossing that you gleefully turn off your objectivity and just sit back and enjoy the ride (obviously high praise for the show). I'd say I've tended to be that way with "Lost" except that I'm constantly analyzing, conjecturing, re-watching and looking deeper into the plot and characters of that show (tonight's episode: WOW). I don't find "Heroes" has quite that ability to captivate me yet, although I certainly like it and find it very interesting.
Next, I'd be curious to know why you knew ahead of time that Hiro had travelled forward in time. I'll tell you why I thought that was a shocker: since the painter creates images of "things that haven't happened yet", the immediate suggestion would be that Hiro's gone BACK in time, in order for the events in the comic to be predictive of things that hadn't happened yet. Now, we both know comics take awhile to be printed and distributed, so it actually COULD have been a predictive when he drew it and already past by the time the comic came out, but that sort of realization would only come after some reflection. I initally assumed the comic had nothing to do with the painter we'd seen, but would instead lead Hiro to someone who perhaps "dreams about the other heroes" (an intriquing, if not totally useful power, I suppose). When it was revealed that the creator of the comic was the "guy who paints the future", my first thought was about how different it was to paint something and not remember it (as he'd been doing) versus writing, drawing, lettering and colouring 20 pages of a comic book, send them to a printer, etc., etc., etc., meaning that maybe he wasn't using the same power. And then I just gave up trying to guess where they were going and went with the flow!
Your link to the Salmon Rushdie article was fascinating, not the least of which because it manages to talk about Rushdie w/o bringing up "The Satanic Verses", the novel that forced Rushdie into hiding for years (perhaps still?) when religious nutballs put a price on his head for daring to write what he did about Muhammad. I'd think that now, more than ever, that would be a piece of history that's relevant, considering how Al-Queda and Bush's fanatics are going at it with the world as their stage.
Appropos that same link, the article writer compared "Heroes" to the X-MEN characters, when perhaps a better comparison would be to JM Straczynski's RISING STARS universe, since it posited a generation of super-powers in a world of normals that looks just like ours in every other way, whereas the Marvel Universe in which the X-Men live is also populated by lots of accepted super-heroes like the FF, the Avengers, etc. I find many more similarities to RISING STARS (so far) than to X-MEN, but of course now I'm worried Kring (or someone associated with him) lifted the idea off Rushdie! Some of the coincidences cited seem like a stretch to me.
One final anecdote: I found the amount of recapping at the start of the episode frustrating, but I had someone at work ask me if I'd "watched that new show 'Heroes' yet?" When I said I'd seen the premiere last week and recorded, but hadn't yet watched, this week's ep, the person said, "There was an episode last week? I thought this week's was the start!" so clearly the recapping worked, to the point where someone coming in cold assumed they'd actually missed nothing but backstory!
Oh boy you like to comment! I do like to enjoy this show on more of an "in the moment" basis, but that said I wouldn't say I'm completely unobjective about it in the larger scope of things. I certainly would never attest that it was a better show than Lost.
As for the time travel, it was very confusing in general. What I meant was that I knew when things were really getting out of hand in the Heroes universe (main character dead, big explosion) that it would be solved by Hiro pushing back time. Or at least, I think that's what happened? This begs the question that you like to raise with Buffy all the time being why can't he just do that in every episode to fix the problems? So do we think that the next episode will focus on Hiro frantically trying to save the people from getting their heads chopped off? And who is doing this... are we suppose to know? And gosh wasn't this a gory gory episode.
Funny, the link I posted I had actually found in an EW article that did mention The Satanic Verses even though the source article did not. I agree, quite relevant.
And finally, I agree about the recapping - a little much.
You, me, and all other "Heroes" fans may be excused if they jump for joy when they read the article at: http://www.comingsoon.net/news/tvnews.php?id=16836
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