I Think I'm Done

Here's something that really bothers me, especially when I've invested a serious chunk of time getting into a story: when the story is suddenly changed wholesale. Some of you may know what I'm getting at, but for those of you who do something better with their Monday nights (like watch football or bare-knuckle fight hobos for nickels at the local bar or scratch your ass), I'll expound upon my vitriol.

This whole thing with Heroes is just...blegh. See, first off, they started out with the whole story of how people were changing over time and now they're getting these abilities. Sure, I think I've heard that plot somewhere before, but at least it was consistent. It wasn't just that one day someone woke up and suddenly could fly, or some such shit as that. Okay, I thought, perhaps this will turn out to be alright, so I watched and generally enjoyed the first season. The second season focused way too much on Hiro, who I find terribly annoying. I've met Japanese people, and they're not all mock-ups of anime characters. Now we've come to the third season and now suddenly, no one was born with these powers, but they were given these powers through genetic manipulation.

Sure, I can suspend my disbelief for so long to try and get by that. Genetic manipulation is a very common theme in science-fiction and, to an extent, we can insert genes into bacteria and we can knock genes out in almost anything, and we can synthesize DNA and proteins/enzymes. Hooray for science! I'm fine with all of that. The thing that irks me is that the whole premise for the show has changed radically in that now people aren't evolving these powers, they were given them by power-mad sociopaths at "The Company". No thanks. But wait, it's better. From the snippet of the "formula" we've seen from when Hiro (in eye-rolling, predictable fashion) looked at the piece of paper with half of the formula drawn on it, the magic bullet that gives these powers is a molecule featuring several fused cyclic ethers. Really? Brevetoxin, the culprit in red tide, is the thing that gives people powers? Huh. Funny, I thought it bound up your ion channels and killed you.
That's not even reflecting the plot holes in the story. Like, for instance, is one of Maya's powers, to go along with the black tears thing, the ability to suddenly go from being unable to speak any English at all to now being able to speak perfect, accent-free English? The baddest of the bad guys manage to escape from this mysterious "Level 5" and are on the prowl as a team of evil characters with incredibly strong powers, and they're captured by a guy with no powers at all after he gives up his gun? Weak. Also, what the hell happened to Kristen Bell? There was this whole "Oh, Elle, you're so powerful but you're untapped and untrained" and then her father (with one of the lamest powers of all) gets killed and now she's just disappeared? Nice. Jumping back and forth between the future and the past is also annoying me. The Petrelli Brothers are suddenly turning into the Summers brothers. Is their dad out running through space playing the part of a space pirate, too? Plus, we get it: Hayden Panetierre is hot, does that mean we have to shove the camera down her shirt at every turn of the plot? I'm not even that put off by her being evil in the future--though I do wonder at the whole dark hair and squinty eyes making someone evil bend. She's also a piss-poor shot.

Also, I think Peter Petrelli brings shame to the character of Synch from Generation-X. What the hell ever happened to Synch? Someone fill me in.

Anyway, the whole thing is a disaster of Cubs post-season proportions. There's not a compelling storyline that makes me want to watch. I might tune in next week, or I might not (depends on how many hobos I can bare knuckle box or if my left cheek has an itch). Overall, the whole story has become meh at best, and this time they don't have the writer's strike to blame for the coming apocalypse.

Actually, if they wrote Apocalypse into the story, things might get a lot better.