SNARKING HEROES (Spoiler Post)

Somebody needs to smack the writers of Heroes on the nose a couple of times with a rolled-up copy of the X-Men. For serious, they're phoning it in this season like never before. Say guys, let's give Sylar AND Peter the Tragic Vampire Curse of Can't Stop Killing, aka the hunger.

The HUNNNNGER!!!!!!

So now the hero and the villain are going to switch places and we can wank away about the nature of good and evil as it pertains to fairly bland rich kids on a rampage? Oh god, they'd better not. Maybe the guy who plays Sylar can pull off a redemption plot, but making Peter Petrelli an angsty psychic vampire is like sticking fangs on a block of firm tofu. Oh, the menace.

I'll be honest. I lost interest in the Sylar/Peter dichotomy thing way back in Season 1. Part of that is that Peter is just uninteresting as fuck to me. All he does is the same stuff everyone else does, only whinier. There are ways to do a "Hoshit, Vanyel Has Every Single Talent There Is" plot well, but this isn't one of them.

Sylar scraped by because at least he had the decency to kill the original owner of each ability, so it would be unique to him from that point on. Once he got to the character, that power was off the board for anyone else--until Peter comes along and makes an emergency backup and pushes the power inflation up another notch.

I appreciate that they were trying to build them into a dark side/light side nemesis affair, but there's nothing fresh in that dynamic that I want to explore. Also, Peter's God Moding spawns way too many cheapass plot twists (time travel! Telepathy! ANGST!) and keeps Peter and his various sexy-scarred future-clones at the forefront of the story where I can't reasonably ignore them. I'm vastly more interested in the other characters who struggle to master just their own individual talents.

Here's why it annoys me. Currently, three characters besides Claire now have the healing factor (going on two, but I haven't seen the end of this episode yet). But Hayden needs screen time, so now she's special! She can't die. (Except for in the first season where saving her life was kind of the entire point.)

Don't even get me started on the Gives Powers formula, the Takes Powers Away formula, the Bad CGI virus, the magical reappearing/disappearing apocalypse, or the way guys keep flying around with blonde women in their arms. Someone still isn't over their high school sweetheart dumping them for the quarterback and it shows.

And triplets! Triplets for everyone. Sure can't get enough of those constantly respawning Ali Larters. I'm calling it right now: by season 4 they're going to be quints.

All in all, Heroes has been a decently fun waste of time, but the flaws are starting to really clunk.

Oh, who am I kidding? We all know that if I had free reign to fix this show, I would probably rename it HIRO AND ANDO DO AMERICA and the whole thing would take place during Mardi Gras so all the girls could be topless except for shiny plastic beads. I have no room to throw stones.

EDIT: Finished the episode. All I have to say is, three fucking characters now have the ability to permanently copy everybody else's talents? What the fuck is this shit? I feel so stupid for liking this show right now.

AVATAR IS OVER WHUT WHUT

SHIT the Avatar finale has been aired already!?

In that case, consider me totally AFK til I get caught up, and I suggest the rest of you who've been waiting do the same. In my personal experience, only Zim (closely followed by Harry Potter) have ever managed to beat out Avatar for sheer quantity of blabbery, psychotic hordes of fangirls ruining everything they touch.

This is a perfect time, too. Sunday = my day off. Also I need to sit still while my hair bleaches and then takes the dye. PRAISE THE LORD! MY SCALP HAS FINALLY HEALED ENOUGH TO RETOUCH THE COLORS!

HACK HACK HACK

One more time for just-in-case:

IF YOU ARE ON AIM AND DECIDE TO SEND ME A LAUNDRY LIST OF MASSIVE SPOILERS FOR A SHOW I JUST TOLD YOU I HAVEN'T SEEN YET, IT IS GOING TO PISS ME OFF AND I AM GOING TO TELL YOU SO.

IF YOUR DIPLOMATIC RESPONSE TO THIS BEGINS WITH 'HAHAHA,' WELCOME TO THE LAND OF BLOCKED.

For fuck's sake. I'm starting to regret having made my AIM name public again.

In other news, I caught Jesse's plague and it knocked me on my ass. I've been doing a lot of sleeping today and just walking up the stairs tires me out. I'm also becoming intimately familiar with slightly bloody phlegm, which is a definite experience.

Lovely word, phlegm. Right up there with smegma, sputum and election.

I Couldn't Help It

This is what happens when they let me near the internet. Feel free to gank! It'll never be more topical than it is right now.

The Scrubs Season Finale Ate My Balls

According to the writers of Scrubs, the right thing to do when a child asks where babies come from is to lie to him or her and say Mommy and Daddy "made a wish." Telling children the truth about sex is mean, and strips parents of their chance to vicariously relive their fantasy of what it's like to be innocent. Or something.

Scrubs later goes on to advise the audience that when two people who don't love each other get pregnant, the best choice is to grit your teeth and stay with the person for the sake of the baby. Even if there is no hope of reconciliation, several objective characters insist that the expecting mother should be humored and lied to in order to give her hope.

And with that, my patience for this show has run out. Halfway through the season finale, I discovered I was done. I had no interest in even finishing it, even though I paid $1.99 for it on iTunes. I eventually did watch the rest, since I felt it would give me sufficient authority to slag it off in my blog as the worst thing since moldy sliced bread.

I wanted to think that this latest bullshit is an attempt by the writers to get us to see how immature the characters are, by allowing them to convey their flawed logic without a narrative overlay of reality.

But this show just isn't smart enough to pull off something as ambitious as that. And just listen to the inspiring emotional music that swells when the bullshit moral is conveyed. The music has been used to hammer home life lessons and hard truths for six seasons now.

I cannot trust a creator who brags about how he has no interest in dragging a certain "will they/won't they" relationship drama out for year after year, yet still makes the "will they/won't they" relationship drama the focal point of the show six years running. Yeahhhh...

The Scrubs gravy train has congealed and now glides along, greasy and cold, on its rusty circular track. The characters have been paired off and handed darling clever little babies to fill the gaping hole where a funny hospital show once lived. Watching it now is like being chained to a wall and forced to watch Garden State over and over, except even more shitty.

These days, I have trouble telling the preaching and moralizing apart from the punch lines of the jokes. And speaking of jokes, I think I can safely say that Season 6 can be summed up in twelve words:

"Some of the people on this show are black. Oh hey, BABIES!"

That's three whole more words than when the show started, people.

This show jumped the shark two seasons ago, and even though I used to hope it was showing signs of life, it's clear now that it will never recover. I could keep watching it for the sake of the children, but frankly, I fucking hate children.

And speaking of Luka being in a position to watch and be disappointed in television programming, I'm BACK! The road trip ended yesterday and all was well. I have many stories, but they'll have to wait because I'm too tired to write it all down.

Update will be on the 9th, as promised. Until then, I'll toss in a reminder that the Not Quite Dead Yet Raffle will be ending with the update. If you still want a chance to appear in Kagerou and get your ass killed, now's probably a good time to get those tickets.