Heroes - 2/2 - A Clear and Present Danger

"So, who am I?", Sylar asks with an excited and, let's face it, lethal twinkle in his eye. Isn't that just the question? Leave it to Sylar to go straight for the heart of the matter. One of the best aspects of this show is the reality that you can find in all the unreality. Our world isn't colored black and white and it seems, neither is the Heroes world. It's a great theme to explore and I just love it when shows decide to put it front and center (ie: see Supernatural's angels and demons). As a rule, the world is made up of shades of gray and just because you're a fictional world, doesn't mean you should be exempt from that rule. As for Heroes, we've watched as our favorite good guys have stomp proudly down the path of the dark-side and we've watched as others also have stumbled, uncertain and unsteady, down that same path. We've watched as our favorite bad guys have dipped their toes into the good-side, shielding their eyes from the bright light and trying it on for size. Some have stayed, enjoying the bright view and some have raised their bushy eyebrows in disgust and moved away, back into the dark, where they believe they belong. Needless to say, people (aka, heroes) change over time and in the end, they all think their cause is the righteous one.

Speaking of righteous, Nathan Petrelli is just hell-bent on tearing my heart out with a spoon every Monday night. The writers could not have chosen a worse hero to turn bad (well, maybe). Seriously, how many times has Peter saved his life and now's he just going to throw him to the wolves? Well, ain't that just brotherly love! Ok, I'm acting surprised, but I'm really not. We knew this was the way it was going to be. What I WAS surprised about was...

HRG!!!!! Now why, oh WHY, would he choose Nathan's side? Well, ok, yes, he worked for the company for like...ever, finding and capturing evil people with evil abilities, but his own daughter is "special"! It's possible that HRG made a deal with Nathan, telling him he would help round up people with abilities if his daughter (and Nathan's biological daughter) would be allowed to stay free. Nathan would agree to that, I think. I guess Nathan's new mission works pretty well with HRG's own beliefs about people with abilities (and it seems Mohinder's also, but by the end of the episode, I'm thinking Mohinder has changed his tune). Still, I'm holding out that maybe HRG is playing undercover-guy and is really secretly helping the captured heroes and not Nathan. But we'll just have to see.

This episode had two great scenes, one of course, centering on Sylar. How could it not? The man is drama gold and no matter how evil he goes, I'd follow him right down to hell, skipping happily along. I watched this whole episode, sighing is resignation and frowning in frustration as each of my heroes were tazer-fied and captured. But when those SWAT wanna-bes got to Sylar, all I did was smile, shake my head and say to no one in particular, "not him". They could try to take down any other hero and succeed, but not Sylar. The man is powerful, there's no denying that and I have to admit to a nice, fuzzy feeling in my stomach as Sylar ripped that team apart. Call me evil, call me twisted, but after seeing those men take all my favorite people...it was nice to have Sylar give them a taste of their own medicine. Yes, I love him, I just can't help myself!

The other great scene was the last scene, the scene in the plane. This was an awesome mixture of action and emotion. More times than not, Claire gives me a headache, what with her incessant whining and strangely straight hair. But I just couldn't help thinking, "you go girl!" while she kicked the poo outta her poor driver, ran to the moving plane, snuck aboard and proceeded to help release and ulitmately unify all the good and evil captures aboard. I'm not saying it was the perfect escape, but it'll do. And let's not forget the "eekkk!" moment as she walks up to find her dad in the cockpit. Ouch, that stings.

Ok, so a couple other minor thoughts:

- "Umm, hello governor". Tracy is a political whore! Maybe a bit cruel, but still the truth. If I had to pick between her and Nicki, I think I like Nicki better.

- The concept of "normal" was in almost every scene. Peter wants to be normal, Parkman wants to be normal and it seems that Nathan and Claire are the only ones who know that that is no longer an option, for any of them. I think the sooner Peter sees that, the sooner he can step up and actually pose a real threat to his brother. Someone's gotta do it and I'm pretty sure a brother vs. brother theme will be just what Heroes needs to step up it's own game.

- I'm loving the idea of Parkman as the new Isaac. Parkman's spirit guide is right, someone needs to paint the future for our heroes and I think Parkman is the perfect guy for the job. He's a good man and there are so few left of them.

I'm getting a serious X-Men vibe coming from this new Volume. It's all about fearing what you don't know or in Nathan's case, fearing what you can't control. I'm not sure what made him feel like he couldn't trust his own kind (perhaps Sylar killing his father?) but the whole thing seems to be moving in a humans vs mutants direction and I gotta say...I'm loving it.

Until next week, Heroes lovers!

Star Trek

'Nough said...

Except: Ben, you are so right. The fact that we can show such a geek-tastic trailer during the all-time biggest jock-tastic television event ever...well, it brings proud tears to my eyes. It seems that we really can, all just get along.

Ghosts of Girlfriends Past

Hey all. TGIF, right? Yeah, right. Ok, well, I just happened upon your VotD, thanks to the ever-manly, ever lady-lovin' JoBlo.com. It's the new trailer for Matthew McConaughey's new romantic comedy, Ghosts of Girlfriends Past. Now, I'm not a huge M.M. fan, but he does on occasion make me laugh at his always stupid man-characters, so I'm not totally against him either. Plus, Michael Douglas, can't go wrong with Michael. Ever. Enjoy!

Lost - Jughead - 1/28

Wow, ok. "Jughead"...wait for it...is a bomb. An H-bomb. Go figure. I never would have guessed that one.

Much too early side thought: Why name a whole episode after a bomb storyline that doesn't even come up but for a of couple minutes? Perhaps they could have called the episode "Faraday" or "What Came Before" or something to that effect. Still, I have to admit, it was fun trying to guess who or what "Jughead" was. Ah, the guessing game of LOST, it never gets old.

Now, I thought that these LOST posts would be shorter now that we are into only 1 hour episodes, but...I can't promise anything. It seems the 1 hour episodes bring up as much, if not more, questions than the 2 hour premiere did. Again, go figure.

Before we begin, let me remind you of my Name Legend:

Non-Islanders - The Oceanic 6 (Kate, Sayid, Jack, Sun, Aaron and Hurley), Desmond and Penny, and Ben.

Islanders - The Freighters ( Daniel Faraday, Charlotte and Miles) and Sawyer, Locke, Juliet and any other people from the plane crash who aren't dead via flaming arrow.

The Others - People from the Island before the crash, before Dharma, before anything. People OF the Island, helping the Island and working for it. Includes Richard Alpert.

The Dharma Initiative - A group of people who came to the Island after The Others, who want to experiment on the Island.

Ok, got it? Great, let's dive in!

Penny and Desmond have a baby boy and could he be cuter?! We could guess that Penny had a baby from the promos we saw, but what we didn't know was that the baby was born about 2 years ago and that...*tear*...they named him Charlie. Could I have sobbed a little more after hearing that line? No, I don't think so. I think this was a great way to honor Charlie and the sacrifice he made for his friends. *Tear*. I miss Charlie.

Something I thought about, why would Desmond even think that merely passing on a message is going to help "save" his friends on the Island? Desmond seems to think all that is required is a days work (he promises Penny, only a day...) but he has to know that to save his friends, it's going to take a lot more than one day. By the end of the day, Penny gets that too. Time to sail away, sail, sail awayyyyyyy...to Los Angeles. Where, incidentally, the Oceanic 6 are all converging at just the right time...

Side note: I am getting a bad feeling about Penny. Brett didn't want to hear it but...I'm thinking more and more that she isn't going to make it through the season. Desmond had his time with her, 3 years and even has a son from her. I'm thinking that's all he might get. But who knows...people have been known to call me pessimistic.

Moving on to the Islanders! The Others have a secret language! How very...mysterious of them. Too bad my spoiler-seeking determination lead me to that little bit-o-news a couple days ago, so I already knew that but...turns out...it's just Latin. How very...practical of them. Maybe I got my geeky hopes up, thinking it would turn out to be some form of the Klingon language or whatnot, but low and behold...it's just Latin. I took it in 7th grade. Big whoop. The Others mystery is slowly fading for me...

Anyway, moving on...

Miles' gift just keeps getting cooler and cooler. I love that we are getting more of it and I hope we get to learn more about it in the future. Also good to note, Faraday didn't seem in the least surprised about the extent of Miles' gift. He seems to know that he can only hear dead people (unlike Hurley, who can see and interact with them). After hearing what Miles has to says about the 4 dead U.S. soldiers they just walked over, Faraday replied with, "Did any of them happen to mention what year it is"?

Ok, this is a biggie. Who do The Others think Faraday and friends are? This is what we know about that:

1) The Others didn't put the trip wire and landmine near the creek, as the Islanders thought. The Others believe that THEY put it there. So who did?

2) The cute, wary, blonde girl-Other (we'll go back to her again later) says to Faraday, "You just couldn't stay away, could you"? Obviously, The Others think they know who The Islanders are, but we didn't get that memo.

3) The Others recently killed several U.S. Military soldiers who wouldn't leave the Island when they were asked to politely by The Others. Apparently, this was an order that came from Jacob himself.

4) Richard says to Faraday that his people attacked them (The Others) and that his people were doing experiments and he believes that the H-Bomb, good ol' Jughead, is theirs.

Ok, so...what does all this tell us? It tells us that the Island had recently been "under attack" by the U.S. Military, who were leaving landmines and H-bombs lying around for people to trip over/set off. Didn't their mothers ever tell them not to leave their toys lying around? Apparently not. They were asked to leave peacefully by Richard but they refused and now they are pushing up daisies and having conversations with Miles. So, does anyone want to take a gander at who these military types might be? Anyone? Ok...I'll go then. How about: They are or will eventually be The Dharma Initiative. That's my guess, anyway. It all seems to add up to that, especially the whole "experiments" thing. But, the LOST writers are tricky little monsters and they could be sending me down a false trail. They're mean like that...

Speaking of Richard...what an enigma he is! Up until last night's episode, I thought that Richard must be constantly travelling through time, skipping around and that's why he seems to never age, but after hearing what Juliet had to say about him, I might have been seriously mistaken:

Juliet: Richard's always been here

John: How old is he?

Juliet: Old.

Maybe Richard just doesn't ever age. Maybe that's a gift from Jacob, from the Island, so that he can continue to work for it. That way, the Island and Jacob can always have someone they can trust. The Island cured Locke, why wouldn't it also have the power to keep Richard forever young? It's also good to note that Richard never seems to be the actual leader of The Others. He comes off as a middle-man, working for Jacob, but under Ben and now still working for Jacob, but accepting Locke as the new leader. Was there ever a time where Richard was their leader? If not, then who is leading The Others in the 50's, where the Islanders are now? He told Locke that they had a very specific process for choosing their leaders...what, pray tell, is this process and was Richard ever apart of it himself? Something to ponder on...

Ok, back to Desmond. We now know that Charles Widmore was financing Faraday's research years before he sent him on the boat to find the Island, probably because he thought Faraday could help him find the Island. We know that Daniel experimented on a girl and that same girl, years later, is comatose and seems to be moving throughout time, much like Desmond did in The Constant episode of Season 4. But her sister's accusation doesn't seem right to me. Would Daniel really ruin a girl's life and then just walk away? Unlikely. What's more likely is that he went to the States to find a cure and even perhaps went to the Island in order to find a way to help her. We still don't know who she was to Faraday, a lover maybe or perhaps just a lab assistant (Fringe, anyone?). Also, who does the man in Faraday's lab think Desmond is? Who are "his mates" supposed to be? I would guess that Widmore had people poking around, but why would he do that if he already knew all about Faraday's work and where he was? It's more likely that it might be Ben's people poking around...I guess only time will tell.

Ok, back to The Islanders. Last night gave us one of the cutest lines ever:

"Because I'm in love with the woman sitting next to me". Awwwwwwwwwwwww!!! I know now that my huge crush on Daniel Faraday is TOTALLY justified. What a sweetheart. But we already knew this, that Faraday had feelings for Charlotte. We just didn't know the extent of them. As for her, it's hard to tell how she feels about him, but if I had to guess, which I do, obviously...I'd say she returns his feelings. Again, only time will tell.

As promised, a quick side path to our "cute, wary, blonde girl-Other". If we were given a name, I missed it, sorry. Anyhow, she's very intriguing, no? I'm getting the feeling she's someone that's going to be important, perhaps to Widmore, but we'll see.

And the biggest, most surprising turn of events yet:

The annoying, arrogant and temperamental young Other (walking around with a uniform that says "Jones", no less...damn writers!) is in fact an annoying, arrogant and temperamental young Charles Widmore. Give me a moment to express my emotions: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ok, I'm good and moving on to my list of HOLY CRAP questions:

1) What is Widmore doing on the Island?

2) How did he become an Other?

3) Has he always BEEN an Other? Was he born on the Island?

4) What caused him to leave the Island?

5) Who is Penny's mother?!?! Was Penny born on the Island?

6) How did Ben "take everything" from Widmore, when Ben won't arrive on the Island for another 20 years or so?

Some thoughts that aren't raging questions:

1) It's funny how close young Widmore is to Faraday, a man who will eventually help lead him back to the Island. It's funny how he would kill him, give the chance.

2) It's funny how close Locke was to shooting young Widmore. How would that have changed the future?

3) It's VERY funny how young Widmore underestimated Locke. It's also good to note here the pride and arrogance young Widmore has pertaining to his knowledge of the Island. How to him, it's completely impossible that Locke, an outsider, could know more about the Island than he did. We are already being shown why he might, years in the future, go to such drastic lengths to get back there.

Whew, that's a lot to take in, huh? In the interest of keeping our heads from going "KA-BOOM", let's call it day. If I missed anything or if you have any better theories or even answers to my millions of questions, leave a comment and we can discuss.

Until next week, LOST lovers!

Wednesday Ramblings

Howdy all! Again, let me stress - I am not a huge redneck. I just like the word. It's very friendly. Ok, moving on...

Your Video of the Day is a doozy. Since the start of LOST season 5, I have also started reading Jeff Jensen's (AKA Doc Jensen) LOST Theories EW column and let me tell you...He goes WAY beyond merely dissecting LOST themes, way beyond. He makes my obsessed and overly-excited television blog look like a disinterested shrug. Still, he's very imaginative and always backs-up his theories with hard (well...semi-hard...no naughty jokes please...) evidence. And low and behold, he's got his very own EW video segment, called "Totally Lost", where he and Dan Snierson discuss and tease on LOST. It's humorous, teasing and actually...kind of intelligent. And here my mom always thought I would only get stupider while sitting on the couch, watching TV 24/7. Pah, shows what she knows.

Anyway, go HERE for this week's "Totally Lost" video and also stick around and check out Jensen's LOST names theory.


Also, despite my obviously biased reluctance, I watched the pilot episode of Lie to Me yesterday. Obviously biased because the show came off as too much The Mentalist to me and since I am a big fan of The Mentalist, I didn't want to fall for a copycat show. I mean seriously, how would Tim Roth ever compare to Simon Baker? Seriously...look at that face:


Well, it turns out that Tim Roth, though leaning towards the creepy side (though it probably just comes from his creepy The Incredible Hulk character), can still act his butt off and Lie to Me makes for a great show *I say with disgruntled respect. If you haven't seen it, check it out on Hulu and then DVR that sucker every Wed night. It's not worth missing LOST for, but it's worth checking out. Also, go HERE to the FOX website to learn more about the show.


In other news, Heroes Volume 4 is fast approaching (it airs on Monday, 2/2) and I found this promo on YouTube. It's not the best quality, but you get the point; the point being that it looks totally freaking awesome! I can hardly decide if I will be able to live with the excitement of both LOST and Heroes each week, but I'll do my best to fight through the amazingly enticing haze of these TV worlds and eventually make it back to reality, hopefully in time for work the next morning.





That's all for my television advise today, folks. Now, finish up work, run to the gym (or if you're blessed with an awesome metabolism, the ice cream shop) and speed home in time for the new episode of LOST tonight. As I've heard in recent scoop...it's going to put even the premiere episodes to shame and I honestly didn't even think that was possible. Look for my weekly LOST discussion, up by Friday.

Quote of the Day

Hi all, here's your QotD, another one from Mistborn. This book is getting REALLY good and I'm almost finished. If I haven't bothered you about it already, go pick it up at your local bookstore. After reading most of it, I've decided that the final installment of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series should be in good hands. So, let's get crackin' Sanderson! It's not like I've spent the last 10 years of my life waiting for the ending to the story, jeez!



"Other men worry whether or not they will be remembered. I have no such fears; even disregarding the Terris prophecies, I have brought such chaos, conflict, and hope to this world that there is little chance that I will be forgotten. I worry about what they will say of me. Historians can make what they wish of the past. In a thousand years' time, will I be remembered as the man who protected mankind from a powerful evil? Or, will I be remembered as a tyrant who arrogantly tried to make himself a legend?"





On another, totally different note: Don't forget that Trust Me premieres tonight on TNT at 10pm. Like Leverage and The Closer, I believe this will be one of our better and more popular shows. Tom Cavanagh and Eric McCormack have great chemistry and are both great actors. If you want to learn more about the show, go here.


The pilot is awesome, go watch it!

Lost - Because You Left/The Lie - 1/21

One of the most enticing and appealing features of LOST are its questions. More accurately, OUR questions. There is nothing more exciting than a television show that makes you ask non-stop, never-ending questions about its characters, its formulas, its events, its WORLD. There is nothing more exciting than jumping up and down around your living room after having some of those questions finally answered. But there is a very thin line that these shows can walk upon. Some shows, like Heroes for example, wander off that line and it's at that point that they start to lose their audience. Luckily for LOST, it has some very smart show-runners and producers. In a recent LOST podcast, Damon Lindelof, one of LOST's producers, said, "Have your characters ask the same questions as your viewers", or something to that effect. It was an answer to a question about how the writers expect to keep their audience from...well, getting lost themselves throughout a season filled with flash-forwards, flash-backs and flash-presents. It's a great idea which causes the often times confused and frustrated audience to not feel so alone with their oh-so-many Island-based inquires. So they gave us, the Islanders (Juliet, Sawyer, Rose, Bernard, Daniel, Charlotte, etc) and the Non-Islanders (Jack, Kate, Sun, Sayid, Hurley, Aaron) people like Daniel Faraday, Richard Alpert and even Ben to answer some of our and their never-ending questions and to keep us from getting too...lost. But let's face it...we don't mind being lost all that much, do we? In fact, I might venture to say...we love it.

So, let's talk about our new questions, theories, about what we now know and most importantly about how sexy Sawyer looks when he's minus a shirt and how sexy Jack looks minus his mountain-man beard. We'll attempt to start from the beginning...

Daniel, at some point, is going to be back in the 70's (?), when Dharma had some controlling stock in the island and he's going to go undercover as a Dharma worker. This would be one of the scenes where Brett and I were jumping up and down and WTF-ing the heck out of my living room. How is Daniel in the past? Why is he undercover and what is his purpose for being in the caves close to the Island's main power source? Well, we know by the end of the episode that the Island is constantly moving through time, back and forth through different time-periods. My best guess is that at some point in the future (can we really even SAY that?), the Island shifts to around the 70s (?) and Daniel is able to infiltrate the Dharma for some as yet unknown reason.

Doctor Pierre Chang, the scientist from the Dharma Orientation films, has/had a family. Who knew?! Who even thought to ask? Well, now we know. We also know that it was by his instructions, his "specs", that the digging crew discovered the Island's "donkey wheel". We also know that the good doctor knows more about the Island than we do. Was he purposefully guiding the workers in order to find the Island's super power, time-traveling chamber? If so, then why have them stop once they discovered it? Were they merely digging to create the Orchid station and just came across it? Though it may not seem like it, this scene answers a lot more questions than it raises. The most important being, we now know that the Dharma Initiative wasn't just on the Island to conduct social and animal experiments. They were there to test and experiment with time and space. Tricky buggers.

Still concentrating On-Island, thank God for Daniel Faraday! Not only is he adorably cute, but he's very informative to boot! We would be so lost without him. So, either the Island or the people or both are moving throughout time. We aren't sure quite yet, but it's interesting to note and question why The Others aren't moving throughout time. Why are only the people from the freighter and the crash moving? On this same note, did the Island just move through time or did it move locations also?

Neat note: Daniel likened their time-traveling situation to a skipping record; one of the first shots we get in the episode is a skipping record in Dr. Chang's house.

Since there are a million ways to ask a million questions about time-travel and you're bound to have a headache by the end of it, let's skip past the meeting between past-Desmond and Daniel Faraday. What we do know is that once Daniel changed the past, it became real, a real memory to present-Desmond. What we don't know is if Desmond is a individually unique case. We believe he is, since Daniel said he was, but we still don't know what this means. Can the Islanders really not change the future by changing the past, as Daniel said, or can they, like he did with Desmond? See...too many questions.

Let's move Off-Island for a bit...

Some things we know:

1) Hurley can certainly make a bad situation worse.

2) Sayid has a new and highly effective weapon: the dishwasher.

3) Sayid seems to be no longer working for Ben.

4) Kate is on the run with Aaron. She can no longer go back home.

5) Sun blames two people for Jin's death: her dad and Ben Linus. But we also find out that she blames Kate and Jack too.

6) Ben has people working Off-Island for him.

7) Jack looks much better without the beard. But we already knew that.

Questions this new knowledge raises:

1) Why would Hurley fore-go Ana Lucia's advise and go and get himself arrested? He has always listened to his dead friend's advise, at least eventually. Is Ben really that scary?

2) When did Sayid stop working for Ben? What happened between them that made him say those things to Hurley, therefore causing Hurley to do whatever he could to get away from Ben? And why didn't Ben know where Sayid was, that he was looking to break Hurley out of the nut-house?

3) When is Kate going to learn? When is she going to start listening to Jack and her nutty friends? And who is the law-firm's client? Is it Ben, so as to give Kate a reason to run and therefore be more willing to go back to the Island? Or is it maybe Charles Widmore and if so, why?

4) We understand why Sun blames her father and Ben for Jin's death, but why not Charles Widmore? He is a much, or even more so, to blame for Jin's death. Is she playing him? Trying to find a way to being him down? What's her game plan?

5) Ben has a huge network of people. If The Others On-Island are no longer following his orders, who are these people Off-Island? Are they maybe still following him? Endless questions abound...

Some other things to think about:

One might think that Richard never ages, that he might be immortal, but it seems now that he had just been traveling through time. Maybe he traveled through time to be at John's birth and then again to see John when he was older, to test him. If that's the case, how is he doing it? A machine? If so, where's said machine? Were the Others so hostile to Dharma so as to keep them from discovering the time-traveling secrets of the Island?

Is the Island just moving back and forth between two different time-periods...or is it changing to multiple different times every time it moves? That would seem more correct, seeing as we see Daniel back in the 70's with Dharma and we see John at some point later with Echo's brothers plane, and then will we see them three years in the future at some point...

Therefore giving the Non-Islands a chance to go back in time and catch them on the Island? Is this the hope we need, the chance we see, for Jack and Juliet and Kate and Sawyer to all meet up again? For Jack to keep Locke from ever leaving the Island and therefore keep him from being killed?

Who shot the damn flaming arrows?!!! I would guess The Others, from the past...but who knows? All we know is that it was a very effective fire-attack.

Ok, so there are a TON more questions and a lot of them revolve around Daniel's mother, who turned out to be the same lady who told Desmond that he couldn't propose to Penny, therefore sending him on his horrifying Island path. But let's leave those to next week, where hopefully we will discover more about her and her part in the Island scheme.

Until next time, LOST lovers!