BSG 3.18 and Heroes
Mar. 13th, 2007 11:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakFirstly, due to recommendations from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ashylogic and rozk, I've been catching up and watching Heroes these last days. Thoughts and squee below. Secondly, despite my regular drug supplier being on the road, I found another source for BSG, hence:
Wow. A Lee centric episode. Which is well written and exploring him. And he's interesting and ethical and ...I'm all aglow with nostalgia and hope, as this is the second episode in a row where I'm very fond of Lee again.
On a shallow note: when watching the scenes with Lee and Sam at the start and at the end of the episode, I immediately thought: they're Logan and Scott at the end of X2 and start of X3!likeadeuce is going to love this!
On a character observing note: interestingly enough, Lee and Sam together are both handling the Kara grief way more mature than Adama does. With bad flashbacks to the quadrangle of doom days, you'd expect them to pull a Laertes and Hamlet about Kara, but no, not at all. Instead, they behave like they're in a hurt/comfort fic. (With potential slash, though actually I wouldn't write it, because Lee just repaired his relationship with his wife, and hurt/comfort sex is still cheating.) Meanwhile, Bill Adama is the one who pulls off a Hamlet at Ophelia's grave (and I always wanted to slap Hamlet there - actually, not only there, but that's not the point): you think you're grieving more than me, boy? Do you? Do you? Lords of Kobol.
(That being said, the Kara memorabilia scene with Adama was sweet and touching, especially her father's day card.)
Old Buffyverse aquaintance Mark Sheppard is fab as Baltar's new lawyer. Smart, manipulative, and with hidden motives - clearly, he is my type. Whether or not Caprica Six saw through him remains to be seen (loved the way she returned the pen), but you know, at this point I'm guessing the writers will steal a page from Witness for the Prosecution - Caprica will pretend to testify against Baltar, because nobody would believe her if she testified pro-Baltar, and then at the last point will give the lawyer (and/or Lee) evidence that makes herself look like a liar.
Lee's journey to joining the Baltar defense team made sense to me; of course it's partly about Adama, but mostly it's about wanting to do the right thing, as difficult and harsh as that may be, and Lee Adama is always at his most interesting when he's put in this position.
As to the assassination of Baltar's previous lawyer and the attempts on this one: currently, my money is on the new lawyer being behind them (by bribing and/or manipulating Seargeant what's his name), and yes, at the risk of his own life. Did I mention this man is clearly my type?
***
Now, as to Heroes:
The exact point where I went from "hm, yes, okay, maybe I'll keep watching" to "wow, that was smart, I'll definitely watch further" was the final scene of the pilot. I was looking at my watch and thinking "okay, Peter, having gained his confidence, will fly, classic set-up, why are you dragging this out so long?" And then he jumped, and we got Nathan flying instead. That was such an inspired twist. Because while Peter is the classic Marvelverse superhero, Nathan the determinedly ambitious politician hitting 40 is the kind of person who just never ends up with superpowers in either Marvel or DC (unless, of course, they're villains.) The Petrellis and their convoluted, intense relationship became one of my favourite things about the show.
(Oh, and episode 18's reveal about Mrs. P being a pullstringer behind scenes? Love it. About time we got a matriarch. Also, you have to wonder about Old Man Petrelli committing suicide just before Nathan and Peter would have gone public against him. Just saying....)
And then it turns out Mr. Bennet is a cross between Jack Bristow and Arvin Sloane, which of course made him a favourite as well. When Nathan replies to Peter's "there are people like us!" with asking "dysfunctional?", he summed it up, because the Bennets being in close competition with the Petrellis when it comes to dysfunctionality despite being an outward opposite in terms of colouring (warm, yellow, brown, golden light for the Texas scenes and the Bennet dress code; sharp, black and white, edgy for New York and la famiglia Petrelli). Yes, Mr. Bennet has this "must protect my darling daughter" credo above all else, but he also regularly brainwashed his wife (among many others), and of course he joined "the company" to begin with; nobody forced him.
(Sidenote: originally I thought that the show was setting up Claire and Peter as the leading couple, long distance soul mates who get together at the end, but obviously once Nathan was revealed as Claire's biological father that theory was blown out of the water. Although, given that I watched Carnivale, I shall never be sure again on-screen incest won't happen. But I'm pretty sure that even if it did, it wouldn't be the uncle/niece variety. Not that I'm implying anything.)
Claire shares some obvious traits with first season Buffy - cheerleader whose newly discovered superpowers take her popularity status away and let her bond with the unpopular kids instead - but comes across as her own person rather than just an imitation. She's also thankfully a female hero who helps some people not her family, because I'm a bit uneasy about the gender division on this show. Among the superpowered people, at least; I really liked Clea Duvall's character who was strong, smart, resourceful and not evil, and miss her since she left. Not sure what to think about Niki/Jessica, because on the one hand it's clearly victim-and-good/killer-and-bad, which annoys, but on the other they've given her a backstory which makes sense of the Jessica personality being what she is, and Niki depowering herself.
Hiro and Ando: utterly adorable. As with Sun and Jin on Lost, I'm thrilled that we have two Asian characters who get to talk in their own language with each other, and of course Hiro with his boundless geek enthusiasm - though later somewhat tempered by tragedy - is irresistable. (He even won I-must-be-normal-Nathan around. Seriously, their few scenes together are just lovely. Mind you, given the way Nathan discovered his powers - with his wife getting crippled right on front of him - even a less politically minded man would be at first averse to the whole superheroics thing.) Giving George Takei a cameo as his father was just candy for genre fans, and of course later Hope actually calls Hiro "Sulu".
*dissolves in geek joy herself*
And... we have to wait until April? Not fair!
ashylogic and rozk, I've been catching up and watching Heroes these last days. Thoughts and squee below. Secondly, despite my regular drug supplier being on the road, I found another source for BSG, hence: Wow. A Lee centric episode. Which is well written and exploring him. And he's interesting and ethical and ...I'm all aglow with nostalgia and hope, as this is the second episode in a row where I'm very fond of Lee again.
On a shallow note: when watching the scenes with Lee and Sam at the start and at the end of the episode, I immediately thought: they're Logan and Scott at the end of X2 and start of X3!
likeadeuce is going to love this! On a character observing note: interestingly enough, Lee and Sam together are both handling the Kara grief way more mature than Adama does. With bad flashbacks to the quadrangle of doom days, you'd expect them to pull a Laertes and Hamlet about Kara, but no, not at all. Instead, they behave like they're in a hurt/comfort fic. (With potential slash, though actually I wouldn't write it, because Lee just repaired his relationship with his wife, and hurt/comfort sex is still cheating.) Meanwhile, Bill Adama is the one who pulls off a Hamlet at Ophelia's grave (and I always wanted to slap Hamlet there - actually, not only there, but that's not the point): you think you're grieving more than me, boy? Do you? Do you? Lords of Kobol.
(That being said, the Kara memorabilia scene with Adama was sweet and touching, especially her father's day card.)
Old Buffyverse aquaintance Mark Sheppard is fab as Baltar's new lawyer. Smart, manipulative, and with hidden motives - clearly, he is my type. Whether or not Caprica Six saw through him remains to be seen (loved the way she returned the pen), but you know, at this point I'm guessing the writers will steal a page from Witness for the Prosecution - Caprica will pretend to testify against Baltar, because nobody would believe her if she testified pro-Baltar, and then at the last point will give the lawyer (and/or Lee) evidence that makes herself look like a liar.
Lee's journey to joining the Baltar defense team made sense to me; of course it's partly about Adama, but mostly it's about wanting to do the right thing, as difficult and harsh as that may be, and Lee Adama is always at his most interesting when he's put in this position.
As to the assassination of Baltar's previous lawyer and the attempts on this one: currently, my money is on the new lawyer being behind them (by bribing and/or manipulating Seargeant what's his name), and yes, at the risk of his own life. Did I mention this man is clearly my type?
***
Now, as to Heroes:
The exact point where I went from "hm, yes, okay, maybe I'll keep watching" to "wow, that was smart, I'll definitely watch further" was the final scene of the pilot. I was looking at my watch and thinking "okay, Peter, having gained his confidence, will fly, classic set-up, why are you dragging this out so long?" And then he jumped, and we got Nathan flying instead. That was such an inspired twist. Because while Peter is the classic Marvelverse superhero, Nathan the determinedly ambitious politician hitting 40 is the kind of person who just never ends up with superpowers in either Marvel or DC (unless, of course, they're villains.) The Petrellis and their convoluted, intense relationship became one of my favourite things about the show.
(Oh, and episode 18's reveal about Mrs. P being a pullstringer behind scenes? Love it. About time we got a matriarch. Also, you have to wonder about Old Man Petrelli committing suicide just before Nathan and Peter would have gone public against him. Just saying....)
And then it turns out Mr. Bennet is a cross between Jack Bristow and Arvin Sloane, which of course made him a favourite as well. When Nathan replies to Peter's "there are people like us!" with asking "dysfunctional?", he summed it up, because the Bennets being in close competition with the Petrellis when it comes to dysfunctionality despite being an outward opposite in terms of colouring (warm, yellow, brown, golden light for the Texas scenes and the Bennet dress code; sharp, black and white, edgy for New York and la famiglia Petrelli). Yes, Mr. Bennet has this "must protect my darling daughter" credo above all else, but he also regularly brainwashed his wife (among many others), and of course he joined "the company" to begin with; nobody forced him.
(Sidenote: originally I thought that the show was setting up Claire and Peter as the leading couple, long distance soul mates who get together at the end, but obviously once Nathan was revealed as Claire's biological father that theory was blown out of the water. Although, given that I watched Carnivale, I shall never be sure again on-screen incest won't happen. But I'm pretty sure that even if it did, it wouldn't be the uncle/niece variety. Not that I'm implying anything.)
Claire shares some obvious traits with first season Buffy - cheerleader whose newly discovered superpowers take her popularity status away and let her bond with the unpopular kids instead - but comes across as her own person rather than just an imitation. She's also thankfully a female hero who helps some people not her family, because I'm a bit uneasy about the gender division on this show. Among the superpowered people, at least; I really liked Clea Duvall's character who was strong, smart, resourceful and not evil, and miss her since she left. Not sure what to think about Niki/Jessica, because on the one hand it's clearly victim-and-good/killer-and-bad, which annoys, but on the other they've given her a backstory which makes sense of the Jessica personality being what she is, and Niki depowering herself.
Hiro and Ando: utterly adorable. As with Sun and Jin on Lost, I'm thrilled that we have two Asian characters who get to talk in their own language with each other, and of course Hiro with his boundless geek enthusiasm - though later somewhat tempered by tragedy - is irresistable. (He even won I-must-be-normal-Nathan around. Seriously, their few scenes together are just lovely. Mind you, given the way Nathan discovered his powers - with his wife getting crippled right on front of him - even a less politically minded man would be at first averse to the whole superheroics thing.) Giving George Takei a cameo as his father was just candy for genre fans, and of course later Hope actually calls Hiro "Sulu".
*dissolves in geek joy herself*
And... we have to wait until April? Not fair!
