So here we have two series, one which shows that you can actually do episodes with major revelations without the world coming to an end, and one in which I’ve more or less given up on EVER finding out what the hëll is going on, and am just grateful that we’ve finally had a character episode that I was really interested in. Spoilers follow:
“HEROES”–Okay, this is how it’s done. Hats off to Claire’s dad, typically known as HRG (Horn Rimmed Glasses), who has evolved into the most fascinating complex hero/villain on prime time. This episode simply does everything right, from the startling reveals that yet somehow made perfect sense (HRG used to be partnered with Claude; Hiro’s father is in this way deeper than we originally thought), to the little moments (a younger Claire helping daddy pick out his signature eye wear). On the one hand we’ve seen HRG do some truly terrible deeds, but on the other hand, we’ve seen him overpowered by such paternal devotion to protecting his adopted daughter that he’s willing to sacrifice literally everything in order to protect her. Simply fantastic episode.
(By the way, I chatted with Stan Lee at the convention and he told me that his cameo in the previous week’s episode was literally cut in half. His second line as the bus driver was a cheery and enthused, “Well…get in!” and then he closed the door with great dramatic emphasis. I think that just would have made that episode a hundred times better, don’t you? Maybe we’ll see it on the DVD release.)
“LOST”–Oh. Thank. God. No Others. No cages. No endless rain. No sturm and drang and operating rooms. No Jack, which I never actually thought I’d be grateful for. Instead finally an episode focused on Hugo, my favorite character (and not just because Jorge Garcia took the time, even though he was “off duty,” to sign an autograph for Ariel during the waning hours of San Diego.) If Locke was the soul of the show…at least, before they apparently forgot he was around…Hugo has been the heart of it. The episode didn’t advance the overall “What’s up with the island” plot one iota, but nothing has for weeks and, as noted, I’ve pretty much given up on the idea of anything doing that. So now my attitude is, at least give me interesting character stories, ’cause otherwise I’m switching to Comedy Central or just reading a book. And “Lost” comes through, with the morbidly hilarious (Hugo’s warnings of imminent danger are ignored by a know-it-all news reporter who then gets wiped out by a meteor that annihilates her, Hugo’s old boss, and his newly purchased chicken restaurant), brilliant casting (Cheech Marin as Hugo’s dad: Best dad casting since Hiro’s), and a portentous ending that signals the return of, at last, Mira Furlan, the mysterious French woman who is making absolutely no effort to effect a French accent, which is fine by me. I just like seeing her on screen again.
One hopes that this week’s episode signals a return to character-driven stories which feature characters I actually care about (did we ever find out how Locke lost the use of his legs?)
PAD
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Dr Jeff to be fair Eric Roberts mashed himself up in a car accident. the plastic surgery wasn’t for vanity reasons.
Starwolf.
As for the radiation sickness? I’m gonna say that they have better anti radiation treatments in the heroes universe. Ted’s wife wasn’t aware she was
succumbing to cancer due to long term exposure.
As for getting Ted, there was a follow up behind Thompson with fake fbi credentials.
Mr. David,
Yes, you did predict that. My hat’s off to you because I thought they were going to create some situation that required Claire’s presence to load Peter up with the ability to survive shutting down Ted with everyone’s powers combined. Now it looks like Peter may be the guy who’s going to kaboom.
Starwolf,
I’ll grant you that everyone there should have received a lethal dose of radiation. I don’t know the specifics of how it works, but I’d expect them to be getting really sick pretty soon if something extraordinary doesn’t happen. However, even if they start dying from cancer in a month, that still leaves them available for the rest of Season 1, which all takes place in the time up to when the Big Boom happens in November. Granted, I don’t think they’re going to do that, but Bennet’s the only character that I’d really miss out of the whole lot of ’em that were there.
I can extend my willing suspesion of disbelief to Matt and Ted being in custody at Primatech. The cops show up and Bennet’s boss flashes some kind of Homeland Security credentials. He tells the cops that this was some kind of terrorist act, calls in his own Haz-Mat team to clean it up, and (of course) sneakily sedates Matt before the authorities actually arrive and simply announces that Matt and Ted are his prisoners.
Or even more believable, he had backup ready to storm the place in case he found what he was expecting in the Bennet house, but he couldn’t send them into the deathtrap it had become. However, they were still in place to clean up the mess.
Of course that’s all just a conjured up explanation for the shorthand meme that secret government organization can make people disappear into their custody whenever they want. I can accept the story point that Matt and Ted are going to end up in custody after what they pulled and Bennet’s organization is going to pull whatever strings it has to to make sure that they’re in THEIR custody.
Heroes changes in season 2
http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/index.php?id=40354
The trouble with Bennet’s people being a government organization is Hiro’s dad. He’s obviously high ranking in the organization which would make it more of a covert Interpol type group than a specific government’s initiative.
We find out about Locke’s legs next week during his back story.
In two/three weeks we also find out about Claire and her “relation” to Jack…
And Hurley’s “boss” did not die in the meteor, he went to work at the box company (that Hurley owns) and harass Locke.
On thd QL-finale front, something I just remembered.
When Sam leapt to talk to Beth, he didn’t appear to leap into anyone. Does he even leap into people at that point to “fix” time?
“Poor analogy. As far as we know Lone Ranger doesn’t have any family/loved ones. He’s got a sidekick and he’s with him most of the time. Even at that, the Ranger gets some time off to just ‘be’. If nothing else, he needs time to obtain silver and manufacture more of his trademark bullets.”
Analogies aren’t poor just because every single detail isn’t the same. Off time to make bullets? When you get to that level of detail, you could just as easily say that Sam had the better deal because he got laid every now and then and the Lone Ranger never did. Both statements are irrelevant to the analogy because the analogy, like every analogy ever, wasn’t claiming that every single detail was the same. Analogies show that one specific thing is the same.
I stick by my analogy. Every Lone Ranger episode started with an intro explaining that his fellow law officers had been killed in an ambush, and every Quantum Leap episode started with an intro explaining that Sam always hoped that the next lead would be the leap home. But was that what the shows were about? Would the Lone Ranger have stopped helping people if he’d ever caught those ambushers?
To me, and you’re welcome to disagree, Sam fully became a hero when he accepted that what he was doing was more important than his own personal wants.
To me, and you’re welcome to disagree, Sam fully became a hero when he accepted that what he was doing was more important than his own personal wants.
Thank you! I was beginning to think I was the only one who thought that way. Sam wants to go home, but he wants to help people even more (even if he doesn’t realize this consciously). After 5 seasons, I would not have accepted Sam suddenly becoming so selfish.
The radiation in Heroes:
I get what people are saying about how much damage the characters should have taken from the nuke guy. I spent a lot of the episode thinking, “You’re sterile, and you’re sterile, you’re definitely sterile.” At the end I also thought about everyone getting cancer.
Then Claire walked out of the house and I didn’t care. Peter’s book on How to Write for Comics has a section on how people will accept anything as long as there’s a happy ending. I’m one of those people. I totally knew the danger those people should be in, but I’m willing to accept them being OK because that ending was so great.
Great blog post.
So, in the blockbuster mini-series comic that pits the characters of Lost against the characters of Heroes, what would the pair ups be? It all happens on the Lost island, so the Lost heroes gain random Island mystical powers, of course.
Issue 1: Hiro vs Hugo (who has the power to randomly call down near fatal bad luck to those around him, and manifest a bathrobed sidekick/minion/imp named Dave to assist him). (spoiler: they realize they are both so cool, they quickly become friends and team up, much to Dave’s irritation)
I thought the end of Quantum Leap was well done. Funny thing is, my first Philcon, I bought a bumper sticker that is still pinned to the back of my desk that read “Mr. Data, precisely what did you mean when you said ‘Oh, boy?'” We thought having Sam Beckett on the bridge of the Enterprise would be cool.
Who’d thunk it?
>I was beginning to think I was the only one who thought that way. Sam wants to go home, but he wants to help people even more… After 5 seasons, I would not have accepted Sam suddenly becoming so selfish.
So … firemen and cops are selfish, unheroic sorts because they spend time with their families/loved ones? OK, Sam had a midlife crisis and changed vocation. It still doesn’t add up. Someone with multiple PhDs to his name, who can conceive and bring about the amazing [multiple!] technologies involved in the Quantum Leap project would do a lot more good in a lab than bouncing around helping an individual or three here and there. Imagine, for example, Dr. Banting having decided to give up medical research in favour of becoming a family doctor in the slums. Yes, he’d help people who needed it. But how many thousands/hundreds of thousands would die of diabetes because he hadn’t gone on to make his insulin discoveries?
And even if the argument can run the other way (say family doctor Banting saved the life of some slum dweller whose future offspring discovers a cure for cancers) Beckett can be of much better use in recruiting and training other Leapers (for want of a better word) via the Quantum Leap project than the existing system where people are thrown cold into it with no idea of what they are doing or why. And he’d still be available to handle especially delicate/tough cases. All the while being back home at least much of the time. A win-win scenario as opposed to the one handed him at the end of the series where he has a loving wife who never sees him again, and his life’s work probably gets dismantled as [if I recall the voice-over correctly] they never see or hear from him again and whomever foots the bill probably would get tired of throwing money away year after year without getting any results to show for it.
Long-winded (sorry) way of saying that even if the mysterious force(s) controlling his leaps can’t do the work for themselves, and they need selfless individuals to do it for them, there’s still a difference between selflessness and intelligent, efficiently applied selflessness.
>”Mr. Data, precisely what did you mean when you said ‘Oh, boy?'” We thought having Sam Beckett on the bridge of the Enterprise would be cool.
Fans have come up with lots of amusing possibilities. I honestly don’t know who first suggested this one (apologies to Mr. David if I read it here years back) but having Sam appear only to see a bunch of kids run screaming from him, so he looks down sees he’s holding a roaring, blood-spattered chainsaw … “Oh boy…” Yeah, I’d pay to see that. So OK he’d probably have leaped into a horror film actor’s body, not a real killer, but his expression then – not to mention when he hears someone yell “Cut!!!” would probably be quite memorable. 😎
“So … firemen and cops are selfish, unheroic sorts because they spend time with their families/loved ones?”
I don’t think Yogzilla meant that at all. Yes, Sam going home is selfish in the same way that Odysseus was selfish. That doesn’t mean a certain level of selfishness is bad. “Selfish” just might not be the best word because it has loaded connotations. I don’t think anyone here would say that Firemen aren’t doing something for themselves by spending time with their families, and I don’t think anyone would say that it’s wrong for them to do that.
Sam was in a position at the end of Quantum Leap to either continue doing important work that helped people or go home. He couldn’t do it as a day job then go home to family at night like Firemen and Cops can, so I don’t think Yogzilla’s comments meant that Yogzilla believes Firemen and Cops were unheroic.
My view is that Sam going home would have been a reasonable ending, but Sam giving up his life to help everyone was a *selfless* ending. That’s heroic in a tragic way, even if it isn’t everyone’s favorite ending.
“Issue 1: Hiro vs Hugo (who has the power to randomly call down near fatal bad luck to those around him, and manifest a bathrobed sidekick/minion/imp named Dave to assist him). (spoiler: they realize they are both so cool, they quickly become friends and team up, much to Dave’s irritation)”
Claire vs. Locke: Two characters capable of incredible healing powers face-off. Plus who does the Island want to whin and what inscrutable thing will it do to end the fight and make Locke’s life more confusing?
Isaac Mendez vs Desmond: Can Isaac paint a picture before Desmond gets a precognitive flash? Will one of them just shoot the other?
Finally, HRG Bennet vs Ben of the Others: The Battle of the Bens! Which one of these mysterious characters is more mysterious? Whose hidden organization has more covert resource and secret influence with the goverment? We’ll never know because the hidden Powers That Be of the Island and the Heroes Universes will never let us know how the conflict ended. They’ll just hint that Hiro’s dad is part of the Hanzo Foundation.
Jason M. Bryant wrote: “Would the Lone Ranger have stopped helping people if he’d ever caught those ambushers?”
He did catch Butch Cavendish- on both radio and TV. He decided, however, that there were still men like Cavendish who needed to be brought to justice.
Rick
If Sam occasionally going home to visit family, loved ones and friends makes him selfish, then there’s no real help for you, especially when, as pointed out, Helping someone June 1, 1975 12:55 AM isn’t going to be affected by taking a houor or two off when he can just leap in AT June 1, 1975 12:55 AM.
Sam became a machine and not a person when he abandoned the people who’d been busting their áššëš to help him and “save” him and his wife.
The character became “tarnished” and less “human” and/or likable at the moment, and suddenly harder to give a dámņ about.
(I put human in quotes becase thare are plenty of non-human characters that are are admirable and likable and “gìvë-á-dámņ-ábøûŧáblë” )
Giving up on his own people when it wouldn’t hurt him to at least set the record straight and say “Hey, I control the Leaps now, don’t need you guys to worry about it anymore, go ahead and live your lives. I appreciate your efforts.” makes him actually even more selfish, he abandoned the people that were trying their dámņëšŧ to help him.
[I still say Enterprise should’ve ended with the blue door opening and AL saying “Captain John Archer must be a descendent of yours, Sam, but it looks like your work is done, you can leap any time now.” And then he hands Porthos a dog biscuit and leaps out…]
Posted by: The StarWolf
Minor fanboy pickiness: the Lone Ranger has a brother (deceased – the leader of the Ranger company wiped out almost to the man in an ambush, from whence the nome de guerre “Lone Ranger” – the sole survivor) who had a son (the Lone Ranger’s nephew Dan Reed).
Who had a son: Britt Reed, the Green Hornet.
Making the Green Hornet the Lone Ranger’s great-nephew. First example of this sort of dynastic-superhero stuff i know of in popular culture.
This is 100% canonical (as Anna Russell says “I’m not amking this up, you know!”), BTW, established in the first respective first episodes of the two radio programs, which originated at WXYZ, Detroit, where they ran back-to-back.
Mike – You’re an Anna Russell fan? As a certain little Brasilian sparrow of my acquaintance is wont to say, “I approve”. As for The Green Hornet being descended from the Ranger’s family tree, I was not aware of it – thanks – but it certainly spawned even greater examples of that genre. Note how Philip Jose Farmer – an author I usually don’t much care for – had a lot of fun concoting family tree diagrams for his Tarzan and Doc Savage ‘biographies’ which were so complicated, they resembled more a diagram of the Tokyo transit system than a typical genealogical chart. In them, he had not just Doc and Greystoke related, but The Shadow, The Avenger, The Scarlet Pimpernel, Lord Whimsey, Monk Mayfair, Moriarty, Wells’ Time traveller, Fu Manchu, and lots of others.
“Making the Green Hornet the Lone Ranger’s great-nephew. First example of this sort of dynastic-superhero stuff i know of in popular culture.
This is 100% canonical (as Anna Russell says “I’m not amking this up, you know!”), BTW, established in the first respective first episodes of the two radio programs, which originated at WXYZ, Detroit, where they ran back-to-back.”
Oh, definitely. The Hornet was conceived as a modernizing of the Ranger. The parallels are obvious: Both masked men with memorable firearms that they use in nonlethal fashion. The Hornet’s means of conveyance is named after a horse and has a color in its name. Both have non-Caucasian sidekicks with similar names (“Tonto,” “Kato”) who are pretty much the brains of the outfit. Both have famous classical music pieces as their signature themes (“William Tell overture,” “Flight of the Bumblebee.”)
PAD
Mike Weber said (re the Lone Ranger’s and the Green Hornet’s familial connection): “This is 100% canonical (as Anna Russell says “I’m not amking this up, you know!”), BTW, established in the first respective first episodes of the two radio programs, which originated at WXYZ, Detroit, where they ran back-to-back.”
Yes, it is 100 percent canonical that Britt Reid (the correct spelling of his last name) was the son of the Lone Ranger’s nephew, Dan Reid. However, unless I’m mis-reading, your quote above seems to be saying that this relationship was established in each program’s first episode. Not so. For one thing, The Lone Ranger debuted on Jan. 30, 1933 on WXYZ radio, and The Green Hornet debuted three years later, on Jan. 31, 1936. What’s more, it wasn’t until the Green Hornet episode “Too Hot to Handle”, broadcast on Nov. 11, 1947, that Britt Reid learned that his father rode with the Lone Ranger.
There was never a Lone Ranger episode that made a connection with The Green Hornet because, obviously, the Green Hornet’s adventures lay decades in the Lone Ranger’s future. However, both shows (as well as Challenge of the Yukon (AKA Sergeant Preston) used the same repertory cast; and, in point of fact, John Todd, who voiced Tonto on The Lone Ranger, also voiced the elderly Dan Reid on The Green Hornet.
And speaking of Tonto, the familiar story of how he found the ambushed Texas Rangers, nursed the lone survivor to health, and that survivor taking on the persona of the Lone Ranger is actually a bit of retroactive continuity. The radio series began in media res, with the Lone Ranger already Lone Rangering, and Tonto already his partner. We learned how they met on the Dec. 7, 1938 episode, “The Origin of Tonto.” In that flashback episode, narrated by someone called “Cactus Pete”, The already established Lone Ranger rescued Tonto from death (twice) at the hands of a crook. The first time the bad guy tried to Kill Tonto for getting in the way of his schemes; and the second time to make him the dead (and thus unable to refute the “evidence” in another man’s death.
The now official story of how Tonto and the Lone Ranger had been childhood friends, and were reunited when Tonto found the injured Ranger at Bryant’s Gap came about later. It was broadcast on the 15th anniversary show, dated June 30, 1948. Why they didn’t have the anniversary show in January, I’ve no idea.
That same, now-familiar origin subsequently appeared in the the Clayton Moore TV series in 1949.
Rick
“Finally, HRG Bennet vs Ben of the Others: The Battle of the Bens!”
Wouldn’t wanna see that, meself. Ben there, done that.
(Sorry, couldn’t resist.)
Posted by Rick Keating
Mike Weber said (re the Lone Ranger’s and the Green Hornet’s familial connection): “This is 100% canonical (as Anna Russell says “I’m not making this up, you know!”), BTW, established in the first respective first episodes of the two radio programs, which originated at WXYZ, Detroit, where they ran back-to-back.”
Yes, it is 100 percent canonical that Britt Reid (the correct spelling of his last name)
I knew that. Just checking if you did.
was the son of the Lone Ranger’s nephew, Dan Reid. However, unless I’m mis-reading, your quote above seems to be saying that this relationship was established in each program’s first episode.
No, you’re not misreading, but the source i’m remembering may have been misleading.
That is, it stated that they rean back-to-back, and implied – at least to my reading – that they began at the same time.
Not so. For one thing, The Lone Ranger debuted on Jan. 30, 1933 on WXYZ radio, and The Green Hornet debuted three years later, on Jan. 31, 1936. What’s more, it wasn’t until the Green Hornet episode “Too Hot to Handle”, broadcast on Nov. 11, 1947, that Britt Reid learned that his father rode with the Lone Ranger.
Again, i recall the source i originally picked it up from as saying that it was the first episode of Green Hornet that established it; either a misimplication (on the author’s part) or a misinference (on my part).
However, believeing that the two programs originated at the same time, i meant that the establishing bit was in the “Green Hornet”, not in both programs.
As i recall, it quoted dialog between Britt and his father about a painting of a masked man that hung in their home’s foyer…
I read it about thirty-five years or so ago, and was going strictly on memory, so, either the source was flat wrong (unlikely), it phrased the information badly (possible) or i misremembered the details while recalling the salient fact.
Thanks for the correction.
Finally got to finish watching LOST. Definitely the best episode for quite a while.
Not much I can say about Heroes that hasn’t already been said, except that a lot of people seem to be figuring on Nikki’s death. I don’t think so. She’s in Peter’s visions, along with DL and Micah. I’m betting on Jessica getting pulled right out of her head by the Haitian.
-Rex Hondo-
Mike Weber said: “As i recall, it quoted dialog between Britt and his father about a painting of a masked man that hung in their home’s foyer…”
You recall correctly. There was such a conversation. And strains of the William Tell Overture played during their talk. I suspect the painting was in the living room (or some other such room) and not the foyer, but I’d have to listen to the episode again to refresh my memory.
Oh, and in my post above, it should have said the second time the bad guy tried to kill Tonto it was to make him the dead scapegoat in another man’s death.
Rick
Now, it’s been a few years since I last heard a Lone Ranger episode (the AM station that used to play radio shows at 9pm every night stopped doing so sometime while I was out of town), but I’m virtually certain that I recall one episode in which the listener was actually introduced to Dan Reid. (I’m also pretty sure that this whole thing wasn’t written until after the introduction of the idea on Green Hornet…)
Of course, if I am wrong, I fully expect to be corrected here (and if Mike’s the one who knows, I also expect to be excoriated for my error, a criticism of which I’ll have to be informed by someone else because I stopped even trying to read his posts early on).
Rex Hondo, unfortunately you misinterpret those visions. Niki/Jessica is in Peter Petrelli’s dreams because she happens to be alive at the moment he is dreaming. Remember that he never met her; she is just a bit player in his dreams. If Niki takes the courageous step and kills herself to kill Jessica, the only real way out of her dilemma, she will no longer appear in his dreams.
And as far as we know, the Hatian, or Scary Black Man as he should be called, can only make you forget facts. He can’t do anything with multiple personalities as far as we know. But then again, neither can psychiatrists. There’s no other way out of the problem. Niki/Jessica has to suicide, or someone has to kill her – perhaps, as the old Hollywood werewolf legend has it, she must be killed “by someone who loves her enough to understand.”
Possibly her son?
Thomas, there’s no more evidence to support your theory about Peter’s dreams only showing people currently alive than mine that they will play a part in events to come.
Also, even if the Haitian can only remove memories, the Jessica personality was created in order to cope with events in her past that Nikki wasn’t “strong enough” to deal with. Remove those memories, and you remove Jessica’s power over Nikki, if not remove her outright.
-Rex Hondo-
Anyone who thinks that the entire Lost series will end up being a figment of Hurley’s imagination has missed the point somewhere: the Lost creators have already dismissed the idea and even played it out to their intended ultimate extent in one episode last season.