Heroes, Villains, and Vampires

Let's start off with the bad of TV season, Heroes. The show used to be good. The first season was an original series that was dense plot wise but interesting to watch. The ending of the first season was a bit anticlimactic but it was somewhat satisfying. The second season devolved a bit-- it became repetitive and used the same characters to do what they've always done. And now the third season, they fell into a vat of crap.

In a show that is all about the battle between good and evil, very little of note actually happens. It is the only war in which no one ever dies. Even if you think they are dead, they aren't dead. Even if you see them killed, they aren't dead. It'd probably be easier to count the characters on the show that haven't been dead at one point or another (in the present or the various futures they've had) than count the ones who haven't died.

The show has jumped the shark (and this shark has the ability to shoot laser beams out of its head). Problem with the same old villains? We'll just switch the heroes and the villains instead of actually killing some characters off and think of new and exciting ones. Hard to deal with the fact that Peter should be invincible? We'll just take his powers away so he is weak and we can go through season 1 again where Peter gathers his powers (I guess the logic here being we should just relive the good season of the show). Hiro can time-travel and should be able to go anywhere in time and fix anything that pops up? We'll just make him so ridiculously stupid that ever time he tries to go through time and fix things he screws up and then decides to stop messing with time. It just goes on and on: Claire is indestructible but no one lets her do anything (and give her useless people to protect her). Ali Larter must have had a three year contract because even though her character died she had an identical twin (God forbid we get a new actress to play the part, and because it is the same actress we have to go through and explain why she looks exactly the same as another of the heroes... can you say needless exposition?)

There are so many characters running around that just seem pointless to the main plot (and I use the term plot loosely as so little has happened over the course of three seasons). If only the villains would man up and start taking some of them out things might get streamlined enough to get interesting again.

I used to look forward to watching this but it has just gotten so bad recently that the DVR has no room for it any more.

(As an aside, there was a nice goof in the last episode: When Hiro froze time in the first episode with the Daphne (the super speed girl), she lost her super speed but could still move at a normal pace. Last episode, he freezes time to go in the past and replace his sword and get fake blood to "kill" with Ando and this time Daphne is completely frozen. Consistency-- let's get some.)

Now to the good, True Blood. To be honest, I nearly gave up on this show a few minutes into it but I am glad I didn't (and not just because Anna Paquin gets naked). It is an atmospheric and campy vampire tale (while those don't sound like they'd go together, they do).

The show gives their version of the vampire mythology, straying here and their from the basics but not so much as to be distracting. In the show, the vampires have 'come out' after a synthetic blood, marketed as True Blood, was developed to allow the vampires to survive without feeding off of humans. Some vampires, like the main protagonist Bill Compton, tries to rejoin society. He meets a woman, Sookie, who can read people's thoughts and there is an attraction right away.

The show is set in the deep south, so you have the obvious racial parallels as the vampires are discriminated against by the humans. Are they justified in doing so? The vampires have fed off them in the past-- will they live peacefully on the new blood or will they keep to their old ways. In addition, there is plenty of sex and drug issues as well... not that any of this is surprising as the show is on HBO (if you are going to be on pay cable you might as well get everything in the show they won't let on the other networks, otherwise it is just a waste of time)

I don't want to give any major plot points away, but if you have HBO and you haven't given it a try, you should.