Heroes

It started, as it often does, with me reading a Slashdot post yesterday. This is how I discovered Firefly and Ghost in the Shell.

Being a "Bad, bad pirate" I downloaded the first three shows, watched the first one, and downloaded the other 8 too. Then I watched them back to back this morning. Obviously, I was watching as I was downloading but it's still a lengthy process.

Um, it's good but kind of stupid. The premise is the pseudo-scientific rubbish that we've seen so many times before. It's not particularly important, though, because the characters are very strong. From the cheerleader to the X-men rogue male nurse, they're all pretty good. The secondary antagonist, Mr. Bennet, is also rather good as "The Conspirator".

1. Claire Bennet. Good character as she could easily have been terrible. Sort of has a love interest/sidekick in Zach, the geeky HS student that is probably heavily identified with by everyone on Slashdot. Although, whether Zach is going to be in her life anymore looks doubtful. Actress Hayden is gorgeous, of course, however, 5'1" tall? Really, what is it with these tiny women who are otherwise perfect (e.g. Aguilera)? Yes, she's 17 but she looks to be, uh, fully developed. Shame, really, because otherwise she is flawless.
2. Mr. Bennet. Good creepy guy with some depth. Does sinister and menacing rather nicely. When he's in a scene with Claire he looks to be 7' tall, though.
3. D.L. Hawkins. MEH. Not a particularly strong character. His power is also...not that interesting, in all honesty. Maybe that's just me.
4. Isaac Mendez. Precog. Now this is pretty damn cool. He needs (needed?) heroin to enter his precognitive trances. Nice touch. His ex-girlfriend/love triangle thing is not that interesting but w/e.
5. Hiro Nakamura. Hiro has the strongest power by far. He's also so cute, funny, and likeable. Has a sidekick too! He's got to be one of the best characters on the show.
6. Matt Parkman. Telepath. I love Greg Gunberg and he really makes the character. However, his power is pretty weak and the women he's with are a) relatively ugly and b) not that likable. Okay, Greg's no oil-painting but COME ON casting, don't be this cruel.
7. Nathan Petrelli. He can fly. That's probably the least interesting thing about him. Very steely Congressman (well, not yet...) with a lot of depth. Also, he really looks like a superhero.
8. Peter Petrelli. Absorbs other's powers temporarily, aka-Rogue ripoff. I actually thought this was the actor that played Simon in Firefly but it's not. Likeable character, good depth, and fits well with his brother. His power, however, always struck me as being pathetically weak since it's so dependant.
9. Niki Sanders. MEH. ZOMG, evil twiness! Sigh, whatever. I like Ali Larter, she's pretty awesome, and eminently fuckable but EVIL TWIN!!1
10. Mohinder Suresh. Geneticist investigator guy. I hate this character. Sorry.
11. Eden. Well, she's dead but she was pretty cool. Very weird looking though. Sometimes she looks pretty, sometimes she looks like a bug.
12. Haitian. Stronger telepath than Matt. Um, he doesn't speak but now he's talked to Claire. He's not particularly sinister which I think he's meant to be.
13. Sylar. Serial killer superhero who can permanently absorb powers by eating (?) others brains. Currently known to have strong telekinetic abilities. He's the main antagonist, his face was only shown in the last two episodes of the show. He's not very deep but he is pretty insane which will suffice.

So...quite a mix up. Some characters are a hell of a lot weaker than others (Niki, D.L., Mohinder) in ability and their story. What carries the show for me is Claire, Peter, Hiro, and, to an extent, Matt's storylines.

Um, was it worth bingeing on the show like that? No, not really. It's not that good. It is quite good, though, and I will follow it in future. FWIW, it is miles better than Torchwood. I would stop watching it altogether but there's only two more episodes (due next week). After those, I'll probably call it quits. To quote The Guardian: "It contains swearing, blood and sex, yet still somehow feels like a children's programme."

As for me, well, I finally ate Christmas dinner today and now I'm feeling crapulent. The terrible thing is all I want to do is sleep. I guess I will but I want to, need to play poker and make that video.

I also picked up my present: Wii points card + Wii classic controller. I'm pretty disappointed with it, in all honesty. It's exactly what I wanted but...VC doesn't play nice with my setup. My VGA transcoder doesn't support 480i which means I have to play VC in 576i using composite cables, and it (Mario64) just looks awful. Plus it's a major hassle to switch all the cables over...and then toggle 480p back on blindly (bottom left, middle right, 3 down, 3 down, bottom right -- it's like some kind of cheat code). I really don't think I'm getting yet another VGA transcoder (YAVT?) but at the same time I don't think I want to play VC under these conditions. Yep, I'm really kind of bummed about it.

Discovered that my webspace works so I may be able to host my vid there if I can keep it under 50MB. Need to sleep now, poker later.