TV Tuesday: American Idol

Asia'h Epperson. Loved her.
*

TV Tuesday: Heroes Season Finale

Last night was the season finale of Heroes. This will be a pretty big week for me and this blog as Heroes, American Idol, and Lost all wrap their seasons.

**SPOILER ALERT FOR REST OF POST**

Two (maybe four) heroes met their fate this week. Last week I said that DL died but apparently I was wrong.

• President To Be (Nathan) wins his Congressional election. His mother tells him the news that Mastermind (Linderman) was murdered in his office but that "the plan" must go on.

• Cheerleader (Claire) tells HRG that Mr. Chernobyl (Ted) was killed by Terrible Timex (Sylar) who used the Cartoonist's (Isaac) power of the paintbrush to figure out that Multiple-powers (Peter) is the one he must vanquish. Peter and Claire meet up with Nathan because Peter is scared and needs help — so he calls upon his brother as he has his entire life and they meet in a parking garage. Sweet Peter still thinks that Nathan cares about him. That is, until he uses the Mindreader Cop's (Parkman) power to read Nathan's mind and figures out he knows about the explosion. Claire decides to fly the coup but runs into Grandma who's lurking in the shadows. HRG gets on the cell with Claire bear and tells her to go with them so she can be safe and then try to escape later on. Interesting that she calls HRG "Dad" right in front of biological father Nathan.

• Peter starts to have an anxiety attack of atomic proportions and begins going nuclear with his hands. He collapses on the street where he teleports back in time to the day when he first went to work as a nurse for Simone's father (Charles). Future Peter listens to Charles and his mother talk about the explosion and how they see the event unfolding. Charles says that the good son, Peter, must be relied upon but she says to trust Nathan because Peter is weak and ruled by his insecurities. As Peter processes what his mother has actually said, she takes her leave. It is then that Charles talks to Future Peter. He knows he's there listening and comments on his invisibility. Did Charles summon Peter back to this time to observe his mother's thoughts about him?

NO REVEAL: We never find out what Peter's Mother's powers are...or, for that matter, Charles' power(s). At the very least, we know that he can sense people around him even if they are invisible.

• Hiro saves Ando (yay!) but not before Sylar sends him flying and starts to cut his throat. Hiro transports Ando back to their office back in Japan. Hiro explans that he must go back and continue his mission alone.

• Little Miss OnStar (Molly) says Sylar is over at Isaac's loft. Parkman goes over to make the kill, but Sylar makes his way over to the building where Molly and The Professor (Mohinder) are plotting their next move.

REVEAL: Molly says she's afraid to locate another evil one because when she does, he can see her. Is this a set up for next season? A "Hero" worse than Sylar?

• Nikki comes to rescue Micah but she runs into a separate being Jessica. It is really Shapeshifter (Candice) and after split personality Jessica appears in a mirror and tells her what's going on, Nikki finally finds the strength to fight for her son. Candice is killed in the ensuing fight. Nikki and Micah show up at the lab to save daddy DL. He's been discovered in the elevator area by Mohinder and Molly.

REVEAL: HRG's first name is Noah.

The Final Battle
• HRG wakes Peter up from his unconscious state. He says Claire's safe and that he'll shoot him if things get out of control. Sylar appears out of nowhere (was he invisible? did he kill the invisible man?) and sends HRG flying through the air and his gun lands apart from him.

• Parkman shows up, better late than never I suppose, and tries to shoot Sylar who catches the bullets and sends them back at him. Peter gets agitated and his hands start to glow. Sylar gloats, "Turns out you're the villian. I'm the Hero." Nikki arrives on the scene and goes all kickbox on Sylar's ass. Peter says he'll finish the job when Hiro shows up and skewers Sylar through the torso with his sword.

• Peter goes into meltdown mode and the whole bunch of them are watching and cowering. We see into Sylar's eye as it run through all his personalities and powers. Before he goes, he gets some revenge on Hiro by sending him flying with the most force we've ever seen him exhibit.

• Peter's hands are getting hotter. Claire, who just can't do what she's told, pops up and decides to shoot Peter to prevent the blast. As she approaches, Peter tells her to do it. "I wish there was a better way," she pleads. Cue daddy-o Nathan who flies in on a wing and a prayer.

• Nathan decides that he wants to be a good guy and prevent the explosion even though he would become the ruler of the world. He grabs Peter and they fly into the heavens where we see an explosion that looks like an amazing summer lightning storm. Why, if Peter can fly, didn't he just take off? Was he just too preoccupied with his impending explosion?

Death Toll: Sylar and Candice for sure. Maybe Nathan and Peter.

REVEAL: Next Season Volume II "Generations"

• After Sylar sent him flying in the final struggle of Season One, Hiro lands in a beautiful field in the middle of an ancient battle. Place and time: Kyoto, Japan 1671. As a lone horseman is about to take on a gang of bow-and-arrow wielding villians sporting the Heroes brand (a calculus integral symbol with two cross bars) on a flag, a full lunar eclipse occurs...the eclipse that forms the Heroes logo.
*

TV Tuesday: Heroes

One thing about Heroes is that characters meet their doom on practically every show. Four heroes met their fate this week.

**SPOILER ALERT FOR REST OF POST**

• When last we saw the Power Taker (Peter), he was afflicted with glowing hands as he absorbed the nuclear capabilities of Mr. Three Mile Island (Ted). He wants Save The Cheerleader (Claire) to shoot to kill if he goes meltdown. Then he just gets things under control. Quite anti-climactic. HRG, after a nice reunion with his little Claire bear, tells Claire, Peter and Ted to go to Windy Forks Nebraska and wait for him there. That will get them out of town so Peter can't blow NYC to smithereens. HRG will stay in the city to destroy the "tracking machine." Evil Watchmaker (Sylar) is listening to their plans with his bionic hearing and decides he's gonna join 'em. As he follows, Peter catches what's on Sylar's mind with the powers he absorbed from Mindreader Cop (Parkman) and they all duck for cover.
• President To Be (Nathan) plots his election victory with Mastermind (Linderman). Linderman tells Nathan his father was a Hero but was weak. As a gift, Linderman heals Nathan's wheelchair bound wife. (Remember how he brought the orchid back to life in his Vegas hotel?)
• Time Bender (Hiro) laments his failure to kill Sylar. Inspirational Buddy (Ando) convinces him to move on and they decide to get the sword fixed at the local handy dandy sword fix-it shop. It broke in half as Sylar froze it in the attempt on his life. On the way to the shop, Hiro and Ando run across Nathan who is out on the street campaigning on election day. Hiro asks for his help to stop the explosion but Nathan said no one can stop it. Hiro tells him if the bomb goes off Nathan will become a bad man. (The Nathan that Hiro saw in the future was actually Sylar in Nathan's image using the ability of Shapeshifter (Candice) who he must have killed in the interim.)
• Daddy Sulu (Hiro's Father) is waiting at the sword shop. He congratulates Hiro for becoming all the hero he can be. Then father teaches son the secret of the sword. Ando runs out of patience and buys a sword for himself. If Hiro won't kill Sylar to save the world, he will. Sweet Ando. Dear, sweet, naive little Ando.
• Candice poses as the mother of little Machine Talker (Micah). They go into a voting booth and he rigs the election for Nathan by talking to the voting machine. Nathan ends up winning in a landslide.
• Jessica and her Caspar the not so Friendly Husband (DL) are in town looking for Micah. They go up to Linderman's suite and confront him. He offers Jessica $20M to kill DL and walk away. Jessica wants it but Niki appears. Linderman pulls a gun and shoots DL during the confusion. DL draws last blood by putting his invisible hand in the back of Linderman's head and then re-appearing. Linderman ends up with a huge hole in the back of his head. You could say he got fisted, and not in a good way.
• Sylar turns Ted in to the FBI chick that worked with Parkman many episodes ago. The FBI catches him on the street while Peter grabs Claire's hand and they disappear (literally) into the crowd to escape. Sylar shows up in the dark of night when Ted is being transported by police van. Sylar causes it to have an accident then goes all scalper on Ted's head and absorbs his power. I didn't hear any clock ticking sound effects, though. It gives me goose bumps.
• Professor Mohinder has nursed Reverse GPS (Molly) back to health. She tells him that her other hero, Parkman, is in the building. (I don't remember Parkman saving Molly from Sylar. Anyone?) HRG and Parkman are on their way to destroy the tracking device but they don't know it will be a little girl. In the hallway outside the lab, HRG outwits Eric Roberts and shoots him twice in the head. This came just in the nick of time as Eric was going to put a bullet in Parkman's head. They proceed into the lab area and HRG pulls a gun on Molly. Mohinder pulls a gun on HRG. And there they stand wondering who is going to zoom who.
• Death Toll: Linderman, DL, Ted, Eric Roberts

Anything I missed?
*

TV Tuesday: Heroes

This week's episode pointed up the complicated story telling this show uses. We jumped from storyline to storyline, and location to location, and timeframe to timeframe. I feel like they are working the storytelling style a little too much and making things a little confusing. Maybe it would make a difference if I was just watching as opposed to trying to write these recaps during the show.

**SPOILER ALERT FOR REST OF POST**

• Ticking Timebomb (Sylar) is running around listening to everything. Remember he picked up that ability from the mountain woman that looked like she just jumped out of Northern Exposure? Well now that he's got Isaac's power to paint the future (Peter's been generating some artwork, too), he's freaked out. He's seen the future and thinks he acquires Nuclear Power Plant Ted's talent and it's him that is going to go ballistic. He decides to go back home to mommy who ends up in a life sized snow globe nightmare. In a tussle with sonny boy, she takes a pair of scissors to the chest and collapses to her doom. Hiro, who's been watching the whole thing, stops time and goes in to cut Sylar's head off. But Sylar is able to restart time although I'm not sure how. Ideas?
• Japanese Teleporter/Time Traveller (Hiro) and Trusty Sidekick (Ando) review the last comic book that Painter (Isaac, or as Hiro says, Eee-sahk) drew. Seems there's no words in the dialog balloons so they decide to go back in time to pay Isaac a visit and find out how the story ends. Sylar is there in the studio doing some painting of his own so Hiro and Ando splitsville and decide to follow him from a distance.
• Killing Machine (Niki/Jessica) and her husband Walks Through Walls (DL) have a fight about their son Electronica (Micah). Remember that Shapeshifter (Candice) is posing as Niki/Jessica and kidnapped him for Mastermind (Linderman). Micah eventually sees that it isn't really his mom. Yep, there are THREE characters running amok looking like the same person. An interesting acting challenge for Ali Larter.
• Grandma Petrelli, with a keen fashion sense, is sashaying around insisting that Save The Cheerleader (Claire) get over to Paris while she continues to hide her own power(s). Claire's uncle Power Absorber (Peter) tries to convince her and his brother (her father) Flying Politician (Nathan) that it could be Ted that's the exploding Hero and not Peter after all. Well, with this news, Nathan calls Linderman and tells him all about this little factoid.
• Linderman calls Grandma Petrelli to get Nathan back in line. She admits that she's in the scheme up to here (I hold the edge of my open hand to my forehead). With a little motherly coercion and guilt, Nathan buckles and agrees that killing millions to save many more will be like Truman dropping the bomb on Japan.
• HRG, Mindreading Cop (Parkman), and Ted "hot" wire a car to get them to NYC. When they arrive there's a nice reunion between HRG and his little Claire-bear. Meanwhile, Peter absorbs Ted's nuclear capability and is having some initial problems controlling it. This after just telling Claire that if he goes all meltdown, she's to pop a cap in the back of his head to stop him. You know, where she yanked the shard of glass out of his noggin to bring him back to life after his "disagreement" with Sylar.
• Professor Mohinder says he has the "formula" to find more Heroes. He meets Molly Walker, the child who can take care of Sylar, has the same disease that Mohinder's sister Shanti had and caused her death as a child. I think we saw her parents being spirited away into the Heroes parents protection program. Her power? A human GPS in reverse. She can pinpoint where YOU are anywhere in the world. But she's sick and her virus crashed her operating system so Mohinder needs to make her better so she can reboot.

Anything I missed?
*

TV Tuesday: Heroes

This week's episode takes place five years in the future. It shows us what life and most of the characters will be like if the Heroes don't succeed in saving the world.

**SPOILER ALERT FOR REST OF POST**

• The future Japanese Teleporter/Time Traveller (Hiro) has been constructing the timeline to understand the blast in New York City. Future Hiro is using it to figure out the chain of events. There are critical things that need to happen for them to prevent the blast:
• Save the Cheerleader (Claire): By saving Claire, they've kept Ticking Timebomb (Sylar) from acquiring her regenerative powers. And that means he can still be killed.
• Save the World: Hiro must go back in time and kill Sylar on the day after the election.

• Future Killing Machine (Niki) is a dancer in a strip club in Las Vegas and is now Power Absorber's (Peter) girlfriend. It would appear that Niki has shed Split Personality (Jessica). We find out that her husband Walks Through Walls (DL) and son Electronica (Micah) were killed in the New York blast.
• Future Peter has a huge scar across his face. Can he be any sexier?
• Niki says HRG is rustling cattle in Texas but he's really at Primatech Paper hiding the "good" Heroes. Kinda putting them in the witness protection program.
• We've known that Peter is responsible for the explosion that blows up New York. But we didn't know that Flying President (Nathan) would lie about it and blame Sylar to protect Peter. We find out that the Mindreading Cop (Parkman) has a son named Matthew and has teamed up with Brain Scrambler (The Haitian) as the heads of Homeland Security. At Future Nathan's direction, they are hunting down those with special powers and killing them. Mohinder says they are actually a new species and he's been instructed to develop a way to kill them on a mass scale. Intentional shades of the Holocaust.

• Wowwie Kazowwie!!! Then it happened. Sylar has met up with Shapeshifter (Candice) somewhere along the way and has taken her powers. Now he has taken the form of Nathan, so he's really Future Nathan, and is now acting as President in the form of Nathan!!! I didn't see that coming!
• No one knows that Nathan is really Sylar in disguise.
• Parkman brings Claire to Nathan, thinking he's doing a good thing in reuniting them. That's when Sylar begins to scalp her and take on her ability to overcome usually-normal wounds. He's taking particular pleasure in this, saying he's waited a long time to get ahold of her. With her abilities he'll be indestructible!

• In the end, Mohinder decides to disobey Future Nathan and kills the Haitian with an injection rather than killing Hiro. Chaos ensues, with Parkman killing Future Hiro, regular Hiro and Ando returning to present time to kill Sylar according to the comic book, and Peter and Sylar become locked in epic battle. Shades of an original Star Trek episode.

Do you think Sylar can be stopped? Who do you think can do it? And who's the new hero we'll meet next week...the little girl who is "the only one who can stop Sylar."

Anything I missed?
*

TV Tuesday: Heroes

Note to reader MSM: You don't have to wait for the DVD...all episodes are posted on the NBC web site!

It's bad enough that I'm watching this on a 21" television, and the show is shot in low light, but we were having thunderstorm warnings last night and the local station reduced the size of the show by several inches on the bottom and right side of the screen to keep everyone informed as they tracked the rain.

**SPOILER ALERT FOR REST OF POST**

• Clash of the Titans: Picking up from the cliffhanger of the last episode, Peter took on Sylar, with Mohinder hanging (bloody from the ceiling) in the balance. Sylar overcame Peter going invisible by swarming shards of glass through the room. After Peter is stabbed of a thousand cuts, Sylar gets knocked out by a rejuvenated Mohinder. Mohinder brought Peter's "dead" body to his mother's house (Angela) who, in the meantime, has been busy trying to spirit her granddaughter Cheerleader (Claire) off to Paris to lay low. Oh, and grandma has powers too but we haven't seen them yet. Claire spotted a large piece of glass sticking out of Peter's head when she hugged him to say goodbye. When she yanked it out, he regenerated back to life.

• Linderman has powers too, as we saw him revive a dead phaleanopsis orchid to a beautiful blooming plant in seconds. He explained to the Flying Politician (Nathan) that the impending explosion in NYC will allow Nathan to become the leader of the city, the country, and the world. Linderman sees the calamity in NYC as a world unifying event. But we know his powers are not omnipotent when he revealed later in the show that his plan had gotten off track. The future is not inevitable. We also found out that Nathan's brother Peter will "go nuclear" and destroy NYC the day after Nathan wins his election.

• The Shapeshifter (Candice) is going to be a tricky character indeed. Last episode, she fooled HRG into thinking she was his wife. This week, she tried it again posing as his adoptive daughter Claire. And later in the show, she fooled the boy Micah by posing as his mother so he'd go with Linderman. Jessica/Niki had refused to cooperate so this was a convenient way to get around her opposition.

• HRG and the Mindreader Cop (Parkman) were locked up together in adjoining, yet soundproof, cells at Primatech Paper Company. They were able to communicate by HRG thinking thoughts the cop could read and he responded with "yes"/"no" by banging on a pipe. HRG guided the Cop through the building with his thoughts to spring Radiation Man (Ted) from his holding cell, too. Ted emitted an electro-magnetic pulse that disabled the alarm system and facilitated all of their escape. So Ted is getting more control of his power, rather than causing cancer and radiation burns to everyone near him. The three are headed to NYC to disable the tracking device implanted in some of the heroes. Remember those two marks near their necks?

• When Sylar awakened from the conk on his head, he realized his list of heroes has been stolen. He decided to head over to Future Painter's (Isaac) studio. [I love the ticking clock sound effect whenever Sylar is up to no good.] Isaac had painted the scene of his own death by Sylar and spirited away his next issue of the comic book, featuring Time Traveller (Hiro) and his Sidekick (Ando), via his most trusted courier. When he gave his sketch pad to the courier, he said, "Promise you won't post any spoilers." Nice! Sylar ended up finishing off Isaac. Or did he?

• So, is this the end of Isaac? Who knows, as Hiro and Ando jumped to the future and have a theory that they can jump back and save him. Although, Hiro tried that with his waitress friend in Texas with no success. And Ando, trying to figure out what is happening in the time continuum (as is the audience), said, "I'm confused." Nice twice! Still in the future, they went to Isaac's studio looking for clues and discovered an odd array of items, photos, and news clippings that seemed to form a timeline. Who created it? Does Hiro jump forward and backwards through time to construct it? How does time bending work so that Hiro could run into his future self in the studio as the night's cliffhanger?

Anything I missed?
*

TV Tuesday: Heroes

This is an in theater trailer before the series started. I watched it and I got goosebumps!

And here's an HD TV commercial for the final five episodes of the season that start next week:They've been on hiatus too long — but they're back next week!
*

TV Tuesday: Heroes

Only two weeks left! In the meantime, check out creator Tom Kring's blog to get more insight into Heroes.
*

TV Tuesday: Heroes

I don't think I congratulated the show on winning their Golden Globe. Well deserved recognition for an addictive show. It is still on hiatus until April 23.

In the meantime, check out the Theories page on the Heroes web site.
*

TV Tuesday: Heroes

While we wait for Heroes to return, check out the Linderman Group's crown jewel Corinthian Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.
*

TV Tuesday: Heroes

Two artists sued NBC Universal and the creators of Heroes in U.S. district court, claiming their work had been wrongfully copied on the television show. New York-based artists Clifton Mallery and his wife Amnau Karam Eele charged in a that the show's creators based their plot line — about an artist who can paint the future — on a short story, a painting series and a short film the couple exhibited in 2004 and 2005.

The artists said in the lawsuit that two people who identified themselves as writers from NBC's Crossing Jordan, also developed by Heroes creator and executive producer Tim Kring, attended an April 2005 exhibition of their work at Hunter College in New York City. The two were believed to have taken copies of the couple's work.

The artists said their work focused on an artist who paints the future and who specifically paints the destruction of two landmark buildings in New York City. They alleged this was "strikingly similar" to the character of Isaac Mendez, whose paintings of the future depict an explosion in New York City.
*