Heroes Season 2 – Ho-hum.

I’m really growing quite bored with this series, and although the reintroduction of Sylar should help the show, it just might not be enough.

Episode 2 was pretty much as boring as the first episode of season 2. It really didn’t reveal much, and really didn’t add anything really intriguing and new.

Peter can’t remember who he is, and a portion of the episode is setting the stage for him having to go along with his captors plan to get the “box” that contains his identity. If he had any smarts, he’d wait till the guy stepped away from the fireplace and then knock him over with his powers. But instead, he’s a lame enough super hero, that he’ll accept the deal.

Hiro’s plotline is pretty lackluster right now as well. He’s now posing as his childhood idol to try and make history turn out right. We all see Hiro’s love life heating up in the near future. ho hum….

Claire and her family…. ho hum. Lets lay low and not get discovered. Of course the flying peeping tom kid, that is undoubtedly her new love interest, discovers Claire chopping off her finger and regrowing a new one. ho-hum…

The good doctor has located the haitian dude and given him the vaccine. He’s back at Claire’s fathers side… ho-hum

Now we have this new Maya girl who has some dark power that it seems only her brother can control. Ho-hum..

I’m thinking this next episode might be my last if Sylar doesn’t inject some kind of excitement into the show.

I think for a show like this to succeed you really need to have new powers along with new interesting ways of utilizing existing powers. Right now, I don’t feel like I’m seeing anything really new or innovative from the series. I’d say it’s bordering on boring right now.

ho-hum….

Heroes Season 2 – feels like leftovers

 

I am hoping that the lack of action in this first episode is just the standard setting the table for the season to come. It’s somewhat understandable, but I think they could have thrown in a bit more to action to wet our appetites.

 I’ve already seen Claire heal her wounds… I’ve seen the one dude hear other people’s thoughts… I’ve seen Peter use his telekenesis… I’ve seen Peter and Nathan fly… I’ve seen Hiro travel through time… ho-hum… nothing happened that was significant, it was just a rehashing of “we have powers”.

Hiro’s father gets tossed from a roof and plummets to his bloody death. But it was really quite an underwhelming scene. Whoever the dude was basically just tackled him and drug him off the building. So he either flies or climbs on buildings or something like that. But underwhelming to say the least.

 Maya seems to be the new girl on the show with some kind of powers to kill. Based on the blood coming from everyone’s eyes, ears etc.. I’m gonna say she’s either got microwave powers or some kind of high frequency sound waves that can kill people. Nobody in the vicinity of her survived. So…. that’s why they conveniently made sure the brother got tossed from the vehicle, beaten, and left behind.

 Peter is shown to be in a trailer car in some trainyard, cuffed to the wall. Apparently he doesn’t know who he is, so I’m sure that storyline will be about him figuring out who he is. How does he get there ? I’m sure we’ll find out next episode.

But I’m not too excited about this season at the moment. Claire meets some kid at school who we find out can fly…. I smell some superhero romance coming our way. 

Last season had so many layers of learning about people’s powers and how everything fit together. Right now it feels like they are trying to set that table again, but unfortunately it’s leftovers.

Perez Hilton – to replace Rosie on The View ?

I don’t think I’ve heard such a brilliant idea in a long time. Who better to take Rosie’s place than someone with no celebrity ego. He doesn’t discriminate on his blog, he dishes the dirt on everyone. It would probably make the show a huge success.

Rosie was just a loud mouth who in the end couldn’t take the same crap she was dishing out. I think the audience would grow exponentially. I have never watched The View on TV, but I might check it out to see Perez do his thing on TV.

Lost – Newspaper Clipping Zoomed

 I think this closeup of the newspaper clipping at least narrows down the gender of the person in the coffin.

Lost – Who’s in the coffin

First, I’ll say that Lost has pretty much turned around 180 degrees and is now far more enjoyable to watch than say 5-6 weeks back. The seaon finale was great, it had enough action and twists added to get me excited about the next season. I thought the future sequences with Jack / Kate were great.

So now the question is “Who’s in the coffin ?”

 Here’s my take – Ben is in the coffin. Why ?

 1. No one was at the funeral. Ben has no family that we know of away from the island as his mother died in child birth and he killed his father.

2. Jack said he’s not a friend or family of the person in the coffin.

3. If only Jack, Kate, and Ben ended up back in civilization, and Ben was the only remaining person who “knows” how to get back the island and rescue the ones left behind… That would explain why Jack was so upset about this person passing away as alot of secrets die with him – mainly the location of the island.

 4. The coffin was kind of short, and Ben is kind of a short guy. 

American Idol – Chewbacca wins

I am very pleased with last night’s victory by Jordin. I am happy to say that I picked the wrong person – due to the fact that the voting has been completely ridiculous and it seemed like Blake would be the next Taylor Hicks. But I have a new faith in the people of our great land now, that they’ll be able to make good decisions without being swayed by novelty beatboxing or premature grey hair.

But… the whole night I became fixated on how big Jordin was. Not in a fat kind of way, but in a Chewbacca kind of way. It was very distracting. Everytime she stood next to Blake, he looked a little more like Han Solo.  Ryan of course looks more like a Hobbit when next to her. Obviously, this should have no bearing on the results, but am I the only one who noted this many times over the course of the night ?

Another thing… Why is it then when they get these great artists on the show they do a song that completely sucks ? Gwen Stefani… Green Day… J-Lo… Barry Gibb…  Kelly Clarkson… Bon Jovi…  Fergie… Maroon 5… Kelly Clarkson…  All came on the show and sang pretty much complete crap. Some might disagree but I think it’s about time American Idol encourages these artists to sing a sure thing as opposed to trying to promote their upcoming album. If they did that, they could probably release a decent album with guest artists performances. Unfortunately, I can’t think of one performance that I was like “Wow!!! that was great”. Given the caliber of talent that I mentioned above, shouldn’t that be the case ?

Song Selection… Song Selection… Song Selection…  It’s still important even after you’ve made it.

Am I the only one that felt like the Sanjaya / Joe Perry performance could have really been a showstopper had you added Steven Tyler to the mix ? or hell.. how about Aerosmith as a whole ? That… would have been a keeper peformance. Instead we get to see Sanjaya run into the crowd and go make the snapping turtle girl cry again.  Maybe “Sweet Emotion” ? “Walk this way” ? Hell, you could incorporate Blake into that one as well.  I just think Joe Perry alone is like having Ying without Yang…

American Idol – Is Blake another Taylor Hicks ?

 The new Taylor Hicks ?

Do Taylor Hicks and Blake Lewis have anything in common ? Is it possible that for the 2nd year straight a fan favorite will win for reasons other than being the best singer ? Will Blake end up with a career after American Idol ?

 I definitely am not saying that Blake or Taylor don’t have any talent at all, but I am saying that I wouldn’t listen to either of them on the radio or in my iPod if given a choice. Success after American Idol really depends heavily on that as Taylor Hicks is now discovering. Uniquely grey hair and underdog likeability doesn’t make a career for you. Blake just might be in that boat, as I don’t think beatboxing is going to make him a career.

 The final song by Jordin last night kind of put an exclaimation point on the fact that if she loses, it definitely isn’t about her singing capabilities. As much as I think that song should have sealed it for Jordin, I believe that Blake is set to become the next American Idol. If the masses were voting based on vocal talent, Melinda Doolittle would still be here.

 So, that’s my pick, Blake Lewis will be the next American Idol. He’ll be every bit as successful as any other beat-boxer you know of, and he’ll seem far less original trying to make it in the real music world.

Heroes Finale – Not the payoff I was expecting

 I’m not going to say that I hated it, but it really felt like there was too much buildup and not enough payoff.  A finale in a fireworks show is just one explosion after another and at a rapid pace. I think that the whole Heroes season has been just excellent in terms of twists and excitement, but in this finale we really didn’t see anything new or any more exciting than what we saw during the season. Actually, probably less exciting since many of the powers we saw before.

 I was really expecting more of a battle at the end, with Hiro displaying a bit more swordsmanship than just popping in and out and delivering a final blow. It’s not like I was expecting something like the matrix where there are 5000 of those guys he’s battling in every imagineable way, but maybe just a little swordsmanship and some interesting twist on how they use their powers.

 Sylar basically stopped some bullets, turned them around and shot them at Parkman. That wasn’t exactly anything we hadn’t seen before. I think had the final fight been 3/4 of the episode, I would be extremely happy with the finale. Instead, it was just a few moments really. Would have been great if the scene happened in broad daylight with people all around and Sylar randomly tossing people and objects out of the way while fighting Hiro and chasing Peter.

 Is it just me ? Am I being too critical ? I think I really wanted to love the finale, it just didn’t seem to pay off quite as I expected. More action and I would have been perfectly happy.

 The final scene shows the blood path into the sewer… I’m thinking he was drug into the sewer by something, and not by his own strength. Molly mentioned another person that she didn’t want to think about cause then he could see her. Next season is going to involve this man for sure, and just like Vader being a pawn of the dark side — I’m thinking Sylar is going to be Heroes Darth Vader.

Kind of sucks, cause I was really diggin how evil Sylar appeared to be, now it appears he’s going to have the same kind of inner struggle that Vader had in Star Wars trilogy. That’s too bad. I think Sylar’s character would be much better as pure evil.

 The teaser at the end for the next season was decent, I’ll definitely be watching next season. But I just hope they incorporate more action and payoff.

American Idol – Melinda leaves !?!?!

I am still in complete shock that Melinda Doolittle didn’t make the finals. I guess maybe it’s possible that some Melinda fans didn’t feel it was necessary to vote this week. I would have to think that this surprised everyone, as I don’t think I heard anyone say they thought she’d be leaving this week. It was pretty much a given that it would be either Blake or Jordin.

I get this weird feeling that if such a thing is possible, Blake will probably win the contest. Another novelty singer who wins because of being different in some way, but far less talented. Blake has his beat boxing and Taylor had his gray hair and the “Soul Patrol”.

All I can say is “wow”…

Elliot Yamin and his new teeth made an appearance. Kind of like Barry Gibb and his lip and big teeth, I spent the whole time fixating on Elliot’s teeth. They look like they might be a little too big as well. I think people who have messed up teeth most of their lives end up getting the biggest chicklet teeth they can get, when given the opportunity to pick some out. I give Melinda about 2 months before she gets her chicklets put in.

myADD American Idol picks – What is the cost of Jordin’s words ?

Last night was one of the best American Idol shows ever in my opinion, it really highlights the importance of song selection. I just wish that Lakisha could have made it to this week, cause I think we would have seen a monster set of performances, that would have blown anything that Blake could ever do completely out of the water. Oh well,  I’ll have to stop mourning Lakisha’s departure at some point. Right ?

60% chance of leaving

In my opinion Blake should be leaving tonight. He is no match for Melinda’s performance skills and Jordin’s amazing voice and ability to connect with a song and make you feel it. But… Jordin’s attempt at talking back to Simon, opens the door for he potentially go home. I actually thought that Blake’s Roxanne was quite good. I think I like the song more than him though.

40% chance of leaving

 For the first time in a long while, I actually disagreed with Simon. Jordin’s peformance of “I Who Have Nothing” was simply incredible in my opinion. The fact that it was older didn’t stop it from being amazing. I don’t think her first performance of that song was that great, but last night’s performace was maybe her absolute best ever.  She completely sold that song, and I think we all felt something. That being said, don’t underestimate the power of talking back to Simon on voters. 

 I think the best strategy is to take the criticism and just act like you respect the opinion… even if you don’t.  What could have been a contained situation – Simon saying that the song felt too old for her was nothing major. But her conflict with Simon will basically cause some voters to vote for Blake – like it or not. 

I’m going to say that Blake has a 60% chance of leaving and Jordin has a 40% chance of leaving, solely based of  her mini-conflict with Simon.  Without that conflict, Blake would be completely out of luck and packing bags tonight.

 If Jordin is out tonight, Melinda will win it all.

With Jordin gone, Melinda wins hands down. But if Jordin manages to stay, there is a 30% chance that she could win it all — if she can avoid conflict and finish off with strong performances.