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October 2, 2007
Heroes Update - Heroes 2, Bionic Woman 1
We are now two weeks into the second season of the Heroes TV series, and I am happy to report that the series is maintaining its quality. There is still the sweetness, plenty of dramatic tension, and multiple AHA moments. Mostly, however, I know it must be good because The Girl Who Feeds Me spends the whole time squealing and jumping up and down. Peg-Eye Nate finds this annoying, but Bruce thinks it's wonderful. Apparently a father-daughter thing is involved.
This year, instead of making the show available on iTunes, it is being offered via the Amazon Unbox service. The Unbox service has several advantages over iTunes: you can start watching while the show is still downloading, the images are high-definition, and you can play them back on your TiVo if you have one. NBC allegedly chose Unbox because Amazon is willing to offer a larger variety of price packaging schemes. The downside is that the episodes can only be downloaded in the continental United States and the Unbox software only works with Windows. It's highly likely there will be a Mac version of Unbox eventually, but it cannot be denied that Amazon is less motivated about Mac compatibility than the iTunes people.
It is interesting to compare Heroes with NBC's new science fiction show Bionic Woman. Bionic Woman is a retread of a sci-fi show from the Seventies, and features Katee Sackhoff in the supporting cast. Like another Seventies sci-fi retread with Katee Sackhoff in it, this show is considerably darker than its predecessor. Heroes is dark, too, but Bionic Woman is dark and paranoid rather than dark and heroic. I can live with the dark and paranoid, but I can't live with the long why-me section between the car accident that cripples Jamie Sommers and the final super-powered chick fight at the end. I warned Hollywood about the dangers of this whole why-me thing way back in May. There was plenty of time for writer/producer Laeta Kalogridis to retool the script in the intervening months. You don't see the protagonists in Heroes spending half an episode doing why-me stuff. They go out and fix things.
That is why Heroes stands out, and why The Girl can't wait to see it each week. Problems are solved by dealing with reality, not by whining about what's already happened. If The Girl was into whining, she'd be a Democrat. For a similar reason, she's not going to watch Bionic Woman.
Pay attention, Hollywood.
Respectfully submitted,
Ferdinand T. Cat
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