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October 23, 2007

Heroes Update - The Secret is in the Brain

In the 1934 movie The Scarlet Pimpernel, there's a moment in which Lady Blakeney is standing by the fireplace contemplating all the strangeness that has swirled about her for the past months. She looks up at a painting of her husband, and notices the ring he is wearing. In that instant, all the pieces fall into place: she realizes that Percy Blakeney and The Scarlet Pimpernel are one and the same.

This is what is known as an Aha Moment. Aha Moments are powerful things. Bruce has watched The Scarlet Pimpernel about a hundred times, and that Aha Moment is his favorite part.

I thought of this last night while Bruce and The Girl Who Feeds Me were watching the latest episode of Heroes. Heroes is chock full of Aha Moments, but it's not the characters who experience them, it's the audience. Bruce and The Girl are constantly pausing the show to discuss how someone's super-power works or what secret relationship has been revealed.

The obvious appeal of Heroes is the real, human emotions on display, as opposed to the endless whining that permeates so much of the medium. But beneath that, there's the fact that you have to watch it with your whole brain. The common view of television is that it's a mind-numbing wasteland, but Heroes is just the opposite: it's a mental exercise.

We need more of that. Here's hoping that other TV shows take the hint.

Respectfully submitted,

Ferdinand T. Cat

# At Tue 9:07 AM | Permalink | Trackback URI | Comments (1) | More Heroes Update | Tags: culture education Heroes logic reviews television

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Posted by: Perri Nelson at October 23, 2007 4:47 PM