Re: Heroes *Spoilers*
With Lost, what I mean by the characters, is that they are forced to interact. The island makes everything... These characters are put at odds with each other each episode and they drove or derailed the process of rescue or how much they found out at a time about the island... That, to me, is what makes that show magic. I thought Heroes stretched a little bit to make the characters relevant to one another. That hurts the show's story telling.
Wait - as Lost goes on, we discover more and more these islanders were connected before they got on the flight. How is that not the same thing? Replace "Island" with "Bomb" and it's just like Heroes. These people, against their will, are forced into a situation where they have to interact. The difference is we're seeing them slowly get connected from disparate threads, whereas Lost starts with them integrated, and works the connections in backwards (both good approaches).
And you can't use the argument that Lost is the only show with psuedo-characters... We've got cheating husband, heroine addict, ex-cons, and duel-personalities vying for control in Heroes. How is that off base in Lost?
A cheating husband is one thing. A cheating husband that killed his dad, has been a drug addict, an a criminal, whilst having his liver stolen from his half-dead father-in-law is a bit much. (As is my example, I know.)
The difference is that those elements aren't used for suffering. It doesn't halt narrative drive. It progresses it. In Lost, those traits show up for one episode, we see them 'tackle' it (i.e. the talk about it a lot) and that's it. That's just suffering, not story. Story needs to progress, and it doesn't progress by simply adding more suffering.
Finally, with the characters... Between Lost and Heroes. The flashbacks, where they hone in on a single character also fleshes them out volumes faster than on Heroes. Just saying. There, in the flashbacks, are where the characters become deeper on Lost.
Okay. We are arguing on terminology here. You think that if we find out more about what person X did in year Y of their life that this 'fleshes out' the character. I disagree. It 'fleshes' out their backstory, their continuity, it doesn't actually do anything to the character. The character is the same as it was before hand - it just now has a new part to its backstory. I do not think this is fleshing out characters. Fleshing out characters means deep structural change, not adding facts to their biography. Heroes, I think, fleshes out characters much more, though not necessarily particularly well or imaginatively.
And... This show needs to have direction. It ambles on and on... With Weapon X knock-offs and Sylar being bad ***. It's too contrived for it to exist past a cult trend, as Lost is. I'm calling it here. When they killed characters, more specifically Simone and Isaac, there was no conviction, just death. On Lost, when even Boone died I was a wreck... I didn't much care for his character, but with that episode, they MADE me care. With Simone? Oh, you're shot? Big deal. You weren't that great a character anyway...
Okay. NOW you've lost it. Heroes needs direction?!
Lost is "we need to get off the island" for three years. Heroes has a direction, "Stop the bomb" which has turned into a new direction in season 2. It had it's direction, got where it was going, and is now going on a different journey.
Also, Lost killed one character in season one - Boone. That's it. The episode where he died was pretty good - except for the fact the Hatch didn't go anywhere in the episode, making me wonder why he died at all.
On the other hand, Heroes has a huge body count, and each death *matters*. Actually *matters*. One character dies and suddenly the show is moving qualitatively closer to armageddon.
I just hope that there is some sense of a better direction on the next season of Heroes... Not that I wasn't entertained... I don't want to sound like a stick in the mud. Remember, my analogy between Lost and Heroes to Marvel and DC. DC has kicked out some interesting tales, including many (sometimes) far better than Marvel. The same thing goes for Heroes.
I just don't get why in the Lost thread, I don't show up and state in every post, "Well I like this show, but I prefer Heroes because of X". Why is the Heroes vs Lost discussion here and not in the gorram Lost thread?
Meh. Now I'm getting aggravated. Because I ****ing hate Lost. It's such a stupid show. What drives me crazy is how everyone who likes it says the exact same buzzwords about 'deep characters' and 'direction' and 'subtlety' and I just see a paper tiger.
Bah. I've had enough talking about Lost. Sorry if I'm getting tetchy, but that's probably why I need to shut up about it now.
