Punch In The Face Index: S2E11

[bryant]

This is the eleventh and most likely the last PITF Index for Season 2 of Heroes, the superhero TV show where punching people in the face didn’t actually happen this episode.

Face-punch count: 0. Lotta powers, though.

Not your usual PITF Index after the cut.

So you could punch Peter some, and Adam’s back to being stupid insane rather than just evil, and Bob’s a jerk, and for some reason Noah’s a stupid jerk all of a sudden, but when you get right down to it the episode was bad. And bad is depressing. And neither Susan or I want to analyze a bad depressing episode for face-punching potential.

So instead we’re going to forgo our usual PITF Index and do the big end of season PITF Index! I say end of season because the writer’s strike isn’t ending any time soon, so Heroes is not coming back in January. Instead, we can anticipate an endless stream of reality TV shows. If I was in charge of Ring of Honor, I would be pitching a weekly TV show to a network, cause they’re going to be desperate before you know it.

Which means this episode was the last we’ll see for, oh, a year or so. And it was bad. Now I’m depressed again.

What cheers people up? Gimmicks!

You yes you get to vote on the end of season PITF index. There are a lot of deserving candidates; too many, in fact, to fit in a Pollhost poll. So we took everyone we’d punched in the face, filtered out the people who’d only been in one episode — which boils down to Monica’s jerk boss and Noah’s jerk boss — and put ‘em all up for vote. Pick your favorites, as many as you like. The top vote-getters will be enshrined. Ties will be broken by our almighty whim.

But before you vote, remember the rules…

Being evil does not mean you need to be punched in the face. Being punched in the face is a direct result of being snarky, useless, whiny, smarmy, petulant, emo, or Mohinder. People not appearing in the episode are not eligible for being punched in the face, except in extreme circumstances like we run out of people to punch. Dead people are immune, probably, unless they appear in flashback or something. Previous performance does influence current placement.

Crap. The poll HTML doesn’t work, so go here to take the poll. Do it!

Originally published at Imaginary Vestibule.

Comments

[kodi]

D'oh, I forgot to vote for Mohinder. I'm confident he'll do fine without my help, though.

(Also, now that we're in "S2E11 Spoiler" territory, something I realized: we don't get to see Kaito put up an awesome fight before he's killed because Hiro told him he would die. Not only did Hiro rob us of an awesome fight, he killed his own father. Yow. Maybe I should have voted for a PitF for Hiro, too.)

[death-by-monkey.livejournal.com]

Speaking of "Spoiler Territory", can I just say how happy I was to see Maya shot...and how disappointed I was that they brought her back to life! Freakin' useless!

And Sylar getting his powers back? Because none of us saw that coming. While the characters this season have been 2-dimensional at best, Sylar is even more uninteresting than his compatriots. And so, here's a question considering the fact that no one has ever actually said how Sylar's powers work. Since he was injected with Claire's blood, does he now have her powers? We all assumed that he needed to eat his victim's brains - but what if he just needs to incorporate their genetic material into his own?

Beh.

The one highlight of the show that -wasn't- ruined by someone coming back to life, though, was Hiro's solution to Adam. And in general, I thought Hiro's use of his powers in this episode was pretty cool. Although it just means that Hiro will have to watch his back even more than his father did. Locking a man up in prison for 30 years is one thing. Entombing an immortal in a casket that's already been buried is another thing entirely. If Adam weren't insane before, he certainly will be after he breaks out of the casket and digs his way to the surface. ('Cuz you know it's gotta happen.)

As far as Hiro being responsible for his father's murder, though, I think that's taking things a little far. I think there are arguments both for and against it, but considering we don't really know how time travel works in the Heroes universe, I don't think we can make any black and white conclusions one way or the other.

[solarmus.livejournal.com]

"Speaking of "Spoiler Territory", can I just say how happy I was to see Maya shot...and how disappointed I was that they brought her back to life! Freakin' useless!

And Sylar getting his powers back? Because none of us saw that coming. While the characters this season have been 2-dimensional at best, Sylar is even more uninteresting than his compatriots. And so, here's a question considering the fact that no one has ever actually said how Sylar's powers work. Since he was injected with Claire's blood, does he now have her powers? We all assumed that he needed to eat his victim's brains - but what if he just needs to incorporate their genetic material into his own?"

I agree 100% Also if Nathan dies without any 'magic juju blood' and Maya lives I'm supremely pissed. (that and Peter gets a 0 for 10 as usual for not using his powers to save his brother)

As for Syler getting Claire's powers (from Mohinder's conveniently labeled vials that all said "Magic cheerleader blood with my own, so sexah" on them...I always took it as his power was the ability to understand how something worked after taking it apart/looking at it's insides...so he doesn't really devour the brains but rather understands what makes them go when he takes them apart like a watch.
Which was a neat concept...last season when he should have been killed off. Now it's bleh.

[death-by-monkey.livejournal.com]

Man, that's a good point. So, this season we lose both Nathan -and- D.L., and all we've got to show for it is Maya? Teh sux.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

At this point, the show could be written by scabs and nobody would notice.

[bryant]

Final post-production work on the last couple of episodes was done without Kring, as far as I know. He finished rewrites on the last episode before the strike started, and was walking the picket line as of November. So there you go.

This doesn't explain the first half of the season in any way, however.

[death-by-monkey.livejournal.com]

So, as an academic exercise, I went through and found the writers for each of the episodes in Season 2. Here's the summary:

Tim Kring - 4 episodes (201, 204, 208, 211)
Michael Green - 1 episode (202)
J.J. Philbin - 1 episode (203)
Joy and Melissa Blake - 1 episode (205)
Nora Kay Foster and Adam Armus - 1 episode (206)
Aron Eli Coliete - 1 episode (207)
Joe Pokaski - 1 episode (209)
Jesse Alexander - 1 episode (210)

Comparing these to the PitF index, we don't really see problems mentioned about the writing until 203, so that's where I'll start -this- summary:

203 - Half a PitF to the writers - so that's half of one for J.J. Philbin.
204 - While no one (and by no one I mean not only Bryant, but none of the commenters) actually recommends giving the writers a PitF in 204, there are comments on how bad the writing is.
205 - No PitFs for the writers in 205, but the first mention of the stereotyped roles for women in the series.
206 - No comments on writing.
207 - Generally lauded as the best episode in a while.
208 - A return to the discussion on the writing of female characters.
209 - Writers get the meta-PitF spot.
210 - Writers continue in the meta-PitF spot.
211 - Continued discussion of the bad writing, although it is noted that Tim Kring wasn't involved in post-production.

So, unfortunately, we've got a pretty small data set here, and other than anecdotally thinking about Season 1 episodes, I don't have anything I can go on to bring those in. There's no real clear winners or losers in this.

Michael Green, who wrote 202, has got no marks against him (although that could be that we hadn't starting thinking of the bad writing yet), Nora Kay Foster and Adam Armus come up clean with 206 and Aron Coliete's 207 appear to be the high marks of the season. Tim Kring's got 1 episode without comments about the writing, and 3 episodes with complaints (though one is possibly mitigated by his lack of post-production involvement).

I wish I had better conclusions to give, but sadly I don't. If anyone else wants to take a look at the episode/writer list, they can check it out at my blog here: death_by_monkey