Question: I'm a little stumped. I keep seeing comments — quite a few in your column (which I enjoy, thank you!) — bemoaning the first few episodes of Heroes' second season as disjointed, following too many characters and spending too much time on plots we don't care about. What surprises me about this is that these episodes seem to me to be exactly what the beginning of the first season of Heroes was. I kept seeing the same complaints, especially from reviewers, citing disbelief that the show was doing as well as it was in the ratings because it was disjointed, had too many characters on its canvas and spent too many episodes on plots that were uninteresting. Don't get me wrong, I was never one of the viewers who had any of these problems — well, OK, there were eps where I wanted to fast-forward to a story I was more interested in — but I did recognize the existence of these issues. I just find it funny that the show is being condemned for following a formula that was so successful in ...
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Kristen Bell, Heroes
Is this the new face of evil... or is she just misunderstood? Former Veronica Mars star Kristen Bell joins Heroes (Mondays at 9 pm/ET, NBC) this week as Elle, a loony operative for the Company who is not above using her special power — still a secret — for her own twisted delight. "Pain is amusing to Elle, and so is the malice with which she conducts herself," Bell says. She's also a spoiled brat. "When she shows up in Ireland to locate Peter [Milo Ventimiglia], she does not succeed and that gets her pretty ticked. She takes out her aggression on the locals." Elle's saga is a sad one. Her parents exploited her like a circus freak and put her into the Company at a very young age.
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Mio Takada, James Kyson Lee by Chris Haston/NBC
Some of the Heroes find themselves paired with strange bedfellows when Matt travels to Philadelphia with one of the last people he expected would help out. The pair are on the trail of Molly's attacker, but they quickly find themselves outmatched. Mohinder is beginning to think he's in over his head as well, especially after he meets his new “partner” and gets a disturbing assignment. In Japan, Ando continues to unravel the story of the ultimate odd couple: Hiro and Kensei. And then there's the mysterious Elle (Kristen Bell), who is trying to join up with Peter. People are just dying for them to meet. — Jeanette Martin
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Kristen Bell in Heroes by Chris Haston/NBC Photo
Here we are, now less than a week away from Kristen Bell's arrival on Heroes, and a few more morsels of intel are trickling in about her enabled alter ego, Elle. "She's a little messed up in the head, which makes her manipulative and out to get what she wants," the former Veronica Mars shared in a Tuesday conference call. That, Bell notes, is "really interesting... because [Heroes'] whole first season was about these fairly good-natured people trying to embrace these abilities and being very conflicted as to how they should be using them. Elle is not that way at all. She very much enjoys her power and the emotional power it gives her over other people." Series creator Tim Kring adds, "Elle was raised within the Company, and this is in some ways a cautionary tale about what would happen to any of our characters had they lived with powers their whole life."As for Elle's ties to the canvas, Bell reveals that in addition to "a little bit" of a connection to Suresh, "There's a very inter...
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Hayden Panettiere by Trae Patton/NBC
Episode Recap: "The Kindness of Strangers"This wasn’t the strongest episode of the second season, but it did offer some insight. Not every chapter of a story is meant to be entertaining. Each chapter has a purpose: Some may hold solutions, while others bridge the gaps between clues. I know many have complained about the increase of characters. The truth is, in order to have death, we need more life. I can’t think of a former Hero I am ready to part with, so if a newbie bites the dust, I won’t feel so bad. However, I’d like Micah’s cousin to stick around for a while. Not the bratty wrestling fan — the other cousin. Monica Dawson is a fast learner. When Monica sees something — a somewhat simple task (I’m sure she can’t regenerate or fly by viewing) — she can mimic it. For example, she carved a tomato into a rose and used a "pro" wrestling move on a thief. I think she can only perform this “power” when she sees something o...
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Masi Oka, Heroes
Question: Scattered. Slow. Confusing. This season of Heroes has been downright awful, telling too many stories with too little progression and too many plot holes in each episode. Last week alone, Matt, Claire, Suresh, Hiro, Peter, HRG, Angela Petrelli, and Maya and Alejandro each had their own storyline and little-to-no interaction with any other character. We still haven't seen Niki and Micah or Sylar this season and many of the actors signed in guest roles over the summer, including Kristen Bell, have yet to make an appearance. I understand that Heroes isn't the type of show to kill off favorite characters (even if they fly into the sky and explode) for lack of nerve or whatever, but wouldn't it have been smart to clean house at least a little before the start of the new season? When second occurrences of superpowers are popping up in the show's 25th episode, isn't the ensemble a little too large?
Answer: Far be it from me to defend a show that most of its fans seem ready and willing
...
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Can't get enough of Heroes? Thanks to cast member Adrian Pasdar, fans can get a special behind the scenes look at some of their favorite actors from the show. Pasdar has posted a series of videos on YouTube under the name "Buckshotwon." "They're little snapshots into the life of what we do when we're not filming," he says. The videos range from simple — Hayden Panettiere shopping for shoes in Paris — to stylized — Milo Ventimiglia and Jack Coleman doing an improv Pellegrino commercial during an airport layover. Of course, Pasdar has his favorites. "There's a cute one of Hayden at the Georges V Paris playing hide and seek with the camera," he says of a piece filmed during the Heroes World Tour. Another fave is shot through the sunroof of a limo containing Ali Larter. One of Pasdar's best subjects is pal Greg Grunberg. "My stuff's really silly," says Grunberg of the videos featuring him. "That's a side of me people don't really see on the show." If the postings seem t...
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Will this be the last we see of Mr. Nakamura? George Takei by Chris Haston/NBC
Episode Recap: "Four Months Later...." (September 24, 2007)Of all the shows I follow, this was the premiere that had me fidgeting in my cubicle all day. I have never missed an episode. I nearly fell out of my chair when I received an email this past summer, saying that I would be the new Heroes blogger. This blog is important to TV Guide and Heroes fans alike. I myself used to read it every Tuesday morning before and after meeting my co-workers around the Heroes water-cooler. Needless to say, I hope I live up to all of your expectations, because this show just gets better and better!First off, the symbol. You know what I’m talking about - the RNA strand that pops up everywhere. Tonight, it was painted in red on Mrs. Petrelli and Mr. Nakamura’s (may he rest in hero peace) torn photos, drawn by Molly, fashioned around Peter’s (he lives!) neck and carved within the handle of the famous Kensei/Hiro sword. So, what exactly does it mean? One known fact: When you receive a p...
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Blake Lively and Penn Badgley in Gossip Girl by Andrew Eccles/The CW
Is it possible that this season, Wednesdays are the new Thursdays? An incredible amount of high-profile new programming — nine freshman series in all — will be introduced to the Wednesday prime-time schedule over the next few weeks, and when the dust settles, I can only hope a few of my new favorites will survive.First up are CBS, the CW and Fox, launching their newbies a week before the official season begins. The biggest headlines so far have been generated by CBS' unseen-by-critics and instantly controversial Kid Nation, a reality show in which 40 kids are set loose in a desert ghost town (actually an unused film set) and tasked to create a Utopian adult-free society. Sounded kind of prosocial and heartwarming until all those red flags began to surface about possible abuse of child-labor laws, penurious confidentiality agreements that made boilerplate mention of such possible reality-show liabilities as STDs, and allegations of injuries on the set. Something tells me th...
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Kristen Bell by John Shearer/WireImage.com
Kristen Bell wasn't kidding about that whole "world domination" thing. My musically-inclined BFF just confirmed for me exclusively that she's planning to form a band called Kung-Fu Professor with her new buddy, Greek star Clark Duke. News of their collaboration first broke yesterday in a Q&A Duke did with New York magazine."We're not sure what we will sound like and we may not be any good," Bell tells me, "but we do know we will all be wearing cravats."You know what this means? Now I can be an official Kristen Bell groupie! Who's with me?
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