TV companies suck

[Andrew]

24 better than last season.

Lost is really good. You might think it is weird when first watching the season, but it is worth it.

Yah. Heroes is getting boring. They are going no where with it. It's like they are just filling in episodes with dialogue that is pointless.

They completely ruined sylar. Although I guess they ruined him after the first season when he was more of a mystery.

[veK]

So far I've seen the kickoff for 24 - the tv movie "Redemption". I'll give season 7 another try I guess but I'll stop if I don't like it. Lost is a must-see for me, especially after the ending of the last season. I just hold it back to watch it all at once. I try doing this with most of the shows now because it's so annoying to wait for another week or maybe even 2 or 3. I also haven't watched Galactica since the break, so at the end of season 4 there should be around 11-12 new episodes for me.

I agree with you on sylar. He was my favourite character right from the first episode and I also like the actor who was chosen for this role. I think that last episode was an interesting one when he met his father but everything else feels exactly like you say "they are going no where with it" and just keep filling episodes with dialogues. I hope this gets better soon.

I'm looking forward to the return of prison break. It should be the last season and it was very good until the break. So I hope it will stay that good when it returns next month.

[Andrew]

Minor heroes spoilers

[hide]

About sylar, I might have missed something, or maybe it was the time travelling, but I thought sylar and Peter figured out how to absorb powers just by hearing how their brain ticks and no need to slash open the head? It was the solution to "the hunger" I thought. That was back when peter went to the future, then went back to the past? I forget, but I do remember sylar learning how to acquire abilities without killing (maybe he can, but still kills them so he is the only one with power?).

[/hide]

[Dragoon Knight]

Spoilers for Heroes:

[hide]When Peter went to the future to meet "nice" Sylar and obtain his power, he still had his empathetic ability (i.e. he absorbs the powers of those around him).  Sylar's was slightly different, however, as it wasn't an overt ability - it was passive, like his own.  To "absorb" it, Peter needed to know how Sylar thought - what processes his mind went through.  As Sylar explained it to him, Peter's thought processes matched Sylar's and he obtained the power.

Sylar later turned out to be able to do the same thing that Peter does (i.e. empathetic absorption), which basically means that he and Peter have near enough the same passive ability, but only Sylar had the "hunger".  This may have been a result of Sylar's upbringing.[/hide]

Perhaps someone should start a topic about Heroes specifically?  I'd hate for someone who hasn't seen the new episodes to have something spoiled for them. :)

[Andrew]

Add hide tags to hide text.

I edited my post to do that.

Just say what it is you are hiding before the hide tags.

heroes spoilers

[hide]So does sylar still have ability to take powers without ripping open heads? If so he should have taken fathers powers, while leaving him alone[/hide]

[Dragoon Knight]

Spoilers for Heroes:

[hide]Yes, he has the ability, but the "hunger" is what compels him to do it violently - it's part desire for powers, part homicidal rage.  And he didn't need his father's power - all it did was calm people down.  Why would Sylar do that, when he could simply paralyse them with telekinesis?  I know it would make sense to us that he should get it, but Sylar is disturbed - logic doesn't flow the same way.[/hide]

[Andrew]

heroes spoilers:

[hide] ok, I understand hunger. But I thought his father acquired many powers over the years? Not just one power. That would indeed be a pretty sad life to only acquire one power when you can get many (there is no hunger to simply kill people, the hunger has to do with getting powers from others). We'll probably see his father sometime in the future if it doesn't get cancelled first[/hide]

[Dragoon Knight]

Spoilers for Heroes:

[hide]Aye, it would have made more sense, but as far as I can remember, Sylar needed to have "good thoughts" about someone to absorb their powers - empathise with them.  He did that with what's-her-face, electricity girl.  When confronting his father, it could be argued that he wouldn't be able to do so.  I agree that we'll see more from Sylar's Dad in the coming episodes.

As for the slowness / cancellation issue... my view is that Heroes is like a book.  Having a chapter put up every week during a slow section can seem boring - it's designed to be read (or in this case, viewed) at once.  Granted, it's not smart for TV producers to rely on their fans knowing this and appreciating it, but I imagine that watching the episodes one after another would be just fine.

I also get the impression that things are approaching a boiling point, and that we'll be returning to our regular scheduled edge-of-the-seat stuff soon.

[Andrew]

Also I was sad to see no new episode of heroes this week. Same for Lost last week.

What's with companies skipping weeks and moving timetables around? As far as I could tell on Monday there was nothing out of the ordinary on tv that would affect schedule for heroes.

they wonder why viewership drops when no one knows when the show will be on, and so the tv company has to spend time on promoting their own shows to let people know when it is airing instead of showing commercials.

as people pointed out at other forums, it seems these companies want non hit shows to die off so they can bring in another show that might do better. They don't like renegotiating contracts and giving actors pay raises. Reality tv shows are popular because you only have to pay 1 or 2 people large salaries and everyone else is doing it for free. Survivor is on season 15 or so. They only have to pay the host lots of money. All other actors are free. So expenses are negligible, while ad revenue is high.

It would be nice to see a company produce TV show and sell/release on internet. Set up torrent website like private trackers, in order to download you have to pay for it. no distribution costs, and all revnues go towards paying for production. I doubt we'll see anything like that for a while.

Can you even download high def (1080p)tv episodes from itunes? There is obviously demand for all this media. The companies just need to make it so it is easy to acquire (torrent+whatever quality you want, no DRM, can work in any country and not just USA), and cheap price. If the price is right and easy to acquire, then people might not be inclined to pirate the stuff since with piracy you get better quality, better availability (30 min after initial airing), no DRM etc. Sadly pirated products are often better than official products. If companies don't want to increase quality of distribution that they will be left behind.

[veK]

tv companies make so much more money by producing the shows for television so there probably won't be anything like "web only" show.

they make money with the commercials and they also get a lot of money paid for licence fees when they sell the show to other countries. and as long as it stays like this, why should they change anything? I think eventually all this will change but right now there are still just too many people alive who didn't grow up with the internet and watch tv all the time. I think in a few decades it will be different. I'd absolutely pay for every episode of a good show as long as I can get it without DRM or crap like that, no commercials or logos inside (just like a dvd release), it's not too expensive and last but not least I have some kind of guarantee that the running season will either be the last or will have another season following. the uncertainty about many shows really sucks. but the companies don't get it with their shows... you can't have let's say 5 million viewers, then skip a week or two and don't air a new episode, then make a 2-4 month break (e.g. over christmas/winter), then return with the show right in the middle of a season with the show being aired on a different day and time than before  and still expect to have the same 5 million viewers like before. seriously, how stupid must one person (program director?) be to not see this and then decide to cancel show that has been successful once and mostly got less viewers now because of the stupidity of the tv company?

as for heroes:

[hide]there are many flaws in the storyline/characters. sylar could take other people's abilities withou killing them, yes. but I think it's harder for him to do it without killing. also I think he wants to be the only one with that specific power. but have you ever noticed that sylar usually only uses recently acquired powers? there are sooooo many flaws with his story if you remember some of his other powers. in season 1 (I think) he aquired a skill that would make him hear over a very long distance. at first he had incredible headaches because of all the noises. do you remember? still you can find many situations in the following episodes of season 2 or 3 which wouldn't have happened like this because of this power. but either the authors forgot about it or it got lost when he lost all his powers. but this wouldn't make sense either because when he got his powers back he also got some back he had before. this is only 1 example, there are plenty more...[/hide]

[Andrew]

early Season 2 heroes spoiler, and season 1 spoiler

[hide]Sylar lost all his powers when he was "killed" at end of season 1. He had to start over.[/hide]

season 3 spoiler

[hide]The repeated episode that was on last monday (on canadian channels) was the one where mrs freeze first got kidnapped. It showed her grabing a guys arm, but his arm did not freeze (it started but then unfroze) and she let go of him and ran into living room where she was captured. I don't remember them explaining that, unless the masked person was wearing some antifreeze suit.[/hide]

[Khan]

Watched 2 seasons of The Wire anyone else seen it? It's really worth tracking down on DVD and quite cheap too.

[Dragoon Knight]

Spoilers for Heroes:

[hide]Sylar lost his powers at the end of Season 1 / beginning of Season 2 due to the Shanti virus - when he got the "vaccine" that Mohinder made, he got them all back.

The guy with the semi-frozen arm was likely wearing a thermal suit of some kind, yeah, since they were after her specifically - Nathan would have likely told them what her powers were and made them go prepared.

As for Sylar's predeliction for not using all of his powers - it's likely that he does, but like a child with a toy, he is constantly looking for better ones.  His only general-purpose power is his telekinesis, but I don't think he's ever been in a situation where he could have been saved via his power (i.e. someone sneaking up to him and him not hearing it).

You also need to consider the "god-modding" side of things - if Sylar has all of these powers, it's quite possible to write a script where he completely owns everyone and everything, but that wouldn't make for good drama or TV.[/hide]

[Gobalopper]

Watched 2 seasons of The Wire anyone else seen it? It's really worth tracking down on DVD and quite cheap too.

Season 4 is the best, it deals with the school system.

[Khan]

Yeah I can't wait for that one got season 3 to work through at the moment and I love stringer Bell so it should be a good one.

[EWS]

Oh dear God I love Lost and I am so peeved I am going to miss the end of the season.

[chatfsh]

I share your love of LOST.  I temporarily stopped watching it but will catch it all on DVD.  Mostly because I prefer watching all the episodes back to back.  Expectation postponed is far too frustrating.

[Andrew]

This season of lost is getting better and better.

Always good for a tv show to know when it will be over in the future so writers can make a decent storyline.

[veK]

Last season of LOST was already a pretty good turn in my opinion.

Today the 2 final episodes of BATTLESTAR GALACTICA (season 4) air and maybe I'll watch the 11 episodes since the break this weekend then. Without any break in between of course  ;D

[Andrew]

Don't get me started. I have missed this season and last season of BSG. I am GOING CRAZY. I'm gonna have to disconnect my internet after tonight as I'm sure the spoilers will be plastered everywhere.

EDIT:

Hmm, Actually I saw season 1-3. Just missing season 4 which is currently airing. It was off the air for so long I get confused.

[veK]

Then go get it... BSG is a great show and I'm really looking forward to my 11-episodes-season-finale  ;D

I won't spoil anyhting in here for you afterwards - or at least put it in hidden text  :)

[veK]

I just finished with my BSG 11-episode-marathon. I liked it pretty much. I don't want to spoil anything, but the last 2-3 minutes of the last episode were the best ending ever in the history of tv shows.

[Andrew]

I thought Heroes this week was really good. Advanced the plot. Maybe because it didn't have sylar in the episode (he's been doing nothing for past several episodes).

Lost this week was really good as usual.

[EWS]

I just finished with my BSG 11-episode-marathon. I liked it pretty much. I don't want to spoil anything, but the last 2-3 minutes of the last episode were the best ending ever in the history of tv shows.

I have heard completly different.  Although I am not a BSG watcher, I have been told by those who are that the ending is a completly and utter load of tosh.

On the other hand, this weeks Lost was awesome.

[exatreide]

now the space battle on HD in BSG finale was pretty sexy, the actual ending ending.

Was quite sad and disappointing.