Until Dawn EP6: Bath Time

By Shamus Posted Friday Nov 18, 2016

Filed under: Spoiler Warning 95 comments


Link (YouTube)

Here is the story about freezing pipes I promised in this episode.

Chris takes a moment to hate on the show Heroes. I agree. That show was terrible and frustrating. It had all of these interesting ideas, but they were buried under awful ideas, then undermined by inconsistent characters, before being ruined by directionless writing. The first season of the show had no idea what it wanted to be about or where any of the plot threads were going. It took me a long time to realize the writers had no plan. They would introduce an idea, toy with it, then wander off and do something else. I kept waiting for all those ideas to come together. I couldn’t believe the show was as random and scattershot as it seemed, which is why I hung around so long.

Despite the title, there weren’t any “Heroes” in the show. Nobody dedicated themselves to helping people. They just fought each other. Or rather, they spent 99% of an episode talking about fighting each other, and then there would be some embarrassing special effects as the fight began, and then we’d cut away and return once the fight was over, because if there was one thing this superhero show hated more than a coherent plot, it was excitement. You’ll see more action watching old Perry Mason reruns.

I think a big part of the problem is that I was really hungry for superhero stories. The Spider-Man series had just been run into the ground. Same goes for the X-Men movies. The Marvel Cinematic Universe was still a year or so away. If I’d realized we were on the threshold of a new age of brilliant cinematic superhero adaptations, I never would have bothered with this cheap, sad, dull, incoherent, idiotic band of no-name non-heroic mopes.

I guess the Japanese guy who could travel through time was pretty cool sometimes.

 


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95 thoughts on “Until Dawn EP6: Bath Time

  1. Daemian Lucifer says:

    Despite the title, there weren't any “Heroes” in the show. Nobody dedicated themselves to helping people.

    Hiro did.He was the hero of the show.

    1. Warclam says:

      So really, the show was just Hero? /Hiro?

      1. MrGuy says:

        It was Hiro’s show.

        1. Warclam says:

          Of course! It explains everything! Gosh, the writers must have been embarrassed when they realized that they’d misspelled it. I guess that’s what happens when you lean too heavily on spell-check.

          1. Christopher says:

            I wish people stopped doing this. The main hero in Big Hero 6 was named Hiro, too.

            1. Gruhunchously says:

              So was the protagonist of Daikatana.

            2. John says:

              The main character of the novel Snow Crash is named Hiro Protagonist. He picked it out himself.

              Snow Crash, as you may have guessed, is a not entirely serious book.

              1. evileeyore says:

                It’s a terrible schlocky piece of drek… which many, many, many people love for some unknown reason.

                1. John says:

                  Eh, I like it. In fact, I like it a lot. But it absolutely should not be taken seriously by anyone.

            3. Shoeboxjeddy says:

              The main hero of Lunar 2 is, you guessed it, Hiro.

    2. MadHiro says:

      One finds that Hiro is often the hero.

  2. Joshua says:

    I watched the first couple of episodes of Heroes based upon a friend’s recommendation, and couldn’t stand it. Reading online, I heard that it rapidly went downhill from such a strong start. If I didn’t like the start, I wasn’t going to like where it went from there.

    The first X-Men film had a powerhouse and traumatic reveal of mutants first discovering their powers, with Magneto being anguished by having his family drug away in a concentration camp, to Rogue almost killing a boy.

    Contrast that to Heroes, where the characters introduce themselves by having conversations with their friends about *how they can now do this impressive thing!*, and some annoying Indian guy expositing at his captive students. Basically, WAY too much violation of Show, Don’t Tell. Plus, none of the characters seemed especially likeable to me, and that was just the beginning of the series.

    1. ehlijen says:

      Ugh, the ‘scientist’ on that show was the worst. He fully subscribed to the Threshold interpretation of evolution.

    2. MetalSeagull says:

      It had so much potential, and then it just went nowhere.

  3. Daemian Lucifer says:

    Did we miss a scene?The last one ended with you jumping over a log.Why is there a bathtub scene now?

    1. Grudgeal says:

      For the suspense, obviously. Can’t you just feel it?

      Suspense.

      WooooOOOOooooOOoooo…

  4. baseless_research says:

    12:35 that was a good background scare. This game does do subtle well – occasionally.

    1. Benjamin P Hilton says:

      I didn’t even notice it till you pointed it out. I appreciate that they made it that subtle. I’d rather chance missing stuff than having it forced down my throat, that way once I do notice things like that it makes me constantly wonder if there is danger nearby that I am just not seeing.

  5. Daemian Lucifer says:

    Screw the hot water,what I would like to know is how are they heating this big ass house,that was snowed in for quite a few days now,with just a single fireplace and that pitiful fire.

    1. MrGuy says:

      What I want to know is why (at 14:30 in the video) we see the single, solitary working electric light in the house, which is off in an obscure corner of the basement. Why is that light on?

      If the power is on, why don’t we turn on the electric lights for everything else (you know, like the one’s we’d use to de-creep a creepy basement, or a creepy upstairs, or to see WHAT WE ARE DOING when we try to get the water heater working?

    2. Philadelphus says:

      That’s what I’ve been thinking, that house should be in thermal equilibrium with its surroundings after more than a day or two of not being heated. Unless it’s incredibly well insulated, but it doesn’t even have double-pane windows (as seen in episode 4); it should be leaking heat like a sieve.

      1. Philadelphus says:

        Y’know, given how the pipes aren’t frozen and how no one seems particularly bothered by the temperature indoors, I’m now thinking there must be some sort of low-level heating system in the background. Maybe gas, since the electricity seems to be inconsistent.

        Or it could just be the devs not really bothering to think through all the implications of their setting, but that would never happen, amirite?

    3. MetalSeagull says:

      Maybe I’m the weirdo here, but the first thing I want to do is get some lights on. Even candles or flashlights. And I’m certainly not going to want to take a bath in the pitch dark in a bathroom I’m not familiar with.

  6. Joey245 says:

    I’ve never actually seen Heroes. The only exposure I have to Hayden Pannettiere is that she did the voice of Kairi in the Kingdom Hearts games. So, yeah.

    Loving this season so far! Everyone is really in top form this season, and there’s equal parts analysis and silly tomfoolery. Keep it up!

    1. Rayen020 says:

      i am glad i am not the only person on this site that has played Kingdom hearts. Next question; Am i the only person on this site that liked Kingdom hearts?

      1. Syal says:

        I liked KH2, only one I’ve played. Ridiculous fanservicey nonsense and then you dance an octopus to death.

  7. Gruhunchously says:

    This game was made by a British studio, so that might explain how some of these British-isms found their way in. As I recall, the cast and writers were all American/Stormarian, but it’s possible that the person in charge of the flavor text and clue item design was British, thus the discrepancy.

    1. Joe Informatico says:

      In my almost 40 years, I’ve never heard another Canadian say “Happy Christmas”. Christmas is Merry. Maybe they roll differently out west where this takes place, but I’ve never heard it.

      1. pdk1359 says:

        From Alberta; hearing happy Christmas in the Harry Potter movies was weird and new

  8. Daemian Lucifer says:

    The first season of heroes was not that bad.It had hiro,it had sylar,it had the hrg guy and…umm…well the idea for peter petrelli was cool.

    1. MichaelGC says:

      Oof, everything at 100 mph, 100% of the time, though. No pacing at all: “QUIET TIME? WHAT'S THAT?!?” Probably wouldn't have been such an issue if watched episodically, but it was a nightmare to binge-watch. I desperately wanted someone to say: “OK look, we don't know what's going on and we wouldn't know what to do about it if we did. So let's sit down, have a nice cup of tea, and just think about this for five freaking minutes.”

    2. Wraith says:

      The first half of the first season was fucking awesome. Pre-reveal Sylar remains one of the most terrifying depictions of a serial killer I’ve ever watched. Isaac as a seer who could only tell the future through art was a pretty fantastic Chekhov’s Gun/Foreshadowing Dispenser.

      But after they “saved the cheerleader” the season hit less and less for me. It was pretty clear they had the same problem as 24 used to, where they wrote most seasons halfway just in case they got cancelled and then had to wing it for the rest. That said, I thought season 1 wrapped up solidly.

      But it took a nosedive there on out. A lot of people say the writer’s strike killed the show. But the biggest problem was that death became cheap. When they kept reviving people willy-nilly, death lost all dramatic significance. It’s a pretty egregious death blow for any work of fiction.

      1. wswordsmen says:

        The writer’s strike killed what was left of the show. If you were willing to accept how bad season 2 (I think) was because you liked season 1 enough the ending killed it. Especially since the last dramatic scene is really stupid with the plot change to accommodate the strike.

        It was never going to be as good as season 1, whatever you think of it, but the strike made it so it would never be good again.

    3. Season one was good, but it wrote a check the rest of the series couldn’t cash. Not to mention there was a writer’s strike going on.

      No one had an endgame or even chapter-endgame in mind, and the only “solution” was to pile more characters on because metahuman origins and weird powers are kind of cool. When it came time to figure out what to do with those powers… it shat the bed.

      1. Daemian Lucifer says:

        The whole “writers strike” excuse works for season 2.But seasons 3 and 4 also sucked.Like Wraith said,making death so cheap was a major problem of the show.To that,Id like to add the “all in the family” trope.And the circus.And mind control never being even remotely as useful as it should be.And turning sylar into a good guy that hungers for powers.And the cheapness of that fight against sylar.And the violin girl.

        1. The other problem they had was in establishing threats. The first season did okay because you had someone predicting the future. Fine, that’s a trope, but that’s not something you can keep doing, and without some agency or entity telling or showing us what the big-bad is for the characters to work against (or with or whatever), there’s not a whole lot left to drive the plot.

          Superhero movie franchises often have a similar problem. Either the hero stumbles over the villainy or the whole plot is a string of fantastic coincidences. Having something like SHIELD or a Professor X around to gather intel on what should be done next is kind of crucial.

      2. Blake says:

        I agree with this.
        Season 1 of Heroes is one of my all time favourite seasons of any show. And when I’ve gone back to rewatch it I’ve found it held up pretty well.

        Season 2 was totally murdered by the writers strike, and they probably should have kept Sylar dead as he became a problem for every future season.
        The later seasons weren’t as bad, but it never really got good again.

        I still watched to the end though and enjoyed Heroes: Reborn when that came out. I wouldn’t recommend it to a friend, but it was fun for what it was.

    4. RCN says:

      Ugh, always thought Sylar was a really awful character.

      What killed the show is that they never really got any villain worth a damn. They’d always introduce new villains by completely shitting over previous villains but in the end you know the current villain is still a joke artificially set on a high threat level.

      But maybe worse was the fact that they couldn’t stick with a rule. Kill a crucial character? He passed on his power! SOMEhow… Peter has the most potent super-power! So… let’s reset him over every dozen or so episodes because we have absolutely no idea what to actually do with him. Sylar is defeated! Eh, let’s keep him around just in case we need to try an actual villain again, he’s awful but at least he’s not a joke. This super-genius kid can solve anything! So let’s always keep him away from anywhere he could actually be useful. Hiro’s power can solve anything! Eh, let’s keep it inconsistent so it can do whatever we say it can do.

      They couldn’t commit to anything to save the show. And the show died for it.

      And I hate Clare with all my might. “I’m immortal? This suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucks! I mean, I would have died twenty times over in my normal teenage life if I wasn’t immortal, but still, all I wanna do is bitch about it.”

  9. David Cotton says:

    The problem with Heroes was they introduced too many characters, too quickly, and did not develop half of them. This was made worse when they gave Sylar the super-superpower.

    But the whole disappointing mess was worth it for the (I think official) Zeroes parody:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWJJBwKhvp4

    Oh, and thanks for the blog. Always very informative.

  10. Spiritbearr says:

    “Happy Christmas” isn’t a Canadian thing. After playing the game I’m pretty sure the only reason they set the game in Canada is so the UK dev team could cover their ass when they use words like “Colour” or call Z “zed”. Which I don’t think ever came up.

    1. Joe Informatico says:

      That would be like those older, mostly WWII-era films, where there’s the lone “Canadian” character among all the British ones just to handwave the accent of the big American movie star in the cast.

      Assuming they liked the Rockies ski lodge location, what part of the US could they have moved it to? Colorado?

      1. krellen says:

        Most likely Colorado, yes. Utah or New Mexico would be other options.

        1. MrGuy says:

          Or Wyoming. Or Montana. Or Idaho. Or parts of Washington State. There are a lot of options.

          1. krellen says:

            The Northern Rockies don’t appear on many “great skiing” lists. ;)
            (Colorado by far dominates said lists.)

            1. MrGuy says:

              Have you read any such lists?

              Jackson Hole (and nearby Grand Targhee) in Wyoming near the Idaho border are consistently ranked among the finest in the country. Sun Valley in Idaho and Whitefish Mountain in Wyoming are top 20 in North America on many lists I’ve seen.

              Sure, Colorado and Utah are the biggest states (in that order) but saying New Mexico is a top skiing area and WY/ID/MT aren’t is simply counter to fact.

              As to the story, what it needs is a lodge in a ski-friendly area, but which is private, and for some reason people don’t mind enough to be breaking in and using it. To me, that argues for a quieter, more remote town somewhere – this isn’t Vail or Aspen. All the states listed would have good candidate locations.

  11. Christopher says:

    I always appreciated that Hiro referenced Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, but luckily now I can just watch Jojo instead.

    1. Leocruta says:

      I get a feeling so complicated.

  12. Kathryn says:

    Shamus, you might like Worm. It is a web serial about superheroes and supervillains. The main character has the seemingly useless power of controlling bugs, but she’s able to do some incredibly cool things because she is super resourceful.

    The author is currently revising it into e-book form, but it’s worth reading as a serial while we wait. I think the site is parahumans.wordpress.com. It has a page on TV tropes as well.

    1. Warclam says:

      Ugh. That series. Warning: only read if you’re into crapsack worlds.

      1. guy says:

        Yeah, it’s a great story, but it’s pretty dark in… everywhere.

    2. Sgalacticplumber says:

      Seemingly useless…. ha…. haha…. HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!! Oh thank you. That was great.

      1. IFS says:

        Yeah bugs outnumber pretty much every living thing on Earth barring microbes, having control of them would be incredibly strong and versatile (though it could take some creativity to get the best results). Of course that depends on the power level of other characters in the setting somewhat, Superman for example could be somewhat troublesome.

        1. Daemian Lucifer says:

          Superman is not that good against endless swarms of tiny things.

        2. Sgalacticplumber says:

          By all means google the story. It’s the first thing you’ll get if you just type Worm. I will go so far as to say that the main character is the closest thing this setting has to Batman when she hits her stride. Justice League Unlimited Batman.

    3. Kyte says:

      I can already imagine Shamus picking out all the inconsistencies in the story.
      “But why are they all acting like dicks?” “But why doesn’t anybody wear masks” “What happened to the guys with guns, none of these bad guys are bulletproof” “Man that sure is some really strong spider silk”.
      Stuff like that.

      And that’s not getting past the timeskip, where it throws out all its strong points (a street-level narrative with strong character focus) in favor of a doomsday plot straight out of Final Fantasy.

      1. guy says:

        One of the things I like about Worm is that pretty much all those sorts of questions get answered eventually.

        Why are they all acting like dicks?

        The powers make people more aggressive and combative to drive them to fight each other.

        But why doesn't anybody wear masks

        Er, pretty much everyone with powers wears a mask. Lots of people have enough coverage to somewhat protect them from the swarm.

        What happened to the guys with guns, none of these bad guys are bulletproof

        There’s sort of an unspoken agreement that people don’t kill people with powers unless they do so first or violate the Endbringer Truce. The Class S threats are a notable exception to this rule, but they’re also largely bulletproof or capable of stopping people from trying to kill them. It’s implied Caldron orchestrated this to maximize human firepower for the big battle, and to keep people on hand to fight Endbringers

        Man that sure is some really strong spider silk

        Spider silk is one of the strongest natural materials, and some varieties are more than twice as strong as kevlar.

        1. John says:

          And yet I’ve never met a spider web I couldn’t tear. I won’t deny that spider silk has cool and interesting properties but call me skeptical about its practical uses at scales relevant to humans.

  13. MichaelGC says:

    To come up with duelling wordplay that bad, I assume you have to plan it?

  14. MichaelGC says:

    I’ll admit to getting a little choked up listening to Rutskarn talking about the guy talking about his loss! He’s absolutely right, though – it was very well done. It’s funny – I don’t normally go for this kind of game, nor the kind of film it’s based on or is yanking the chain of, or whatever, but I found myself looking for a way to play this despite not owning a PS4. Which, given that this is a PS4 exclusive, didn’t go so well. Ah well.

    I guess it is the seeming attention to small detail that is the main draw, rather than perhaps the story or the characters, so that might explain why the genre isn’t an issue for me. Wonder what these guys would be like with a different one? (Perhaps one not based on creating characters as annoying as possible? Where, if you succeed: well done, you have successfully annoyed people and been annoying. Full marks, there.)

    1. Philadelphus says:

      Yeah, I thought that part was pretty well-done too””both the game and Rutskarn’s analysis of it; and I actually did lose a sister coming up on two years ago.

  15. Andy_Panthro says:

    Peter Stormare is amazing in everything he’s in. Even if the film/tv show is terrible, he puts in a top level performance.

    1. Skilled actors know where their limits are and if they can push them or not. If you are skilled you know when you risk over acting or underacting.
      It’s also possible he (or his agent) are damn good at picking/accepting roles.

  16. What Chris said “Chris: I wanted to take a bath” what we all the rest of us thought “Chris: I wanted to see Sam naked”

    1. Daemian Lucifer says:

      Undress the cheerleader,please the world.

  17. The Loyalty vs Honesty question is kinda bullshit. As honesty implies loyalty. Because if you are honest with someone then they know where you loyalty lies.
    Honesty vs Dishonesty would be a better question in this case.

    1. Christopher says:

      That logic is kind of a stretch, but more importantly: He’s asking you to rank virtues. You can’t go “YEAH, dishonesty is what I think is most important in a person”.

      1. Then he should have elaborated using a scenario.
        Also as I said, if one is truly loyal then you would never be dishonest to them (if you are then you aren’t loyal). Loyalty and Honesty are not mutually exclusive.

        That being said…let me clarify a bit (I was hoping not to have to use spoiler tags).

        Small spoiler:
        There is a reason why this shrink is behaving the way he is, the odd questions are tied to that.

        Medium spoiler:
        The shrink is behaving this way because that is how the person with the cap that we can’t see saw the shrink as).

        Large spoiler:
        The person with the cap has taken the worst aspects that they can remeber of this shrink, the overly animated facial expressions may not just be due to eager mocap animators.

        1. Christopher says:

          I have seen a playthrough of the game, so I know all about the plot. I don’t get what it has to do with this question, though. I’m not following your thought process at all, sorry.

          Who cares if honestly and loyalty aren’t mutually exclusive? He asks you to rank charity and honesty aterwards. It’s not a ranking of opposites. Honesty and loyalty can be related, but they aren’t the same thing either. One is the concept of devotion. The other is the concept of being truthful. There’s nothing bullshit about that question that needs to be explained by plot.

          1. “He asks you to rank charity and honesty aterwards” this assumes pre-knowledge of the questions.

            Also you are forgetting that the whole shrink thing here is contrarian almost all the time. The shrink is putting honesty and loyalty in opposition to each other.

            There is also a lack of both and neither.

            I understand that the devs might want to keep it simple, and in most of the game you almost always have a A or B choice, except for a few cases where you got a C choice (aka the Do Nothing choice).

            But I also understand that maybe (medium spoiler) the person being asked the questions are for reason later apparent possibly made up the questions, i.e. the questions may not have been the shrinks original questions.

            I’d also like to clarify something. It’s obvious you are meta-thinking seeing as you stated “He asks you to rank charity and honesty aterwards”.
            I meant in a role play sense, or rater from the point of view of the character sitting in that chair, they would not have knowledge of the next question after the current.
            So the only thing they can do is evaluate the current question given to them.

            And as I pointed out before: If a loyal person lies to you then they are not loyal (would you consider someone who deceives you to be loyal?).
            However a loyal person or disloyal person can be honest.

            Now do consider that in real life you could question the shrink about the two responses they want, but in the Until Dawn Universe the character in the chair can only make one of those choices. So I’m a tad restricted in my explanation due to that.

            It is also sort of a trick question, as one could consider a person that is always honest to be loyal (or reliable rater). People loyalties also changes (due to external influences), while honesty does not (unless the personality of someone changes).

            I hope you understand more what I’m talking about here, I’d rather have a discussion wrapped in a ton of spoiler tags. Some of this stuff makes more sense when you think about it later after certain revelations later in the game’s story. I try to not “get ahead” of the current episode. Maybe when the episode in question has “aired” we can revisit this topic.

            1. Shoeboxjeddy says:

              Saying that a loyal person wouldn’t lie to you is untrue. For example, people tell white lies to make people feel better, that’s a form of dishonesty. So the shrink seems to be asking “Do you value honesty more than your loyalty to your friends?” Would you tell your friend if he or she was wrong, or would you paper over it out of loyalty?

    2. Syal says:

      Honesty means you’re giving independent thought to the situation, which implies you’re working with the other person for your own independent reasons, and you might go your own way if they do something significantly against your own judgment. Loyalty is “through hell and high water” kind of stuff, “doesn’t matter what you’re doing, I’ll back you up”. They’re not mutually exclusive but they’re also not the same thing.

      It’s kind of like “brains” vs. “brawn”, really. Do you want another set of eyes on the matter or do you want another pair of hands.

    3. Daimbert says:

      Yeah, if someone is honest, you always know where their loyalty lies … but a) that doesn’t mean that their loyalty is with you and b) they might be the sort of person who is very honest that their loyalty is for sale to the highest bidder. You seem to be assuming that being disloyal has to been lying about it so that they can betray them later, but you can show no loyalty to anyone and be absolutely honest about it.

    4. guy says:

      Honesty vs. Loyalty comes up when being loyal to your friends means lying to someone else to cover for their mistakes.

      1. Christopher says:

        Like Ashley either trying to hide the meeting between Emily and Mike from Matt or showing it to him.

        1. Ashley revealing what she saw to Matt could be due to honesty to Matt, or due to Loyalty to Matt, or to disloyalty to Emily, or disloyalty to Mike.

          Dishonesty would only be in effect if she was selfish (not wishing to rock the boat while staying at the cabin because she just wants to relax), or if asked/confronted with it Example: “Did you know?” and she answers “I had no idea” would be a lie or dishonest (sadly Such a scenario isn’t in the game as far as I can recall, would have been interesting.)

          Note!
          Things get really murky due to how a term or word is interpreted. Do you use the meaning of the word or the intent of the word or the result the word ascribes to?
          If I’m attributing the wrong word to the wrong meaning it could be due to that (I’m also not a native English speaker, then again there is almost a dozen “English” languages in the world so even that word is a tad ambiguous).

  18. Neko says:

    Wow, I was seriously lost for a bit there. Ep5 ended with ï½¢Jessï½£ vanishing from the snowball fight with ï½¢Mikeï½£, and screaming. Ep6 opened with ï½¢Samï½£ drawing a bath, but I just assumed it was the same character. Maybe because it’s dark but… they have the same hairstyle and the same voice and the same doomed teenager aura.

    1. Possibly a small editing snafu there by Josh. He did a pretty hard cut, but there was a fade out at the end of the previous episode. Maybe he should have included a few seconds of the end of the previous ep at the start of the next ep.

      Reason I’m saying that is because that would make the hard cut in the game (going from Jess vanishing to Sam in the bathroom) more obvious. Instead it almost looked like Josh did skip some stuff.

      This is a side-effect of doing a let’s play on this game. If I recall correctly there are quite a few of these hard cuts in the game.

  19. Fun fact: Teenagers don’t bathe for weeks at a time, instead applying daily coats of “Axe” body smell.

  20. Zak McKracken says:

    My guess is that the filthy rich people owning that lodge deal with the problem of frozen pipes in the same way as they deal with the problem of how to get the huge house warm after noone’s been there for a month: You just don’t turn the heating off, but leave it running on a low level.

    Since everyone was running about outside without hats or gloves, it can’t seriously cold, anyway.

    1. Well Ashley did say “Ashley: We’re freezing our buns off out here” (that line always makes me smirk a little)

  21. Zak McKracken says:

    Water, by the way, has a pretty high heat capacity, and bathing tubs are usually just thin sheet metal, so there’s a lot mor water than metal and you’d only have to make the water just a little warmer to compensate. I eman, most hot water boilers can make it hotter than anyone would want to put their hands in, so that should be just fine.

  22. Syal says:

    So… 10-year old conversation topic: I watched the last few episodes of Heroes Season 1 when I was a kid, and I watched the 4400 off and on, how do folks think they compare?

    1. Andy_Panthro says:

      I much preferred the 4400. Both were affected badly by the writers strike, but I think the 4400 recovered much better.

      1. I really dislike strikes. Sure those on strike may get benefits as a result, but others may loose their jobs, have issues living (food/transport/utility/medical/fire/police strikes are the worst), sometimes a corporation need to scale back due to increased costs which means some of those that where on strike no longer has a job.

        Why work contracts don’t simply include a automatic inflation adjustment clause that is calculated each month I have no idea, would have solved so many issues. (Heck, taxes should be re-calculated monthly as well, avoiding the headache everyone gets once a year).

        Sometimes strikes aren’t always about the monthly salary though, but other benefits should be negotiated in a different way. I always found the idea of giving employees a percentage of the profits as a pretty great solution. If the company does well the employees will benefit. If the company does poorly, no benefits but the company bank isn’t bled dry.

        I know, it’s all a tad idealistic. And extremely few companies does that.

        1. Bubble181 says:

          Danger, skirting the Politics rule here. But since it isn’t American politics: Belgium DOES have automatic inflation adjustment – people’s wages rise along with a “consumer index” based on the average prices of a bunch of “normal” products (it’s a bit complicated and I’m simplifying, but the “basket” of products it draws from would include, say, 4 loafs of bread, half a cup of margarine, but also something like 1/48th of a laptop and 1/72nd of an “average” TV and so on, per month).
          It’s one of the reasons we’re literally the most expensive country in the world, bar none, to employ low-schooling people, and why we’re so miraculously automated compared to (most of) the USA. Since the increase in your wage only more-or-less matches the increase in prices, you don’t feel like you get richer or earn more over time. On the contrary, the way people’s minds work, you get the sensation that you’re constatly getting slowly more poorly all the time. In other words, to make people feel like their work matters, their wage *has* to increas on top of the “index”. Which means unions fight for wage hikes, all the time. Which leads to inflated wages and a trade imbalance.
          Also, of course, some things were deliberately left *out* of the index basket – and there’s a separate basket (not including alcohol, petroleum products, tobacco,…) for a whole host of other things.

          Anyway, be careful what you wish for. Automatic wage adjustments lead to inflation. They also tend to push production abroad incredibly fast.

        2. Shoeboxjeddy says:

          Strikes are meant to be inconvenient and damaging, that’s what exerts the pressure on management to resolve the issue. If the strike was convenient in any way, it would completely defeat the purpose of doing it.

  23. Jsor says:

    With regards to the whole monk prank IRL, that reminds me of the viral video where the guy threw a water bottle at an actor during a jump scare prank.

    https://youtu.be/NTMoXEZtUQE?t=1m10s

  24. Hal says:

    For a superhero fix, I thought The Awesomes was a great show. Season 1 was superior to the others, but it was great overall.

    Real shame it didn’t get picked up for a fourth season.

  25. Y’all really should have picked Honesty again, because then you get to be a Mage.

    Charity seems closest to sacrifice, which gets you the Tinker class, which doesn’t get to use magic, which is a pretty major handicap. Sounds like Resurrection might have come in handy.

    (Since I’m probably dating myself pretty hard here, reference. Which, conveniently, ends up selecting a Tinker in the end.)

  26. General Karthos says:

    Heroes Season 1, taken entirely on its own wasn’t too bad. You just had to accept that all these ideas they introduced weren’t really going anywhere.

    I stopped somewhere midway through Season 3, because, like you, I was hanging on to hope that maybe the reason Season 2 was so bad was owing to the writer’s strike and the season having to be more or less aborted halfway through. But if I had stopped at the end of Season 1, I think I would have been reasonably satisfied.

  27. Binary Toast says:

    Loyalty! Honesty! Charity!

    Okay, so we’ve got three Elements of Harmony, just three more and everything comes up rainbows.

  28. MichaelGC says:

    “I think I can handle a little old set of stairs,” says Sam as she walks facefirst into a wall.

    1. natureguy85 says:

      Ha, I caught that too!

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