T w e n t y S i d e d

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.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

There’s a jumpscare right around the 14:30 mark here, and it doesn’t make any sense. It’s a jumpscare for the audience and not the characters, which is a problem I’d just been complaining about a few seconds earlier. Mike is looking through the binoculars and a face appears. For one thing, the face is very close. Since the characters are standing on top of a steep slope / small cliff, I have no idea how anyone could stand that particular distance in front of the binoculars without hovering above the ground. More importantly, Mike gives no reaction whatsoever. Either Mike is in on this murder (in the style of Scream) or the storyteller is engaging in flagrant shenanigans.

Josh suggested that maybe it was Jessica jumping in front of the binoculars for a second, but if you freeze the frame you get:

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Until Dawn EP5: Corndogs?”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.