Bad Ideas Find a Home, Monday on NBC

Were we supposed to be surprised last night on Heroes when it was revealed that Kristen Bell’s character, Elle, is working for Bob?  The way the two of them were shown together it felt as though we were supposed to be shocked and surprised by the revelation.  However, it was telegraphed from the moment we saw Elle on the phone back in Ireland.  Was it also stated outright at some point?  Frankly, I can’t remember.  That’s really the problem with this Heroes this season – it’s been so dull and all the reveals so boring that one can’t quite tell if they’re reveals at all or something the audience has known from the beginning. 

Frankly, I don’t understand the reasons the show is progressing the way it is.  D.L. died.  We all knew that.  Yet, last night D.L., we find out, didn’t die at Linderman’s as we had suspected, but rather was killed by some random schmo in a nightclub while trying to rescue Niki.  What was possibly the point in that?  I think we already got a pretty good farewell scene for D.L. in season one, it was tearful and sad, and complete.  Or, so I thought, I guess, in the producers’ minds, I was wrong and the show just had to reintroduce and rekill him all in the same episode.

One thing I’m definitely not wrong about is the foolishness that continues to pervade the super-twins, Maya and Alejandro.  Okay, so her first manifestation of powers was upon finding her brother’s new wife cheating on him on their wedding day.  I’ll give you that such an event completely sucks, but without any build up or lead-in to the story, it very much had a “who cares” feeling to it.  There was never a moment when we didn’t know  the wife was going to cheat on the husband, she was never painted sympathetically, she was never even a real character, so who cares about her death.  Okay, so Maya knocked off a whole village the first time she did her superpowered black ooze in the eye thing.  Without us knowing about any of the people there it’s hard to care.  The more I see Maya and Alejandro the more I’m reminded of Lost last season with the addition of two characters that had an alternate storyline before getting written off as a bad idea.

Last night was actually rife with bad ideas.  For instance, who thought it was a good plan to have Livia live in the past on Journeyman.  What stroke of genius was that little storyline?  Every implication we’ve gotten this season is that there is a group of people controlling Dan’s time travel, and every indication we’ve gotten is that the group is made up of a bunch of capricious morons more concerned with their ability to make folks leap around in time than what happens to the leapers.  When Dan is finally let in on the secret (if the series doesn’t get cancelled before then) I hope he throttles Ziggy and Al Calavicci, lord knows they deserve it.

Lastly, or almost lastly anyway, I am getting more and more disappointed with the teases for Chuck.  Every week they promote the almost getting together of Chuck and Sarah.  Every week there is some brief, ridiculous scene where they’re pretending to do something in order to convince those around them of the veracity of the relationship.  It sort of ended last night when Chuck announced to Sarah that they had to break up because otherwise he would well and truly fall for her, but then again it didn’t end because we were told that Sarah has feelings for Chuck.  I guess soap sells.

Speaking of selling, can I just remind you that Nova tonight is great and you should watch it.