Heroes

Watching Hero's, season 1, disks 3 & 4 over the last two nights, some thoughts occurred to me:
1) My guy urge to watch 3-4 programs via channel skipping with the remote is pacified by the way the show(s) skip from one storyline to another. It's a little bit like watching 2-3 different shows simultaneously.

2) It ties into a deep seated frame of mind in this country. A state of fear that a large American city will be hit by a terrible bomb, all the while being politically correct in not fingering the most likely terrorists, but rather suggesting that we'll bring it on ourselves and doing so in a way that will sneak under the radar of most.

This is a feature that I think is a vital ingredient of any successful movie or tv program. It needs to tie into some key factor in the national psyche, some emotional tie that calls to you.

The Japanese were devastated by two nuclear bombs, only to live under their protection two decades later. In movies, their hero was Godzilla, created by radiation, who'd protect them from menaces while destroying cities doing so.

M*A*S*H was anti-war during the Vietnam War while fronting itself as a comedy program.

There's more examples. And lots of non-examples, too, I suppose.

Just this morning I watched "M". The world hasn't really changed that much in 80 years. The thought I had was that Fritz Lang and Peter Lorre, both vocal anti-Hitler till they were forced out of Germany, were tapping into the feeling, that in Germany there was a psychotic madman on the loose and only the regular people could do something to stop him, that this movie while being about a fictional child killer, was referencing the Nazi's. If you watch the movie, don't be surprised if you find yourself agreeing with the criminals and thinking that the drunken lawyer would fit into the 9th Circuit Court.

3) Personally, I could relate with the villain, Sylar. Like him, I have the power to see how things are broken, but I take it a step farther. I can see how to break things, even things that are unbreakable, but just need a slight modification to be rendered vulnerable. People will say that I'm mechanically inclined, but I see these things in more than just mechanisms.

Unlike Sylar, I only use this power for good. I fix things, I design unbreakable things, or I'll protect something from being broken.

1.a) Referring back to item 1, above, the more you watch, the less remote each subplot is. There are more casual ties between characters so it's not like skipping back and forth between a few programs.