Heroes: Parasite quick review

I saw tonight's episode of Heroes, Parasite, just now and thought I would write a quick two minute review before I went to bed. Again, the show continues doing a good job of maintaining the timeline (e.g., Isaac paints his death, which Hiro will see (in the first episode), sparking the whole thing to begin with, and in doing so, avoids any time paradox issues, as discussed in the Collision and One Giant Leap entries). This implies that the bomb will go off, and perhaps "saving the world" is a bigger problem than the first bomb (sort of like a precursor to Jericho, to cross storylines). Not sure how they will resolve that one, but hopefully it's done this season.

So Linderman is played by Malcolm McDowell (or, in science fiction circles, as the villian in the Star Trek: Generations movie). We'll see how that works out, I haven't formed an opinion yet. The bigger surprise (sort of) is that Peter and Nathan's mother (and Claire's grandmother) is also connected to this whole thing. I wonder if there are two different mutant factions going on and whether Linderman has some sort of mutant counterpart. Again, I think this whole thing is sort of playing out like X-Men where Magneto (counterpart: Linderman) is trying to get the mutants to band together one way and To Be Determined character (with the Haitian under him now) is trying to get Peter and Hiro et al. to come together. We'll see if this plays out. I obviously dropped the ball last week with Simone having power (which she does not) and the jury is still out on who exactly stopped that bullet, Hiro or Ando. For now, it doesn't look like it was Ando.

And to perpetuate a rumor I heard somewhere (the link to which escapes me now, but maybe it was off of The Heroes Archive/Episode Listing site or Heroes TV fansite), the show's producers have two or three episodes that they are filmed, but will only be on the DVD to promote sales? I know a similar escapade was done for a fake pilot of My Name is Earl, but I wonder why NBC (or the copyright holders of either show) think that they would make more money off of the DVD sales/rentals than by an airing on national tv. Now, maybe the shows don't flow with the plot exactly for whatever reason. If that's the case, show them in the summer when you are starving for ratings. I'm sure you'd make more money in an hour than you would from a year of DVD sales. Or, in the case of the fake Earl pilot, show it on April Fools day or somewhere near it. Not that I question the business judgment exercised here, but I just wonder how it can really be that rational. Clearly both showings (on air and on DVD) would make more money than one (DVD). Is selling that many more DVDs really worth the trade-off?

No new Heroes until April 23... guess that means it's almost time for the greatest three weeks in college sports - March Madness!

Tags: nbc, heroes, parasite, my name is earl, bad karma