Here Be Much Fangirling And Many Spoilers.

I guess I should have included Blog More Oftenner in that list of resolutions for 2009. It's all good though, because I never actually leave the Bloggeddy Blog Blog when I claim I'm going to. I tend to sneak off when no body's really expecting it, including myself. But the BAP has been busy with School, which surprisingly isn't that bad now that there are only 15 of us left in my class and we get to go home half an hour earlier and our classroom is all the way up on the 4th floor and it takes teachers absolute centuries to reach us, as a result.
Anyway, this post has been brewing for quite a while now, and I'm thinking it's about time I put it up. It features the only two TV shows I have had the time and the inclination to stomach over the last month or so, and will be done in the same fashion as the Coldplay vs Sigur ros smackdown we had some time last year, if you recall. Once again, I can promise no real intellectual input, no reduction in the amount of whining, bitching or fangirling (although I may be adopting the term "fanlady" as opposed to "fangirl"- I've always thought of myself as a little too sophisticated for the latter), but I can promise that the judging will be based on some very important and very crucial criteria. Let us then quit the waffling and proceed.

The Battle Of The Somewhat Mediocre TV Shows

Heroes Volume 3 vs. Supernatural Season 3
(For the benefit of those not in the know, Heroes is about a bunch of people with special powers who are constantly trying to save New York, and Supernatural is about two insanely hot brothers who go around killing demons and saving people)


1. Quotient Of Pretty


You would assume that Heroes, having way more characters than Supernatural, would naturally also have more Pretty People in their ranks. But your assumption would be wrong (actually you'd probably be right, but on this blog, you're not). We now turn to simple Maths to reveal the Truth of the situation. Truth, by the way, as I have learned in John Keats' classes, equals Beauty, and Beauty equals Truth. Therefore fangirling is a totally intellectual activity of very very noble literary proportions. But I digress. Using the very simple Maths I mentioned earlier; Heroes has about two dozen main characters at any given time, so if we randomly select 10 of them, and then pick out the number of Pretty People present within this 10, you'd end up with say, 6 Pretty People at the most (according to me, anyway). So you're looking at an Average Pretty Quotient of 60%, which is pretty impressive. Now consider Supernatural, which has only two main characters to focus on. And both of them are Pretty. And you don't need Maths to tell you that that makes up a 100% Pretty Quotient. Therefore in the area of Quotient of Pretty, Supernatural pwns.

2. Character Development

Heroes honestly sucked at this in season 3. There was absolutely no sense of connection or continuity, that feeling that you've been watching the same characters grow and change over the last two years. All of them seemed stuck in this sickening rut and were acting far too unlike themselves to be believable. Or maybe it's more because they're being ultra-condensed magnified versions of themselves, which makes them all the more annoying. I wanted to rip Claire's hair out for being such a desperate whiny little brat. I wanted Nathan to go die because I just could not be bothered to try and figure out what his deal was anymore. I barely paid attention to Peter. I absolutely detested what they did to Sylar ; presenting us with the fact that his lust for blood and power, his evil persuasion was only a side-effect of his ability, and not something that could have been deep-seated or innate within his original persona as Gabriel. And this totally robbed the most interesting aspect of one of the most interesting characters and turned him completely BLAH. And as for Mr. Bennett, how much longer is he going to be just the nerdy-looking guy in horn-rimmed glasses who is also an expert assassin and would do anything to protect his best interests and those of his loved ones? He has been all that for three seasons now, would it kill you people to add a different side to him, develop his individual story a little, give him something of his own?
Supernatural fared much better at this, and they probably had an advantage because they only had to develop two people. But to give credit where it is due, for such a mediocre show, they actually did quite a kick-ass job. Mainly because you did get that sense of nostalgia, like, hey look, here are those two extremely pretty guys I've been watching since I was 16, and I now actually care about them and their fate and their choices as opposed to way back in 2006 where all I did was wait for one of them to take his shirt off. Therefore, for eliciting the power of pure emotional connection to the characters, Supernatural pwns again.

I still do that, though. Wait for either Dean or Sam to take his shirt off, I mean. It passes the time during particularly dull episodes.

3. Death Toll

I have bitched about this considerably in previous posts, and I don't need to say it again. But I will. The makers of Heroes have no balls whatsoever when it comes to killing off a character. Either that, or they do kill somebody off, and something very convenient and unexpected comes up to bring whoever it is to life again. You will really have no idea how annoying this is unless you watch the show yourself, truly.And of allllllllll the people they chose to get rid of permanently for once, they had to snuff Adam Monroe. They just had to. He was the only thing that was even slightly fresh or funny (and no body's funny anymore! Jokes don't kill! They are so taking themselves way too seriously).


On average, about 5 people die Horrible deaths on Supernatural, which is lovely. After the trashfest of Heroes, you kinda forget the satisfaction of watching a real good death scene unfold, with the awful screaming and bad effects and everything. Also, the two main Pretty Boys, they die, too. Of course, they always come back, as a result of one brother selling his soul for the other. Literally. But at least with SPN, you know that the miraculous resurrection came with a heavy price, bound to be paid at a later date, and there is always a sense of urgency or dread surrounding the Bringing-A-Winchester-Brother-Back-To-Life Show.
Once again, Supernatural pwns. And yes, I am being very impartial here.

4. Tim Kring vs Eric Kripke

The creators of Heroes and SPN, respectively. Mr. Kripke, for paying attention to the fangirls and throwing in all the little inside jokes from fandom, you is Awesomeness. To Mr. Kring; you didn't listen to what I said about making Milo Ventimiglia grow his hair back. I gave very solid and very well-supported reasons why bringing the Original Peter Petrelli Hairstyle back would spell glory for the show, and I put it out there, I really did. It was on that Facebook group and everything. But did you take heed? Noooooooooooo. Now look what happened! For shame, Kring.

5. Plot

For Heroes, it was really a case of "What plot?". There honestly seemed like there wasn't one, and if anybody actually noticed a proper plot I would be genuinely grateful if you could enlighten me as to what it is, because the season is over and I am very confused. What is this Catalyst? Does anybody know what it is? What formula? Are these words that sounded really fancy and so the writers' put them in so it would all seem very high-brow and science-fictionney? What bloody timeline are we in now? Is it present day, six months ago, 16 years ago, 45 minutes later? Which version of Peter am I looking at at any given time? Future Pete? Present Pete? Past-But-Not-Quite-Yet-Present Pete? The Ghost Of Pete Future? Why doesn't all the carefree time-travelling create a dozen paradoxes and Explodify the universe? What the heck does Arthur Petrelli want?? I know it's something evil and of world-destroying proportions, but what? Where's Micah? We're not stupid enough to forget him. What's with Matt and the tortoise and the stupid running blond girl? What was the bloody point of blowing up Costa Verde? It all turned into really bad soap opera mode close to the middle, and I completely lost the thread, and I know it's not because I'm stupid. It's because there was no direction, no clarity whatsoever. Everybody ran around talking about how something horrible would destroy the Earth (what's new?) and how they all had to save it, but all that ambiguity really got on my nerves. My intelligence felt insulted. It was all a messed-up jumble of stuff that probably looked impressive on paper but turned to crap when executed. There was so much going on it pretty much all cancelled each other out and became nothing. Oh to go back to the days when Heroes could tell a good, complicated, criss-crossing yarn, and tell it well. BOO you, Heroes. BOO you.

Now, Supernatural? Supernatural had direction. Dean sold his soul to Hell in exchange for bringing Sam back to life and he has only one year to weasel his way out of eternal damnation, if at all possible, while Sam grapples with the reality of losing his brother and the possibility that Hell is grooming him to one day be AntiChrist Superstar. Clean. Simple. Uncomplicated. Plenty of room for emotional punches.SPN in season 3 also went a little bit in the way of soap opera-ishness, but it was done well. And I have never really watched SPN for its mini-episodic-plots. If you want real quality scares, go rent The X-Files. You may have heard of it.
Since SPN is pwning everything, you may be of the opinion that I should stop here. But nah. I haven't reached the fun bits yet.


6. Bad-Ass Boys: Sylar (Zachary Quinto) vs Dean Winchester (Jensen Ackles)

That's a no-contest win right there. Not even The Eyebrows Of Doom can stand a chance against Jemsem Smeckles and his Pretty. Not even a shadow of a a chance. Also, Dean is just such a character. A jerk in many ways, but he grows on you in spite of yourself, he really does. To quote myself;
"...He's all cocky bad-ass-porn-watching-mullet rock-listening-face-stuffing-demon-hunting-women-objectifying-devoted-son-big-brother-and-all-round-kick-asser. He can stuff so much food in his piehole he looks like he may tear his face in half. He is a manly man who shoots guns and says no to chick flicks and says "Dude!" a lot, and hides all his pain deep deep inside where nobody can see it, and when he really really has to cry all you get to see is one teeny itty bitty teardrop, because his dad messed him up so bad (screw you, Papa Winchester!) and made him go all psychologically repressive, and despite his macho and cocksure arrogance and tough-guy persona he has heartbreakingly low levels of self-esteem and painful insecurities, especially about his family leaving him when they no longer need his bad-ass protection, and the struggle he goes through in holding up that mask he uses to hide the fact that he does indeed feel emotion, probably more acutely than most people. Oh Dean. How you hide your raw and vulnerable need for affection. The fangirls' collective hearts bleed for thee! He's just like those M&Ms he enjoys so much; hard shell on the outside, soft and squishy on the inside. Fangirls go "Awww!" and want to pat him on the head and feed him chicken soup and give him huggies. Well, no. Actually we want to rip his clothes off, throw him up against a wall and bang his lights out.But we'll totally follow up with soup and cuddles. Promise."



And the fact that he looks pretty much like Sex-On-Texan-Bow-Legs does no harm whatsoever. And of course he is way bad-asser than Sylar and his brain-stealing tendencies. You need to have spectacular levels of bad-assness in order to pull off a leather jacket that doesn't fit and a kid brother who is a few storeys taller than you are.









7. The Sensitive Emo Angsters : Peter Petrelli (Milo Ventimiglia) vs Sam Winchester (Jared Padalecki)

This, I must give to Peter. Season 1 Peter, to be more specific, although that's kinda sorta cheating. Back when he was all sweet and naive and had all this blind, touching faith in humanity and the genuine desire to help people and make something of himself. Where the hell did that Peter go, eh? And the Hair that came with him?
Sam is a nice guy and everything, and he went to Stanford, which is hot. But he doesn't really do anything for me. He's a sweetheart, though. Too bad he's like, the spawn of Lucifer, or something.















8. The Cooler Weapons/Toys

You have to admit the powers people have on Heroes are still pretty cool, despite the sexy car and the shiny Gun That Kills Everything on SPN. I can even forgive the fact that nobody can really explain what this catalyst business means. It still looked really awesome when Hiro's mom transferred it to him and all. This, I shall consider a tie. Both Heroes and SPN pwn this.

9. The Brother Aspect : Petrellis vs Winchesters

If I were comparing the first seasons of both shows, Petrellis would would have won this by a landslide, which Nathan would have approved of. The Brother-Thing in season 1 of Heroes made up a great deal of the charm for me. It was touching, and warm and heartbreaking in its complexity and totally believable despite the circumstances. The Brother-centred climax in the final episode, it made me cry, which spoke volumes of how well the relationship had been moulded throughout the 24 episodes.


By season 3 however, you almost forget that Nathan and Peter are brothers until you see them in a scene together and your brain slowly pieced it together. The Petrelli brothers' relationship took a major backseat in the place of a lot more insignificant things that were just filler for the most part. It was obviously a result of Peter cutting his hair off. Even his blood ties have disintegrated. I knew it, and I warned them NBC people about ages ago. I did.


(I think we can all see a pattern here). The Brotherliness of the Winchesters however, has never been in question, even if they never really kissed as much as the Petrellis did. Mainly because there aren't too many other characters floating around to distract you from it, but also because the concept of Brothers makes up the very core of the story and all it stands for (which obviously puts Heroes at a disadvantage, but whatever). Sam and Dean's heavy dependence on each other is so unhealthy and sometimes so disturbing it's almost painful. The extent to which they go to protect each other, how that fierce love can spill out into the realms of pure, filthy selfishness and re-affirm the capacity of human love and constantly make you think about whether or not they'd be this close if their lives were any less weird. Supernatural is no more about Banshees and Crocattas than Heroes is about people who can shoot coloured light out of their palms. And that truly goes out as an honest compliment to both shows.
But Winchesters still pwn.


10. Plus Points and Major Disappointments

I've bitched too much about Heroes already, so I'll talk about the positives then. Mohinder goes through hell, which is brilliant.
Aaaand that's about it, really. And Ando, of course. The always lovely Ando, although he couldn't seem to quite make up his mind about his accent this season.

And I've said too many lovely things about SPN, so let us address the one major negative point in season 3 ; neither Dean nor Sam took their shirts off. At all. I mean, what is the deal? Bloody teases, they are. Are they trying to make up for the overexposure of last season? Thank goodness for Google image search, though. They can't hide under clothes forever, not on the Internet, they cannot.
But seriously, it's really as if Supernatural started off so terribly that the only way for it to go was along the road of Improvement, whereas Heroes kicked off so brilliantly that every season after the first has been like a struggle to keep up with with the standards it set for itself.

The Verdict
Supernatural has reached unattainable levels of pwnage. They pwn beyond all Pwnage. Pretty boys. Fast cars. A shiny Gun That Kills Everything. Leather Jacket. Pig In A Poke. And a mini Bon Jovi karaoke session. Top that, Heroes.


Yes, boys. Feel free to indulge in a beer. You've earned it, for now at least.

"Eat Your Brain? Claire, That's Disgusting."

Warning:Viewers in Asia may consider staying away from the spoilery spoileriness. Viewers in North America and Canada (or Asian pirates -which would make up pretty much 95% of the continent's population) are warned against telling me anything related to season 3 of Heroes that I would not possibly want to know, or else, in the words of Tracy Strauss, "I will hunt your ass(es) down and destroy you".

That's right. Pose, beautiful people. Pose.

Thinky Thoughts Regarding The Season Premiere Of The Second Greatest Show On TV. Ever.

1. I'm Getting Seriously Tired of The Character-From-Future-Interferes-With-Present-Timeline Gimmick.

Really. So Peter From The Future shoots his Present Brother Nathan, which didn't really come as a surprise to me (because I'm smart and I had every conceivable possible identity of Nathan Petrelli's assassin figured out months ago) but I was really hoping the writers wouldn't go down that well-worn path again. You want to know how to surprise us, Heroes Writer People? Make it obvious and as uncomplicated as possible. Because we fans never think of the obvious and uncomplicated. You have conditioned us to the point of making thought processes harder for ourselves. You've already won! So ditch all the confusicatingness of of timelines mixing with each other and you run less risk of messing up with the plotlines of future seasons. Listen to me, Heroes Writer People.
Also if Future Peter returned to our time to off Nathan because his Future sucks and all that, so he has to change it, and now by shooting Nathan he appears to have fixed it, then shouldn't this particular bitter-and-scarred version of Future Peter not exist anymore? What is the deal? And he's posing as Present Peter while Present Peter is stuck in some fat-guy-named-Jesse's body, which begs the question; where is darling Peter's Present body and fat-guy-named-Jesse's soul or consciousness or whatchamaycallit? They can't all be stuck in one body, can they? Oh damn, you, Show.

Also, Peter Petrelli. It only hit me last week; sure the boy's pretty and everything (everybody should now say a silent prayer in honour of the wonderfulness of Milo Ventimiglia's DNA) but he is also virtually indestructible. For Sylar's sake, the dude BLEW HIMSELF UP. Nuclearly. And he lived. But apparently he also scars. How can he have a scar if he has Claire's power of instant healing? He's meant to be practically divine, see? If the scar is only there to make him look sexier, well. I'm not exactly complaining.. You know I only nitpick because I love you, Show.


2. Mohinder Suresh's Ever Evolving Levels Of Stupidity

The man's as dumb as he ever was. Please, I beg the people who have already seen the entire season, let me know if the ass dies. But don't tell me who/what kills him. I want that satisfaction at the very least. And now he has a lovely ditzy girlfriend to make out with! And they can perpetuate the species with their own special breed of Stupid-Beyond-All-Reason-Spawn!
DIE, Suresh.
DIE.


3.One Word; Sylar.

Oh darling Sylar. What would this show ever be without you and your ego and your cheesy villain dialogue and the mysterious things you do with people's brains. Literally.


Which begs another question- he used Claire's brain for his own fell purposes and then stuck it back in her skull so she could just heal herself and stuff-because she cannot die, see- so what happened to all the other brains he used? Every corpse that was found from season one onwards had the head sliced open but the brain missing. So what does Sylar do with them? (Brainshakes!)
And if Mamma Petrelli isn't lying, and if she truly is his mother (because she's a very shady and morally ambiguous old lady-which makes her Awesome- but you really have no idea what she may have got up to over the years. Heck we don't even know what her power is), and she isn't simply saying such things for vile psychological reasons, then it only goes to prove that the entire Petrelli family is simply Gorgeous Beyond All Reason. Amen.

Ignore that really tall dude on the left. He is awesome in his own special way. Just not in a I'm-A-Petrelli-Therefore-I-Am-Hawt-Beyond-All-Mortal-Comprehension way.


4. No More! No More!

How many Niki/Jessica slutalikes are running around out there? What are these things, triplets? No more, I say! No more! There are way too many other characters to be keeping tabs on without introducing more Ali Larter clones every now and then.

Oh HAI Pete! How on earth did you get in there?

The scar. The scar. The factual inappropriateness of the scar is bugging me. I already have to live without the Emo Hair, now this. Tsk.


5. Hiro and Ando


I had no idea how much I missed these two until the "You didn't look behind the Mona Lisa??" exchange. I swear, if anything, anything at all happens to tear these two apart in any conceivable way, I'll hunt down the Heroes Show-Making Peoples' asses and and..destroy them. Theirs is an Epic Bromance which no Hollywood studio can deny, dammit! The love, you cannot be blind to the LOVE! The whole Ando-Is-Evil thing had better work itself out to a nice mushy sticky-sweet ending.

And finally,

6. Just Because I Feel Like It.

Oh Milo. You're a heck of a lot prettier than I am or will ever be, did you know that?
And it makes me happy to look at pictures of you from the days when Hayden Panatierre-Or-However-You-May-Spell-It was still too young to know how to spell your name. Or make out with you.

BAP's Sexiest Males on TV

Don't give me that look. I'm getting horny again. It means I'm well on the way to recovery. You people should be happy for me.


BAP's Sexiest Men On The Telly-vision


Jake Epstein

Cameron "Cam" Dunleavey, the kid who would do anything for money on the 2000 science fiction series The Zack Files, on the Disney Channel.

I was 11, okay? And Jake, along with his character Cam, was probably my first ever pre-pubescent crush. He was bad-ass (or at least as bad-ass as a 13 year old private school student on the Disney channel could get) and he had no qualms about doing anything and everything if it meant he could get a quick buck (the birth of my current love affairs with morally ambiguous bad-asses) but in the end he always came through for his buddies, if not always in the most conventional way. These days Jake is on some show called Degrassi:The Next Generation, making his theatrical debut, playing in a bunch of bands, and attending theatre school in Montreal. I must say he's grown up rather pretty as well. I always knew Canadians were sexy. Right up there with Scots, them.

BAP's favourite Cam quote
Gwendolyn 'Gwen' Killerby: How many girls has Cam dated simultaneously?
Zack Greenburg: ..Six. In one afternoon!
Cam Dunleavey: Not six, more like half a dozen… it was a total freak scheduling accident, okay?



Noah Wyle

Dr. John Truman Carter, the bumbling stumbling cutie on that little show called E.R. Perhaps you have heard of it.

Yes. Laugh. Fine.Noah Wyle was another one of my pre-pubescent crushes (come to think of it, pre-pubescence wasn't too long ago, in my case). Dr.John Carter was the original Dr. George O' Malley, I tell you. He wasn't too smart, but his compassion and sensitivity made up for lack of doctorly brain cells. He also turned bad-ass when he started getting addicted to narcotics, but that only happened after another bunch of stuff happened, like that time he got stabbed by a schizophrenic patient. Needless to say,I kinda sorta stopped watching E.R after Noah and his character were very tactfully written out of the plot. Both John and Noah are very sorely missed.

BAP's favourite John quote
Leonardo DiCaprio, hoop skirts, and tragic love is kinda my idea of hell on earth.


Brendan Fehr


That hot bad-ass and deliciously sarcastic alien guy, Michael Guerin, on Roswell. If my memory still serves me well, I believe he was one of my first post-tween year crushes. Yeah.

So the show wasn't exactly enlightening and brilliant. But seriously, if alien boys looked this good, then I have no idea what we teenage females and our ovaries are still doing on Earth. We should be out there looking for that gosh darned planet, I tell you!
Although Mr.Fehr's sexy count has dropped considerably after he had the inhumanity to appear in a Vanessa Carlton vid. Are we that desperate here, Brendan? No no no no no *stuffs fingers in ears* let's all just close our eyes and picture Michael Guerin, okay? Michael Guerin...ooh look! Isn't that Katherine Heigl??

BAP's favourite Michael quote
Stick a fork in us, Maxmillan. We're done.




John Krasinski


The not-very-bad-ass-but-supremely-funny paper salesman, Jim Halpert, on The Office [USA].

He isn't particularly hot in any sense, but he's a decent looking dude, and his character Jim is probably the funniest, sweetest most lovable guy on TV today. And as some chick on Photobucket claims: "Everyone wants a Jim". A Jim to send Dwight faxes from the future, a Jim to mess with Dwight's bauble-head collection, a Jim to stick Dwight's stationery in green jell-o, a Jim to create "aawww...!" moments with everyone's favourite receptionist, Pam, a Jim to sneak a few furtive, cheeky glances at the camera..Yep. We all need a Jim. And we can't have a Jim without John. Much love to both!

BAP's favourite Jim quote
Way.
Way.
Waaaay too many to list down. I don't quite feel up to typing for the next 5 hours, or anything.







David Tennant/ Christopher Ecclestone

Two incarnations of the 945 year-old-anti-weapons-sience-geek-time-travelling-leather jacket/pinstriped suit-donning-Earth-rescuing- alien on cult Brit sci-fi series, Doctor Who.
And no, I did not just make that up. It's a real TV show.

Anybody who knows me and my horny tendencies are probably already well-versed in my three-month long affair with David Tennant (scottish!) and are also probably well and truly sick of it by now. But the guy -or rather, his character- is thoroughly infectious! The 10th doctor is wild, chipper, angsty, insane, bubbly and goes around saying things like "They've never seen a banana before!" and "Your dad was from Thick-thickety thick thick town in Thickania" really really fast, plus he's skinny and wears converse and pseudo-glasses.
And yet if I want to put Tennant on this list, it would be criminal of me to ignore Chris Ecclestone. They do both play the same character, after all. Just not at the same time. Chris' version of the Doctor is darker, moodier and more cynical, as well as being more sarcastic and far less emotionally available. All this is clearly exemplified in his all-black leather get-up, just in case you don't get the whiffs of angst and the-weight-of-the-universe-is-on-my-shoulders vibe from his dialogue alone. Chris was also in Heroes, as one of my favourite characters (bring back Claude!!) which makes him awesome by default.

BAP's favourite 9th Doctor quote
Go! Now! Don't drop the banana!

BAP's favourite 10th Doctor quote
So, physics! Physics, eh? Physics! Phyyyysics! Physics, Physics, Physics, Physics, Physics Physics, Physics, Physics, Physics... I hope you're getting all this down!

Jensen Ackles


The bad-ass demon-busting ghost-killing (yes, that's right, ghost-killing) gun-toting Chevy-driving protective older brother and all round don't-give-in-to-your-emotions macho man, Dean Winchester on Supernatural.

He can't act for peanuts. But boy, does he look good. Any episode involving his character covered in a lot of blood and grease is like a freaking bonus. His extreme sexiness also considerably limits the brain functions of females (and males who are that way inclined) so that it distracts you from pondering on all the humongous plot holes within the show itself - Where do they keep getting money from? If they're murder suspects and on the FBI's wanted list how come they go around using their own credit cards like it's no big deal? How the heck do you shoot a ghost and kill it? Why did they totally forget about the yellow-eyed demon, who is a principal plot point, for the entire duration of season two, only to re-introduce that story arc in the very last episode? When do they do laundry? Doesn't the Chevy ever run out of gas? Why are the special effects so ridiculous? How can Dean still look so hot even after being practically run over by an eighteen-wheel truck? Since when did the Internet become such a reliable source for demonic information? - and reduces you to a blubbering pile of saliva and oestrogen , utterly incapable of any independent thought apart from something along the lines of ..that-dude-too-hot-must-find-way-to-get-in-pants...
Or maybe that's just me.

BAP's favourite Dean quote/s
I am one hot piece of ass!!!

Milo Ventimiglia

The sensitive and emotionally-in-touch Exploding Man,Peter Petrelli on NBC's Heroes. Or the very well-read bad-ass, Jess Mariano, on Gilmore Girls. After the debacle that was Heroes season 2, the second description seems like the more appealing one.

What more can I say about the boy? He's pretty. He makes reading sexy. He has the best hair on television. He isn't afraid to cry.He is the Eternal Emo. Long live The Petrelli! ( Now seriously, grow your hair back. I heard that's an excellent cure for amnesia).

BAP's favourite Peter Petrelli quote
Hey, you know what? I'm just gonna fly off the terrace yeah? No? Hey, I can fly. Nathan so can you. Tell you what. Why don't you just race around the Statue of Liberty real quick. Huh? Give this tweedy cat something to write about.

Curtis Stone

That insanely sexy Aussie chef who stalks lonely women at malls and follows them home to cook for them and make their boyfriends/husbands feel incredibly jealous and inadequate, on Take Home Chef.

Seriously. If he were anywhere around here I'd totally follow my mom to the fresh produce section at Tesco's every week instead of skulking around the bookshop until all the shopping gets done. And Tandoori prawns have never looked sexier.

BAP's favourite Curtis quote
What? He actually talks on the show? Man, I need to pay more attention.



David Duchovny

The very open-minded and witty FBI agent, Fox Mulder, on the greatest TV show in history, The X-Files.

Yes, well he's old now, and he makes lotsa lousy movies. And Fox Mulder really is a pretty ridiculous name. I mean, I thought Apple was bad...

But I adored his character on The X-Files, and it always felt like a mini personal victory when Mulder got the chance to totally stick it in Scully's face. That was before they had that wet make out session, of course. Although sometimes it did get rather annoying when he was always gung-ho about blaming every single thing that happens on an X-file phenomena. See, in real life, it doesn't quite work that way. But since the show is called The X-Files, he certainly has a very valid point. And I still wouldn't want anyone else to come ask me questions about my latest UFO sighting.
I demand re-runs!

BAP's favourite Mulder quote
You think if maybe we ignore him, he'll go away?

Jake Gyllenhaal

Because it's my Bloggeddy Blog Blog and I can do whatever I want with it.

BAP's favourite Jake quote
Someone once said that I was the 'thinking woman's man,' and I was just like, I hope every woman is thinking.

Also there was once this crew member on the Ellen DeGeneres Show, who came out onstage once to demonstrate how to play a Neos game. He was pretty cute.
If I think of anybody else I feel deserves a spot on this here list, you can be pretty sure there'll be a Part Deux up sooner or later.

Save the Hair, Save the TV show

what BAP didn't like at all about Heroes season 2 (there were too many of these, so I decided to narrow it down to the few things that bugged me the most)

Mohinder Suresh isn't dead yet.
Yes, good people of the world. 34 episodes into the Heroes saga and everyone's not-so-favourite molecular biologist/cellular geneticist/whatever-the-hell-it-is-that-he-does has faced Sylar twice, been threatened at gunpoint at least 6 times, made more numbskulled decisions than I can remember, put everyone with around him in mortal danger at least once,gone undercover to bring down the Company and then put his own (adopted) daughter's life at the mercy of said company, whined about his father a gajibillion times, given one of the most dangerous villains in the world all his powers back, and after all that he has nothing more to show for it than a bit of a broken nose. Well. To be fair there was this one episode in the first season where, after being rather more stupid than usual -quite an achievement, even for him- he got his arse massively beat up by Sylar who then stuck him up on the wall. But that was also when Mohinder dripped blood all over Peter Petrelli's hair. Travesty. So that just counts as another point against him.
I'm telling you, the first episode of next season had better be called Heroes Volume 3:Villians-- Episode One-->The Long, Slow,Very Painful and Absolutely Final Death Of Dr.Mohinder Suresh Which Will Include No Sudden Twists, Catches or Convenient Scientific Genetic Discoveries That Will Bring Him Back To Life.


The lack of Peter Petrelli's Emo Hair
I will never again take a human being's hair for granted, ever again.
Peter Petrelli's hair in season one, was truly and absolutely a character in its own right. It had meaning, symbolism and was in a way, the very essence of the character himself. The hair reflected Peter's personality; a young, tender dreamer, whose emotions and ability to love another living thing without condition to the point of total, selfless sacrifice ensured a purity of soul very few people in the real world possess. Those long, floppy black locks were his life-force, the generation of his mind and heart, the total core of his being. The Hair was what Peter used to hide his expressions in moments of pain, anguish and vulnerability. The Hair appeared to strengthen his resolve in gritty hours of danger and sacrifice. The Hair radiated a warm glow when he was around the people he loved, when he was content in knowing that nothing could hurt them, and that the good souls of the world were safe. The Hair made his moods of angst and I'm-letting-everybody-down magnified 15 and 3/4 times.
The Hair was more than simply a very pretty thing that crowned the head of an equally pretty young man. The Hair was the governance of his entire existence, I tell you.
The Hair was Peter Petrelli.
Peter Petrelli was the Hair.
Can't you just tell?


And in season two somebody had the brilliant idea of cutting all the lovely Hair off, and leaving Peter not only as an amnesiac in a shipping container on an Irish port, but also as an amnesiac in a shipping container on an Irish port with a very unbecoming buzz cut. Yeah so now Milo Ventimiglia is all buffed up and spends most of the first half of the season being Sinfully Shirtless (I'd be a hypocrite if I didn't admit that I quite enjoyed this) but there was always a sense of something missing. It wasn't quite the same Peter anymore. And I'm not just talking about the amnesia. It was almost as though a substantial part of Peter's soul had been amputated when the Hair was shorn off. Peter Petrelli had not simply evolved from the first season, he was now a completely unrecognizable character. Even the scar-faced Possible Future Peter was more believable than this guy.
I refuse to accept this. Because the writers of the show have driven me to the unthinkable. They have made me dislike Peter Petrelli. He's being stupid. Well, actually he has always been stupid. Stupid in a I'm-going-to-leave-my-family-and-fly-to-Texas-and-save-this-girl-I-don't-even-know-because-I-am-the-only-one-who-knows-the-danger-she's-in-and-it's-my-responsibility-to-rescue-her-and-the-world-in-the-process-even-though-i-have-no-idea-what-i'm-up-against-and-I-am-virtually-defenseless-but-I-am-sure-as-heck-going-to-die-trying kinda way. The kind of stupid that makes you want to pat him on the head and coo over what silly little beautiful boy he is. But this season, without the Hair to give him guidance and show him the Path Of His Soul, Peter has risen to new and different levels of stupidity. The kind of stupidity that has reduced me to a state of totally-not-caring whether or not he dies. It is unthinkable. It breaks my heart.
On a more positive note, there is a wonderful Facebook group devoting all its time and effort to getting enough requests to send to the Heroes HQ, which will hopefully convince Milo Ventimiglia (since it's his hair anyway) to grow the Hair back. If you all know what's good for you, you'll join the Bring Back Peter Petrelli's Hair Petition.
Please grow your hair back by September, Mr Ventimiglia.
The Peter fangirls are perishing in slow agonies without it.


The way characters are killed off and then conveniently brought to life again.
I hate this. I don't even want to talk about this one. It's like the show isn't even taking itself seriously anymore. Almost every time somebody kicks the bucket, there just happens to be a syringe full of Claire's blood lying around, just in time to bring the dead person back. And the people who are resurrected in this manner don't even deserve it (with the obvious exception of Noah Bennet). Why the heck does Maya have to stay alive for? She hardly did anything except kill her brother's entire wedding party and snog Sylar. Maybe I'm just jealous.


The characterization of Gabriel Sylar
From being one of the most chilling,sexy, sinister, messed up, mentally disturbed, charismatic villains of TV in a long long time, Sylar has been reduced to nothing but a raving loony with some painfully generic one-line villain dialogue; "I'm baaaack!", "Now look what you made me do" and of course his old line about wanting to be "special". His character now borders the line between obligatory bad-boy and just plain ridiculous. His role in the plot is -for lack of a better word- stupid. He should have just been brought in next season, instead of being subjected to such humiliation so soon.

Abandoned/unfulfilled plot threads
Remember how all the writers were raving about this new villain in season two who was so awesomely evil that he'd make even Sylar shit his pants? The man of Molly Walker's nightmares?
Put his picture right next to anti-climactic in the dictionary too.
He turns out to be Matt Parkman's dad, which is quite interesting. His ability is to warp reality, get into people's minds and play around with their worst fears, presenting them with visions and situations that aren't really happening.
Utterly horrifying.
If only he hadn't been introduced in one episode, killed in the next, and one TV hour later lay completely forgotten in the dust on the floor of the Hall of Underutilized Bad Guys.
And that's just one plot thread that was introduced; nay-foreshadowed-since the halfway point of last season and just left to rot all on its own.
Also the whole concept of Big-Bad-Thing-Destroying-New York is getting a tad old.

I am of course willing to cut the folks at the Heroes HQ some slack; they had originally written and shot Volume 2 as a 22 episode whopper, but along came a little something referred to as the writers' strike, which hit them over the noggin and forced them to cut down on episodes, down to just eleven. Which means the folks at Heroes HQ must have had an absolute field day trying to fit and alter multiple plot lines and character/story developments into half the time span they had originally intended it to be. They didn't do themselves any favours either. Season one set the bar so high it would've been a miracle if season two had equalled its quality, let alone surpassed it.
But I''m not gonna bitch about every single thing they did wrong this time around.


what BAP actually did like about Heroes season2

Sinful shirtlessness
Yes, the sight of Milo Ventimiglia all naked and sweaty for the first 5 or six episodes came very close to making up for the fact that Peter wasn't being himself. Then he put his clothes back on, and I recovered enough brain function to see he was giving Mohinder Suresh a run for his money when it came to the area of self-destructive stupidity.

Noah Bennet
Sublimely portrayed, as always, by Jack Coleman (the very great great grandson of Ben Franklin). The man deserves an Academy Award. His is the only character that did not suffer one single bit from the massive episode cut.

Adam Monroe a.k.a Takezo Kensei
It's about frickin' time we got a blond bilingual British bad boy on this show. The man is pretty darned hot for someone who is 400 years old. He's smart, sarcastic, funny and utterly likable, even when he's bad. And when we found out that he has some sorta I-Am-God complex, it just upped his Sexy by a few more notches. He is currently buried alive in a coffin in a graveyard, but he hasn't lived four centuries to go down that easy. He will be back. Badder-assed than ever.
Although he too, suffered quite a bit with the episode cut. You never get too much depth or back story with him, which is a pity, because he is potentially a way cooler villain than Sylar. I mean, he already has the Brit accent, for crying out loud! Thankfully, the next season is called "Villains", which means I'll be getting my fair share of Bad Boy fixes.

Pick a fandom, Any fandom..

It is quite obvious which fandom I'll be going for here: the amazing Heroes has just started its second season run in Malaysia(months after it finished airing in the states,making the Internet a very dangerous place for anti-spoilers folk like me). In any case,this is a little meme I found on a random LiveJournal blog(I told you I practically live there these days) and it seemed like a fun little piece to tackle. Most importantly I'd get to play around with PICTURES! And it satisfies self-indulgent bloggers(is there any other kind?) to yammer on about stuff they like regardless of whether anyone else is interested. If you're reading this you had better be freaking interested, that's all I'm saying.

1. The first character I fell in love with.


Peter Petrelli. It's hard not to,when he's indulging in all these dramatic poses on top of high rise buildings in New York, and having cool clairvoyant dream sequences, and being all emo-ish and "It's my turn too bee somebodee now,Nay-than!" Seriously though. Peter,in my opinion,is impossible to dislike. Look past his initial tendency to be just a tad whiny,and you'll love the guy for his tenderness and his sensitivity and his genuine compassion for others, and his gentleness and empathy and utter selflessness. To be willing to die for the sake of a complete stranger,only knowing that it simply must be done,is either saintliness or pure stupidity. Either way, you'll find yourself going "Aww..!" at him,and wanting to throw your arms round him to shield him from the big bad ugly world that will taint all that is pure about him and shatter his childlike,touching faith in humanity.
Or maybe that's just me.
Also,it doesn't hurt that Milo Ventimiglia happens to be excessively pretty.

2. The character I never expected to love as much as I do now.
Noah Bennet.Not my fault,since for the best half of the season he was being portrayed as the shady-not-so-evil-dude but still a dude-with-bad-intentions-dude.And we didn't even know his name until the last episode! Actually,he was being positively mean to everybody,including his own daughter. All those shady business trips he took, plus his knack of turning up in places he shouldn't be turning up at, and not to mention some pseudo-villainney dialogue, hardly worked in his favour. He made horn-rimmed glasses the most sinister thing in the world,next to ticking clocks. However as the season wore on,we began to see how misrepresented Mr.Bennet was (camera angles and scary music really make the villain,you know).

But Mr.Bennet,despite having no powers to speak of,apart from those of a very good psychologist, is one of the real heroes of the show. The ordinary man who will willingly take a bullet and allow his memory to be wiped for the sake of his daughter's safety ain't no villain in my eyes.

3. The character everyone else loves that I don’t.
I'm not too sure about this one. I do not particularly dislike anyone on this show,to be honest. There is a level of moral ambiguity that avoids characters from ever being labelled totally evil or purely good. So any dislike I may have for a character is based entirely on how much they piss me off at any given time. And based on that I say I dislike Niki/Jessica Sanders.

She's not bad or anything. It's just that I'm so blah about her. She could get her head ripped off and not get a bat of an eyelash from me. I can't understand why there are people out there in Heroes fandom that do like her. To me she's a character who is just there to fill up holes in the plot. Who's gonna sleep with Nathan Petrelli? Hmm...oh! No problem,we'll just make Niki/Jessica do it.
She scared the hell out of me at the beginning,actually. To look in the mirror and see a reflection that isn't you,to black out for hours and wake up with bludgeoned corpses in your garage with blood on your hands... You're either insane, or that's how your power works,or both.

4. The character I love that everyone else hates:
I love Sylar. But who doesn't really?It's the Quinto factor. You're supposed to hate the guy,or at the very least, dislike him.

But he's the villain. That makes him mucho cool. He gets all the cool villain dialogue. He gets to cut people's heads open and steal their powers.He sometimes gets to wear really cool black trench coats. He has revealing conversations with the good guys and they never know who he is. When you think he's gotta be dead this time, he always comes back to life. Such is the coolness of Gabriel "Sylar" Grey. The coolest part is that he used to be super nerdy(but hot) watchmaker. Now he's a super evil(but still hot) super villain. Plus the fact that he's completely screwed up mentally,thanks to his demanding mother, who somehow warped his abilities to think and function like a normal human. So his madness has a great deal to do with his mother messing up during his crucial formative years in childhood and adolescence, and yet,at the end, you have to blame him for the choices he made. He actually tried redeeming himself towards the end,Sylar did. But he was always doomed to succumb to his insanity. A poor,misguided,psychopathic(but hot) bad guy.
Me likey. Very muchy.

5. The character I would shag anytime.
Peter,but he's a very honourable good boy.He would never shag inappropriately. Sure,he screwed Simone Deveaux without much of a second thought,but that was diffferent. He was genuinely in love with her (*pukes*) and had been for a very long time. I suppose the next best option would be West Rosen,who is also very pretty,thanks to Nicholas D'Agosto's genetic endowments(biology really counts on this show). But if he starts spewing his alien/robot philosophy at me, he's g-o-n-e, gone.

6. The character I'd want to be like.
I have never really thought about this one. It's much more comfortable just watching them die and get hurt and stuff. The coolest power to have,in my opinion,is Hiro Nakamura's teleportation and time travel thingie. It would make my life a heck of a lot more interesting. I wouldn't even need a bloody passport.

Claire Bennet's ability(rapid cellular regeneration) would also be cool,meaning that I would be effectively immortal. But who wants to live forever,really?

7. The character I'd slap.
Also depends on who pisses me off the most at any given time. I have felt like slapping virtually every single character at least once in the course of 24 episodes. Peter,for running away from help and being full of way too much angst and emo, and Nathan, for being such a politician, and at the moment Claire,for being such a hormonal wreck,with her talk of wanting to be "who i truly am". The entire Petrelli family,basically.

But to be fair, they really are a very good-looking family.

8. A pairing that I love.
I'm not too interested in romantic pairings within the show. The entire plot is far too fascinating and complicated to be wasted on who-is-crushing-on-who-subplots. Heroes isn't a bleeding soap opera,you know. Romantically speaking though, I did get the warm fuzzies for the brief but disgustingly adorable relationship between Hiro and Charlie.

They had the cuteness factor going full speed,like there was no tomorrow.
Unfortunately Charlie got her head sliced open by You-Know-Who.
That was the end of that.

9. A pairing that I despise(d).
That of Peter Petrelli and Simone Deveaux. I hated Simone. She had everything going for her,and she had to be a wreck all the time. Plus she had to go sleep with Peter. My pure,innocent Peter. I wouldn't actually have minded her so much,but she was so fickle! She kept going between two men, breaking both their hearts and abandoning one or the other at 10 minute intervals and then acting the victim. Then she had to let poor Isaac(who honestly loved her madly) shoot her dead,and that screwed him up even more(drugs and psychic paintings included). But that was one of my favourite episodes. When Simone got a bullet right through her. It felt good.

I detest this scene from the bottom of my soul.

10. Favorite character(s).
*Noah Bennet
*Sylar
*Angela Petrelli
Those three are so mentally screwed up,they are liars and manipulators and top class thespians. They deal in secrets 99% percent of the time. They do the sickest things,but then you remember that their love for the family is what motivates them at least part of the time. It is impossible to hate them for being evil, and equally impossible to love them for being good. They are,quite simply,a caricature of humanity.

Moral ambiguity rocks.

11. What are your favorite things about your fandom?
I love the plot,simply. That it is original and so unlike anything else on television today( you could say the same about MTV's Super Sweet Sixteen,but bear with me,yeah?). That it has the power to keep me hooked and watching every episode,something no show has done since way back in the days of the X-files (still the best show ever).
Also that the writers do not insult the viewers' intelligence. The storylines get so complicated sometimes, you fear that something must surely go wrong,and you actually sit down and sketch a rough plot to see where the mistakes were made,but then you get a headache and go watch Spongebob Squarepants instead. At least you don't have to think too hard about why starfish feel the need to wear shorts.
And it may sometimes be reminiscent of The X-men crossed with Days Of Our Lives,or something, and the science behind the show is usually far from accurate(but pretty accurate) and the dialogue gets cheesier than cheese,and the pseudo-philosophic monologues may grate("Sometimes questions are more powerful than answers. How is this happening? What are they? Why them and not others? Why now? What does it all mean?". You're not making sense! You're not making sense!!) but what it never fails to do is to tug at ye olde heartstrings, jerk a few tears, rip out your soul,tear it into little pieces, make you all emo and angsty for a couple of hours, and feel all tender and deeply connected to the rest of the human race( until the next time your neighbours start setting off fireworks for Chinese New Year's).

12. What are your least favorite things about your fandom?
I refuse to answer this. Refer to question 11.


13. What is your deep, dark fandom secret?
Until this very day, the first thing I say when I see a cockroach is "Sylar!" and then I make my mother kill it and then we discuss the representative symbolism of a cockroach in terms of Sylar's failure to ever die, and Mohinder Suresh's theory of God being a cockroach due to its being the most highly evolved species on the planet,even ahead of humans.
Also sometimes I daydream about Milo Ventimiglia being topless.


There.
Done!
*beams*
This wasn't exactly taggage,but I'm going to tag a few people anyway.
Grace
Hannah
I.Mastermind(kikistrike?)
and anybody else reading this,of course.
Just do what I did,pick a fandom,any fandom,and have fun with it! It can be anything you're a fan of, anything off TV,a movie franchise,a book,quite literally anything you want. I'm sure you people are going to come up with stuff more entertaining and kick ass than mine,so I look forward to that!

In the meantime, I plan to finally get my copy of Brokeback Mountain from my aunt,and actually watch it after all these months.


Rest in peace, Mr.Ledger.