Company Man

October 24th, 2007

Tonight's episode of Heroes on BBC3 might just be the most purely entertaining forty-five minutes of television I've seen this year.

That is all.

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7 Responses to “Company Man”

  1. Kris Says:
    October 25th, 2007 at 14:06

    Ooh, that *was* a good one. Horn-Rimmed-Glasses guy later did an interview on Television Without Pity, during which he revealed that he doesn't actually speak Japanese. He learnt all that phonetically. Apparently Hiro and Mr. Sulu helped him with the pronunciation quite a bit.

  2. Gary Farber Says:
    October 26th, 2007 at 05:18

    I tried looking up which episode that might be, but the BBC3 schedule site I found didn't go backwards further than then one day. Any chance you might identify which episode you're referring to?

  3. John Says:
    October 26th, 2007 at 19:22

    Gary, the episode was 'Company Man' – the one where we got our first look at Mr Bennet's early days as a Hero-hunter, juxtaposed with scenes from a hostage situation. (I'm being vague because BBC2 viewers won't have seen the episode yet and I wouldn't want to spoil it for them.)

    Since the two of you have seen past that episode, could you please answer two questions for me. A simple yes or no will do:

    1) Do we get to meet the elusive Mr Linderman by the end of season 1?

    2) If we do, does he turn out to be someone we've already seen?

  4. Gary Farber Says:
    October 27th, 2007 at 07:35

    "1) Do we get to meet the elusive Mr Linderman by the end of season 1?"

    Yes.

    "2) If we do, does he turn out to be someone we’ve already seen?"

    No. He's a well-known actor you'll well recognize. One who has been around for quite some time.

    He's a prominent on-screen character before the end of the season.

    Incidentally, although I know you want to avoid spoilers, do be aware of the Heroes Wiki, which does a good job of summarizing Known Facts, including from the graphic novels and blogs and all those other online parts of the storyline.

    Trivia!

    Company Man has more shots than any other episode of Heroes to date. Most have about 750 — Company Man has over 1000

    Jack Coleman (Mr. Bennet) is in 95% of the shots in this episode.

    [...]

    This is the first episode in which James Kyson Lee and Masi Oka do not appear (although Hiro does as a child). This leaves Hayden Panettiere as the only actor who has appeared in every episode.

    Let me ask you: does it appear to you that Claire feels pain when she's wounded/hurt?

    And if they settled this question explicitly with dialogue in Season 2, with her declaring that she did or did not, would you want to know, or would that be a spoiler?

    Because it seems to me that most of the time in the first season, she clearly feels no pain, or little. She doesn't even notice, in the first episode, that she has a piece of wood sticking out of her side, until her friend mentions it. She generally makes no exclamation of pain, or facial expression of pain, or anything, including when she was on the autopsy table, chest all open: am I right or wrong?

  5. John Says:
    October 27th, 2007 at 10:50

    Thanks: your answer to my second question blows one of my theories right out of the water, but on the other hand the prospect of the last major player we have yet to see – a guy whose actions have touched so many of the characters – stepping into the limelight is rather appealing. (Not that I actually needed any persuading to watch the remaining episodes.)

    As to Claire and pain, it's true that at times she seems more irritated than hurt as she pushes bones back into place or whatever, but that seems to vary from scene to scene. During her encounter with Sylar when he threw her against the row of lockers and she lay there on the ground pushing her broken bones back into position she did look to be in some pain, whereas when she woke up in mid-autopsy she seemed more grossed out than anything else. I think that either a) she feels pain, but it's dulled by her healing power, or else b) it's like the age-old question of How Strong Was Buffy Summers? (The answer being, as strong as she needed to be to make for an entertaining fight scene.) The other option would be that she's like Hugh Jackman's Wolverine ("Does it hurt?" "Every time.") but whilst I could buy that from an old hand like Logan I don't think that Claire has been doing the healing thing long enough to be that stoic.

    I think I'd rather not know whether/how they cleared this up, if you don't mind. Now that I'm hooked I'm trying to avoid spoilers.

  6. Gary Farber Says:
    October 28th, 2007 at 05:22

    "I think I’d rather not know whether/how they cleared this up, if you don’t mind."

    No prob.

    Keep in mind that it seems almost inevitable that there's going to be a writer's strike of the American Writer's Guild very soon, like in some weeks, and it seems like it will be apt to go on a while, and that would seem to mean that the second season of Heroes, now proceeding, will be interupted like all the other shows, for some time.

    Then it remains to be seen what the Screen Actor's Guild and Director's Guild do, as their contracts come up in a few months, following.

  7. Gary Farber Says:
    October 28th, 2007 at 06:51

    Update.