Monday, November 30, 2009

They always land on cars

On tonight’s episode of Heroes (which you should be watching because it’s still a great show no matter what the self-consciously jaded masses say), a character commits suicide by jumping off a tall building. (Nathan Petrelli. And this time, he’s really dead.) (Oh! Spoiler warning!) (Oops! Too late!)

He falls in rather overdone slow motion and lands … on a car. Even though the alley below is almost deserted and there seem to be only two cars parked anywhere nearby, he manages nonetheless to hit one of them squarely and smash its roof in.

Why don’t onscreen deaths-by-falling-from-high-buildings never, nowadays, end with the character landing on the concrete with a splatsplash? It’s almost always a car. More dramatic, I suppose, but still it’s one of those silly clichés that very much interfere with my willing suspension of disbelief.

On the positive side, the car landing in this TV episode wasn’t followed by the car alarm going off.

7 comments:

Chris said...

Really? You're watching Heroes, and THAT'S where your suspension of disbelief falters? (So asks one of the jaded masses. I enjoyed the first season, back when it was Watchmen: The Series, but I lost interest through the twists and turns of season 2...)

David said...

Well, okay, you have a point about suspension etc. But as a fan and reader and writer of sf/f/h from way back, I've never had any trouble accepting the premises of such a show. After that, it's internal consistency or use of cliches that gets to me.

They dropped a lot of the twists and turns and have been focusing again on a few main characters and plotlines. It probably won't be enough to keep the show alive, but we're still hooked on it.

Daniel Dvorkin said...

Cars: they're the new wrought-iron fences!

David said...

This is odd. I know that Daniel left a comment, "Cars: they're the new wrought-iron fences!" Blogger says there are three comments present (not counting this one). But when I open the comment window, I don't see Daniel's comment. Blogger has its problems.

Now I'm waiting to see the two combined: character falls off tall building, lands on conveniently located car, crushing roof and setting off car alarm, bounces (maybe it's a convertible with a very strong roof) from the car onto the spikes of fence. Some brief twitching and gurgling.

TGirsch said...

A friend of mine (an avid skydiver) who once witnessed one of his skydiving buddies have a chute fail and buy the farm informs me that people don't splat -- they bounce.

David said...

Bounce! That's astonishing.

TGirsch said...

Now we're not talking like a superball, of course, but there is a little bounce nonetheless.