fireproof bones

every person in the world wishes at least 30,000 times a day that they had a superpower. there is nothing in life that wouldn't be made infinitely easier by, say, being able to lift 50 metric tons over your head. any superpower would be nice, even a shit one like fireproof bones. but there's one that's often overlooked, even though it's the most common one, shared by the majority of film and tv characters. it's the ability to disappear behind any moving vehicle. this superpower is so mind-boggling that it just... boggles... my mind (i like the word ‘boggle’; i should use it more often). it's a scene common to nearly every movie. the hero will be looking at someone, usually a villain, who's standing on the other side of the road who will then suddenly disappear behind a bus or a truck. if instant teleportation was a trait they had throughout the story i could understand it. but it never is. my retentive asshole demands an answer.

i mean, the obvious answer would seem to be that they're grabbing on to the bus or truck as it passes. even if they could find something to grab in the first place, the force would probably yank their shoulder out of its socket. all the confused hero would have to do to is look 50 metres up the road where the disappearing man would be lying on the side of the road in a pool of blood screaming as his former arm disappeared, still attached to the truck. for some reason this never happens in films. i think it should. one armed villains are the best.

either that or they've just dived behind some nearby object to hide. and are getting really weird looks from passer-bys. it's not just restricted to this kind of scene though. there's also the classic two people talking, one turns away for a second, a second, and when he turns back the other character has disappeared. the implication is normally that he's charged headlong out of a window that's at least 20ft away without making a sound. this is normally shown by a fluttering curtain. again, all the other character would have to do to find this mysterious disappearing figure would be to look out of the window; at the crumpled, misshapen body lying smashed on the pavement 10 storeys below.

or perhaps i'm being too cynical and they really do possess this power. and you've gotta admit, it'd be a fucking cool power to have. you could confuse so many people. and who knows where you'd end up when you disappeared. it could be anywhere! you could see the world from the side of a bus. it's only a matter of time before hollywood cottons on to this idea i'm sure.

why am i thinking about superhero powers? because the heroes season finale is next week. it's been a ridiculously long time coming, i'm struggling to remember what happened more than six episodes ago. it'll be interesting to see the season as a whole and find out if the plot is coherent or not. anyway, some of the episodes have been pretty exceptional. it does have dips and all the cheese and coincidences you'd expect, but they manage to get it right most of the time. personally i hope it all goes pete tong in the final episode. it would make for an interesting second season and lots of implications, creating a completely different story to the first. given the comic influence on the style of heroes, it's not inconceivable that there'll be an apocalyptic ending.

oh, and if all that made no sense then you clearly haven't seen any heroes. tsk tsk. there's no excuse, you've got the whole of summer and its miserable damp weather (especially us poor bastards in scotland) ahead of you; so curl up round the warm glow of the laptop and catch up with heroes. the show with more mysterious disappearing characters than you can shake a stick at.