Misfits

Brief summary: Heroes, but in Britain. So more sex, swearing, and generally a hell of a lot more incompetence and self-awareness. Five kids doing Community Service get "super" powers, hijinks and hilarity ensue.

There's a topic for season four on this board, but in typical style I'm running behind having just finished the first two seasons.

So this is going to have spoilers for the first two seasons. Be warned.

What can I say about the first season? I loved it. It has a great set of characters, it's very funny ("Save me Barry!") and I enjoyed the arc of trying to keep everything under wraps. Creepy Simon is best Simon. There were some minor issues, for example the Time Cop issue of "I've changed events but have no memory of the changes" bullshit which leads to silliness like Curtis being surprised to see Sam visiting him. At least we got that great time travel breakup joke out of it though. Minor niggles aside, it was pretty much high quality throughout.

Season two... not so much. I foresaw a season of the probation worker's cop friend stalking them, trying to find out what happened. This gives the group a reason to stick together, introduces the conflict of whether to protect Simon or not, etc. Yet he played almost no part in the season, he just vanishes. It was incredibly odd and I hope he's back for the third season. At least the new "I give no fucks" probation officer was awesome.

Instead we get the lameness that is Future Simon. It gave me this dread sensation of the show jumping the shark. His scenes were urgh and it has introduced about a million problems. For example, how can he have footage of an interview which didn't happen? Why is he hiding his face behind a mask when he can just turn invisible? It's quite possibly the worst outcome of that plotline they could have come up with. At least it gets wrapped up quickly, and thank god, because it stank of the writers making "cool" shit up as they went along. Considering how limited they've made Curtis's power I thought they knew better than to just lightly throw time travel into the show like that.

The show is also annoyingly coy with the love interests. It establishes from show one what the relationships will be, then when it wants to move Alisha on to Simon it makes sure to slide a new love interest in for Curtis to ensure no drama occurs. The Simon and Alisha relationship is also dull as dishwater because it's "foretold" and so happens, no justification required. She discovers he's a nice guy, then suddenly they're banging. What? This could have been a great arc but in the end she's lifted from one relationship and plonked into another because lol destiny.

This also means we lose creepy Simon. We got a glimpse in season one of a somewhat darker side, and I was hoping there'd be more to him than loner cured by power of friendship and healing vagina. Alas, that went away completely and he spends most of season two being Ace Rimmer or guy-who-tells-people-not-to-do-dumb-shit-which-they-then-do. Oh, and he starts learning parkour because, again, destined to happen.

The Christmas Special maintains the great British tradition of Christmas Specials being terrible. The writers seem to forget that Alisha hasn't told Simon about the hideout (she does in episode six but only because he finds it himself and then it's rewound), or include any justification as to why she's revealed everything. Nathan suddenly likes pregnant woman. Why? It seemed like a clumsy attempt to get the ending manger scene.

Anyway, loved the show when it started, really not sure about the direction it's going off in. It just feels like they didn't want to run the original premise into the ground, but aren't sure where to take it from there.

Misfits is great. Still great even in Season 4. You should have just taken a day and caught up instead of making another thread though.

I needed to purge my dislikes of season 2.

You twat. Have you seriously watched the Christmas Special and still bring up elements like plot, coherence and making sense?
There is a guy who sells a single, possibly unique infusion of immortality for a measly 40k pounds.
There is a community centre in and around which murders happen each and every episode but nobody gives a shit. Said centre also happens to be pretty much the only place where anything happens, ever.
There was a villain who turns serial killer with his milk movement power.
The killing of Jesus, followed by the birth, followed by the afterbirth scene. The afterbirth scene.

This show is taking the piss, as the Brits say, starting from episode one. Nobody in their right mind gives a shit about continuity errors and plot developments because it's ONLY about having fun.

Wanker.

Which the first season did much better.

Bah, if you actually liked the first season you would have rewarded my in-universe post with a like. Case in point!

This was about the most amazing moment of television I can recall.

Really? Apart from killing "Jesus", I thought that it all felt terribly forced. I suppose if the nativity scene holds has any power to you then it might mean more.

I probably need to rewatch it but nothing else left an impression - I don't remember any jesus killing. And I meant "amazing" in that I was shocked it got on television, horrified at what was going on, and cackling wildly.

Nathan is probably my favorite tv character of the last several years.

You discount that whole sex thing far too easily. Future Simon is the only one Alisha could shag non-rapey style, and Simon's options, though no longer being "that creepy kid" (and having become a bit of a hunk), are limited because of having to lay low for his mission. Also, he's not around for long enough to work a drawn-out relationship building process into the story. Hence the banging, which didn't feel all that sudden or inexplicable to me.

Every power is basically whatever someone desired most during the storm. This lets it be wish-fulfillment for some and just completely random shit for others.

It felt lazy. Rather than natural development they threw in an "I'm immune to your power anddon'taskmewhythere'snotime" and then some "we're destined to be together" in place of any actual fucking development. I don't understand Charles's point about character development because I think it's a real weak-point in the show.

Moving into season three now

I've just started on season three. Missing Nathan, hoping new guy will grow on me.

Is that right? I'll have to look when I have some time but milk manipulator? Seth the power trader? Didn't Simon want to be noticed rather than invisible?

If you're right, well done Adree and this show is more wonderful!

Well I think there's still the "monkey's paw" effect of their desires being twisted, Alisha being the best example. Maybe I should have said a reflection of their mind at the time of the storm? Of course I'm probably totally wrong and it's just whatever Howard Overman thought would make good tv at the time.

I don't think it's desires so much as what they were thinking about at the time they were hit. Simon felt invisible and so became it. Probation guy was angry just as he was struck, so became a monster, etc.

Curtis wanted more than anything to go back and fix his mistakes... time travel.

Alisha was confident in her sex appeal and felt that everyone wanted to have meaningless sex with her... anyone who touches her wants to have sex with her.

Nathan didn't care about the consequences of his actions... immortality means you don't have to care.

I can't explain Kelly's mind reading... she was self-conscious, always worried/wondered what other people thought of her?

I think that's it, yes.

Caught up to episode 3 of season 4 and I'm starting to like the show again. Adding a 3rd Rudy split that is essentially a psychopath was a great idea, IMO. I'm a bit tired, but what are the other new guy and girl's powers? I can't remember.

I also just caught up to the latest episode of Haven, and it reminds me a lot of Misfits: almost everyone has powers/troubles. Guy in a coma gets unplugged, wakes up, the rest of the town goes into a coma. They fleshed out the cause of what activates a trouble, linking it to trauma. Sound familiar? Anyway, psycho Rudy was pretty awesome, and now I want to watch the show more.

The end of season 3 felt so definitively conclusive that I felt absolutely no desire to carry on into series 4. Plus, ugh, that fucking awful Nazi episode. Is it actually worth watching?

The Nazi episode ruled.

And yes.

They actually make a joke later in the season that nobody uses their powers. It's not really a show about their abilities.

It's interesting how the show is a revolving door for the cast. It's what Heroes should've done, but didn't really have the balls to kill off their popular characters.

The ridiculous looking guy's power is weak TK. The hot girl's power is x-ray vision.

I actually think of Misfits as a kind of Outer Limits or Twilight Zone serial that's based in a community center. The first season is still the best to me, mainly because it acts more like a thriller with a conflict to resolve rather than just the random-shit-happens storytelling in later seasons.

I wish they had come up with some other resolution for sadistic sociopath Rudy. He seemed like a great villain to waste on a single episode.

Agree on all points. As far as psycho Rudy, It was also great seeing the actor portray all 3 versions, because he did a fantastic job.