Every time I watch this scene I get more and more upset when I see Chandra slap Alice (in front of her father no less). This doesn't seem to fit Chandra's style. It seemed very out of place. (I understand that sometimes a person might need to be slapped to bring them back to their senses, but not a child and especially not by her Doctor.)

I think it was because he was panicking, and wasn't sure what to do. He did apologize afterward.

It was the early 60s. The rules were a tad different.

Also, she was out of her mind and her ability was running wild. What, exactly, was Suresh's alternative? Gunfire? A stern lecture?

A stern lecture on the principles of quantum mechanics and the theoretical sciences of the modern era wherein...ZzzzZzzzZzzz

It wasn't too long ago that slapping a hysterical woman was considered appropriate. I'm with you though -- not appropriate.

I disagree. Sometimes it's the best answer to someone who's gone completely, and literally, hysterical.

I repeat...just what exactly was he supposed to do? Wouldn't, I dunno, shooting her have been even worse?

Subdue and restrain? Yes.

Physically attack? No.

The point was it was the wrong thing to do, but he was panicking,and that split wrong decision that he knew the moment he did was wrong, set it all off.

The kid was throwing lightning and rain and hail, and her wind was throwing people around like toys.

Exactly how was she supposed to be restrained?

I get that he made a mistake and the standards for dealing with the situation were different then.

At the same time, I think there were lots of better options open (to a person using his head). She could easily have been subdued. Chandra could have let her run. Where was she going to go but back to her bunk.

I'm not sure that anyone at the facility was aware of what her power was at that point, so how would they blame the weather on her? But even if they did, slapping the person who's creating a sandstorm because she's upset...just doesn't even sound like it would make the situation better.

Slapping a hysterical person makes perfect sense. It certainly makes more sense than letting her run away, so that she could pose a threat to anyone that irritated her, or trying to comfort her, when you're the reason she got upset in the first place, or trying to restrain her, when the men with guns are busy making sure she's even more upset, or, I dunno, shooting her.

All of those options, except shooting her, I think would be preferable to slapping her.

Unless you're shooting her with a tranq gun. Then that option is still on the table.

The obvious problem there is obvious- none of those options work.

Have Chandra try to calm her down? It's like expecting Sylar to calm down Molly.

Letting her run away? Brilliant...as long as you don't care about the damage a hysterical weather witch can do.

Shooting her would work, but it's a bit counter-productive.

All of those options could work. Every option is going to have the possibility of going wrong (you know, like slapping her went wrong). The point is that people try to pick the best option. "Best" is apparently a matter of opinion. In my opinion, slapping a scared little girl is a little lower on the options list.

I say let her run away because she's just going back to her bunk (where else?) Then she'll calm down on her own. I think the Chandra:Alice :: Sylar:Molly analogy is reaching a bit. Sure, Alice had been told not to trust him, but he didn't exactly kill her parents in front of her (yet).

Disregard

I think corporal punishment weas legal and acceptable even in real schools some decades ago... though I'm not sure if it was still acceptable by the early 1960's...

Exactly right.

Slapping people out of hysterics can work, it just didn't in this case. With a level head he might have gotten her father to calm her down, but he was panicked (with good reason), and chose the best option that was available to him at the time.

First of all she was definately NOT Hysterical.
What she definately was? AFRAID.

A major difference between the two if you ask me.
If she were hysterical she wouldn't had even run away.

She would be more like she was in the present time we saw her (her old self)
in which she would stay rather put and bring lightnings and storms upon everyone in sight.

The only reason she throw a lightning to the one guard as a child was because he was blocking her exit
and she definately wanted to go out of there so she did what was nessecary and was focused.

When chandra caught her she was still trying to get away from him because she was afraid of him.
"Will Dr. Suresh come for me?" already implyed that she was afraid of him the whole time already.

So in my opinion there was no reason to slap her cause with it he made the situation even worse and as Angela already had told him, he would be the cause of the death of everyone there which also this one slap caused.

Her father tried to defend her without actually harming him and then the guards start killing everyone.

I think we can safely say that the hysterical ones that should had been slapped were the guards in this and definately not alice.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Hysteria
1 : a psychoneurosis marked by emotional excitability and disturbances of the psychic, sensory, vasomotor, and visceral functions
2 : behavior exhibiting overwhelming or unmanageable fear or emotional excess

Hysteria doesn't suggest you're standing in place- it means you're reacting in a completely unreasonable way. Creating a hurricane because of a shot? That's not normal fear.
This kid already had problems- remember the hail because of the F? She had a break when Suresh approached her with the needle and went literally hysterical.

Hysterical is also someone that screams around and is unreasonable not listening to anything or anyone.
It's still not the same as being afraid of someone ALONE.

Alice showed that she didn't had full control of her ability yet back then and she wanted to go out of there.
I only said about the staying put part to show the difference between the old and young alice additional.

The young one just wanted to run away from the "bad doctor" while the old one was totally confused, angry and lost in her anger about being lied making her wait her whole life in a desert for her sister to come back and "save her".

Also she didn't create a hurricane, it was a storm and she had shown previously that when she is angry or afraid her powers start "going on" and thats exactly the same thing that Mohinder found out through Maya.

Maya even told him that everytime she was afraid or angry her powers were turned on (adrenaline).
They showed nothing else in Alices case.

There is a difference to being hysterical if you like it or not.

Let's just let it drop. It's obvious we're not going to agree on this point.

imho, she was completely hysterical and smacking her, although not maybe a good option, was the best of the available ones and, more importantly, completely accepted at the time. (Slapping a child has only recently come into disfavor. It was still accepted when I was a young boy.)

Unless that's some wimpy lightning (and it may be, Mo wasn't even a little hurt) she just killed a guard. But of course, you can't slap a kid, even if they are a murderer.

Where did you saw her killing?
Yes she hit him unconscious like she also did with mohinder in the present but you can't say she killed anyone only because of it.


That's why I dissagree with you, because it was obvious she wasn't hysterical.
I even gave you Maya as referrence which you actually as a person that looks into the details should had aknowledged and you go there dropping everything only so you can be right about your claims once again. Sad to see that your stubborness often gets in your way even in things like that.

Also saying it was appropriate at that time or even at the time you were still a young boy.
It might have been "appropriate" but definately not by a random person who felt like it only to say "sorry" two seconds later. That's why also her father reacted the way he did and pushed chandra away.
If it were as appropriate as you claim it was he definately wouldn't had attacked chandra.

See, I have a basic knowledge of the real world. Lightning has a temperature of 30,000 °C, or 54,000 °F. It can fricken melt sand. Yes, you can survive a lightning strike, but that dude got hit directly by a lightning bolt and flies back. In all probability, he's dead. I have no idea how Mohinder survived -- hell, not only survived, was perfectly fine, with no burns, disorientation or even surprise at his continuing health. Maybe his power has some kind of increased durability, or healing factor or something.

Yeah he totally over-reacted but she was causing chaos hence why he did it. Back in the day slapping a child was seen as normal whereas these days even a parent slapping their child is seen as excessive which is possibly why our society is headed down the gutter but that is a topic for another time. Though her dad obviously didn't appreciate that

Is it bad that I would of laughed if Mohinder had gone to slap Alice as well?



hehe....oh dear I think I need to grow up

I don't think Alice killing the guard is a certainty. Elle's lightning wasn't always fatal and Alice's lightning isn't natural either so it could be wimpy in comparison to the real thing.

lol i'm no longer allow to say it but no one cant stop me from QFT if someone else says it.

+1000



not my definition of a useless power right synch

The thing is, if it is produced by weather, and therefore by an accumulation of charged particles within clouds (at least, that's my understanding of lightning) it can't really be faked. Lightning is really only made one way. Elle was emitting her own electricity, so you can't really be sure how many volts she is putting out, but lightning is generally the same. If Alice created it and her power is meteorological manipulation (probably with some kind of extended control over lightning), she would need to make it the natural way, so I suspect it's perfectly normal lightning, and so most likely fatal.

Edit: And before anyone says "overanalysing", yeah, I know. Show with super powered people, yaddah yaddah.

Slapping hysterical people is totally okay.

True, BG!
Here's another proof! Remember that?

On more serious note, though, I really don't approve of slapping, but I can understand that people used to do that several decades ago. Still, it's understandable why most of us were moved by Chandra slapping Alice: nowadays we think that it is awful and degrading to hit a child.

Slapping is just bullying.

I thought letting her go back to her bunk would be ok. Or letting her visit with her parents.
The doctor was much bigger than her and he was also an authority figure.

The proof on the last two posts are not proof at all.
I assume they are ment to be punny (spelled correctly).

Anyone remember the movie Airplane?? - That scene is histerical when they line up to slap the **** out of that lady..

Now I'm not saying he shoulda hit her..but I understand..

Honestly, I agree with the stance that Alice was NOT hysterical. This isn't something that can be gauged by the strength of the storm. When she got an F, she caused a destructive hailstorm. In the episode, when she was a little sad, there was a thunderstorm. When she cheered up a little, it stopped suddenly and the sun came out. The weather is obviously fine tuned to her emotional condition.

So even while her storm was dangerous, Alice herself was not "hysterical" (a medical term that isn't accepted anymore. I only used it in my above post to make fun of the passe practice of slapping emotional women).

Even as a child I did not think that slapping or hitting was appropriate unless it was in controlled discipline by a parent or teacher. (by controlled I mean no anger involved. the adult had time to put themselves out of the problem emotionally before administering any form of discipline.) I'm also not saying that I never fought; my fighting was in getting other people to stop hitting or bullying my little brother.

Alice was upset. A gust of wind opened the door and a bolt of lightening hit one of the scientists inside. What are the chances of that happening? Obviously Chandra knew Alice would have an ability otherwise she wouldn't be there. He put two and two together. It wasn't a huge assumption.

I'm going to have to agree with Synch here. How was he supposed to restrain her? Keep in mind Normals naturally fear Specials so I doubt Chandra thought she was just going to blow off steam and then go back to her bunk.

What I find unacceptable is that they shot any of the Specials. Especially a man who was trying to protect his daughter.

I think that the guards were under the stress of being around genetically superior people. I mean, if the Specials wanted to, they could've potentially destroyed the camp with their abilities.

Slapping does not work when the only reason the person was hysterical in the first place was because you were being aggressive or otherwise threatening towards them


Meaning, Mohinder's idiocy at pinnacle moments was apparently inherited from ol' pop.

I forgot that this board lacks a sarcasm detector.

I really just think that Suresh slapped her to get her to snap out of it.

Taking a more modern approach to New Age parental behaviour, Alice was really just an Indigo Child expressing her inner creative spirit and instead of slapping her in the third eye and forever damaging her inner child, Suresh should have put her in "time out," so she could reflect on how bad she'd been.

As has been noted, the culture was a little different back then as regarded things like slapping women and children, he was in an extremely agitating situation and panicked a little bit, and it looked like he regretted it almost immediately.

It seems to me people are being WAY too PC about slapping. I don't think he should have slapped her, mainly because he wasn't her parent, and when you slap kids, it should be on their butts, but it isnt like he punched her. Regardless, his over reaction pales in comparison to the guards. He slapped, the guard shot. Which is worse?

My problem isn't really with the show. It was a different time, Chandra was scared, he overreacted, and he slapped her. I don't like it, but I find it completely understandable.

I just find it hard to believe that some people think that today if the same events occurred, slapping was the best option open. I don't see how anyone thinks slapping a scared little girl who's creating a major sandstorm out of her fear would actually make the situation better.

But now I'm just being redundant. Shutting up now.

If we want to talk about todays best options, I would go with Tranq gun, Taser, Chloroform on a rag, or maybe a nice TKO. Im kidding (maybe), but honestly, a slap isnt the worst thing in the world. For quieting down a scared little girl, probably not a good idea, but when you have a random soldier shoot that guy (was that really her dad?) a slap reallys seems insignificant. I think everyone over reacted. Alice, Chandra, The guy that got shot, and the soldier that shot him. None of them really made any good decisions

Well, she wouldn't o' stayed there for 50 years..XD

Geez people, the episode was set in a time when people behaved with differing sensibilties. Slapping people often happened then. It happens today. People do not always make the right decision. Maybe he thought that if he slapped her hard enough he could knock her out and stop the storm...

Either way it was 1961, and you slapped people who were out of line. I think a few judicial slappings would do a lot of people TODAY some good.

Yeah, because clearly it was SO effective and helpful there.

Please
Pleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleaseplease
pleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleaseplease

Tell me you're kidding.

For the love of God say it's a joke.

I wish that I were.

Some of the parenting communities I sometimes read for the heck of it on Live Journal tell me otherwise. Which is scary. And then there are these communities which are . . . something you kind of have to read to experience.

There was a "parenting Indigo children" community on LJ a few years ago which I think is now defunct, but, oh my God, the posts on there? So exactly what I wrote up there it's not even funny.

Anyways, back to your regularly scheduled topic! Do I think slapping her was wrong? No, because it's not like he could have done anything else other than had one of the guards shoot her at that point, and I don't think they were shooting people with tranq guns.

Chandra Didn't do this on purpose

He lost control, as he did say sorry to Alice.

Alice's father got way out of control, he killed everyone on that base camp.

This is what is wrong with the world today. You realize she was kind of in a time out... a time out called Coyote Sands. Seriously, when you have somebody who is behaving badly, you have to set them right.

Expressing her inner creative spirit? No, creativity is art, not shooting lightning at somebody. She was throwing a tantrum, out of fear. That tantrum in this case was augmented by the storm. She needed to be incapacitated before she did more damage, because she was completely out of control.

You put a child, be it a real world child, into time out and all you get is a child who will stew on it until they pretend to be "better" just to get out. Believe me, we put all sorts of people into time out, like jail, and they rarely reflect on how bad they have been. More often than not they find a way to get back at those who put them there.

Indigo Child, my third eye!

-BAT