The Heroes Review I Don't Want To Write

I was expecting Heroes to have an epic Finale. Season 1 kept building, and building...and ended with a fizzle. I felt like Ian Malcolm in Jurassic Park ("You do have dinosaurs in your dinosaur park, right?"), because we have all of these superpowered people who decide when the time is right, not to use them. And it's not like these are unestablished powers - it made the episode seem trite and bound by the laws and budgets of a tv show. I figured that NBC would have dumped more money into it for the effects work. Good special effects and epicness are possible in a tv show - see Firefly, which has spectacular effects (and a great story, damn you FOX for..everything).

Here's a list of things that I either didn't like or didn't get:

1. New York City. I love NY. What a fantastic place. The thing is, the city in last nights episode was not NY. It was a dark sound stage somewhere. The evidence of this is that "Kirby Plaza" (a fake place with a sculpture that is in LA) is a bustling intersection in the daytime and apparantly abandonded at night. There were no people, no cars, no traffic. Not even any traffic noises. For a show about "Saving the World" you'de think that maybe actually putting regular people in peril might have made the show more dramatic. Have "civilians" see Peter going nuclear, and running for their lives. Panic in the streets. Chaos. Epic. The fact (and the truth) is that by making NYC empty, the lameness/tvness level was increased dramatically.

2. Super Powers. If you got 'em, use 'em. Now, Company Man is one of the best episodes of Heroes. It's the one where Ted the Caveman goes all nuke-ish in the Bennett household. The effects were awesome, as was the tension. No fast forward to the finale. Peter's loss of control ofver the nuke power looked totally different. There were no cool flashes or pulses of light, no cries of panic, pain, despair. The scene was utterly emotionless, and devoid of any of the tension from Company Man.

3. Loose ends. This was described repeatadly by Tim Kring (the creator) as an enclosed episode. We have loose ends everywhere. 5 characters who may or may not be dead, Simone and Charles never fully or clearly explained, and the coupe de grace: Save the Cheerleader Save the World. Apparantly the reality was Save the Cheeleader, The Cheerleader stands around and does nothing. It doesn't matter now, because not only did she not shoot Peter, but Sylar, who can stop bullets but not a sword, got away. Claire did NOTHING in the finale, and while you can argue that if Sylar had her power, he would have regenerated after being stabbed and still exploded. I still think she should have played a bigger role. Oh yeah, and whatever happened to Claude the Invisible Man? Him showing up would have been AWESOME.

See, I don't think I'm stupid. I'm actually kind of smart. Smart enough to know when I've been insulted by the writers of a TV show. All the hype and buildup, and the payoff wasn't there. NBC, Tim Kring, and the writers should be ashamed. Like it or not, there job is to entertain and give US what we, the viewer, wants. That's the nature of television. I'm not trying to be oeverly negative, but people want to be thrilled and entertained to the max. Spider-Man 3 may have had a crap story, but people wanted to be wowed by the awesome special effects. That's why it set an opening weekend record. I swear, the finale of Heroes was so emo I was expecting Peter to start cutting himself.

In retrospect, I think I'm going to give Heroes a break. I'll check out Season 2, but I'm not exactly excited for it. I'll always think of it as a show that had a ton of potential, but that just never delivered. I should expect it, that's a Hollwood theme lately. Retread old stories, and build hype for things that are just totally lame (Fantastic 4 anyone? Silver Surfer looks worse than the T1000 from Terminator 2 in 1994).

So let me know what you think, leave a comment!