“Heroes”- The Line
Well there’s good news and there’s bad news. The Good news? The show finally had its “Here’s where we’re taking the season” moment, given to hopefully keep us interested, despite the overall lack of focus of the rest of the season so far. The bad news? Its exactly the same as last season. EXACTLY. The only difference this time was that it was Peter jumping a year ahead to a completely destroyed New York, and not Hiro. This just further illustrates the writers inability to do anything to actually move the show forward from where it was last season. More after the jump…
Season one was an origin story. A bunch of people find out they have superpowers, and are on a collision course to meet up and save New York from being completely destroyed, in what basically amounts to a ripoff of the ending of “Watchmen“. When you go to see a superhero sequel, you don’t expect to see the same movie a second time, only slightly different (unless it’s The Hulk). You want to see growth in the characters, i.e. now that they have fully realized their powers at the end of the first one, you want to see them fully in control and capably fighting the good fight, maybe with some bumps thrown in along the way. I’m really not quite sure what the people in charge actually had in mind coming in to this season, but it basically feels like a complete re-tread of season one, only this time they’re completely misusing characters, or not letting the story be about the characters, but rather the characters serving the story.
The most obvious example of this forced storytelling happened at the end of last night’s episode. Rather than having Peter go to Montreal and have some sort of twist that the French streets were in Louisianna (thereby allowing a possible meet-up with the two characters living there, and maybe Sylar and the Wondertwins as they make their way east), they took the easy way out and had the place actually be in Montreal. Honestly, that wasn’t that big of an issue, because it turned out that the location didn’t matter anyway. It was a completely arbitrary city that was supposed to be mysterious because it had French street names. Once they got there, it wasn’t even important anyway, because the only thing there was an unsigned note. “Great, another dead end… way to think it out before pulling the trigger, guys”, I thought. Then randomly, (and I mean totally randomly; Peter has no idea how they got there) they jumped forward in time to a blue screen of the “I am Legend” set. Why would they make a big point of having them go to Montreal if as soon as they get there, they jump to 2008 New York? It’s possibly the most-forced moment of the year AND it’s the same stunt they pulled last year. Granted I wasn’t expecting it, but a surprise is different than a credible “twist“, in that there has to be some sort of logic behind it, not just an arbitrary need for the plot to move forward. If they had something that Peter saw in the room that made him think of New York and his power accidentally went off, I’d buy it, but totally out of the blue with no provocation? Nah. And is it just me, or are you guys also not really interested in this “X-Men”-ripoff virus storyline? One more thing. For a show that’s shot in L.A., I don’t really understand the constant use of New York. I mean, it’s by far a more dramatic and recognizable location than L.A. but there are plenty of other cities in the country, and if they’re going to just blue-screen every location rather than finding an actual outdoors place (I’m also looking at you HRG), why make it somewhere you’ve been already? Why not Chicago, Seattle, Washington, Boston, or most logically, Atlanta, the home of the CDC? Maybe there’s something to seeing a completely lifeless Times Square, but its been done in Vanilla Sky, and coming up in the Will Smith vampire movie, and with much better results.
I almost feel betrayed by the show at this point. I mean, didn’t the end of the season kind of ensure that coming into this year, everyone would know each other, and probably be working together in some capacity? That logically, considering they all have SUPER POWERS they would’ve all kept in contact in some capacity or another, just in case “future events such as these, affect them in the future”? At the very least, I expected that things would change from last year. At five episodes in, lets look at where the plotlines stand.
Claire and her dad are hiding things from each other, while Claire and her boyfriend muse about how evil the cheerleaders are. Meanwhile her dad is off doing violent things so that he can find mysterious paintings that tell the future. Parkman is hunting down a dangerous character who may have tangential ties to the circumstances that will shape the rest of the season. Hiro’s having an adventure somewhere that’s not the present. The company is abducting people. Mohinder is doing some genetic stuff. Nikki is working as an enforcer of sorts for someone way higher-up. Peter’s discovering his powers, and trying to figure out all this end of the world stuff. Sylar is coveting a girl that he can get awesome power from. Which season am I talking about? You tell me.
Not only does there seem to be no growth, but a lack of focus also seems to be killing the show. With last night’s Legacy Virus story, and the finding of the Lost Paintings of “Nostradamus” (that was easy enough; I’d assumed they were going to have to find them one by one, or at least they’d be buried next to the Ark of the Covenant in some giant warehouse), where does that put the Mutant Killer story that seemed to be the bigger story only last week? Everything’s a tangled mess with no tension building right now.
On the plus side, how awesome are Zachary Quinto and David Anders? Quinto can go from completely innocent to disturbingly intense and menacing in a believable fashion in no time flat. And I truly felt more sympathy for Anders’ Kensei than I did for Hiro in last night’s episode. Knowing how great Anders is as a villain, I can’t wait to see what he does with the character next, if the writers give him something to work with.
I guess I really shouldn’t be complaining about the end of this episode, because I’ve spent the past few weeks talking about how the show is stagnant week-to-week, and they finally went somewhere with it, even if it was artificially induced. It’s like Crystal Lite; you should, for all intents and purposes, be liking it, but it just leaves this bad aftertaste in your mouth.
