Heroes: Volume One
I just finished Heroes, Volume One on DVD. Interesting stuff. I don’t have TV, so I wasn’t watching during the broadcast season - I devoured the whole thing in one prolonged gulp over the past two weeks. Some thoughts (with spoilers):
My first impression is that I wish the writing could match the design and production of this show. The concept is brilliant, the show has some great characters and performances (particularly Hiro, Mr. Bennett, Sylar, and the Petrelli brothers), and the cinematography and musical design are awesome. The writing, however, feels weak in places. Although there are a few very outstanding episodes (“Genesis,” “Company Man,” “Five Years Gone”), there are a number of episodes that feel almost awesome, but not quite. I’ve been trying to think of a word for this, and the best I can come up with is “goodiocre” (better than mediocre, but less that truly good).
Some example problems: “Save the cheerleader, save the world” is an awesome tagline for the show, but the way this plotline is developed becomes murky once you dig into it. It was clearly a great way to connect characters that would otherwise never have crossed paths, but Claire’s actual importance for the finale is somewhat obscure. Yes, it’s good that Sylar wasn’t able to regenerate (clearly that’s important), but the show seems to signal that there’s more to it - when Nathan comes to Peter, he indicates that he’s had a change of heart because of Claire, but… Well, the whole climax in the final episode baffles me. Why was Peter losing control of his powers? Why does Nathan have to fly him away, when he can fly himself? Why not put a bullet in his head, shut him down, and then pull the bullet out later so that he can regenerate, like he did with the glass shard? Or tranquilize him, like Clair did with Ted in Texas? I suppose many of my writing problems come down to the climax in the season finale - I don’t feel like many of the long-plotted storylines come to a satisfying conclusion. The Peter stuff in particular seems very weird and illogical to me.
Hiro’s story, however, was great. His takedown of Sylar was totally successful for me.
The show has a sloppy time-travel paradigm, though, which bugs me. I love time travel stories, but I think you need to figure out your fundamental “laws” or “axioms” of time before getting into such stories, or else you end up with lots of inconsistencies. In my mind, for example, the meeting between Young Hiro and Future Hiro in “Five Years Gone” is impossible. Young Hiro is supposedly meeting a Future Hiro who has not gone back in time to tell Peter to “save the cheerleader,” yet in this future, the message has already been delivered, and Claire is alive. But Future Hiro gets shot at the end of the episode, suggesting he could never have gone back in time to deliver the message. Inconsistent! I think they’re just fudging it, which bugs me. It’s not that hard to keep your time travel stories tight, people!
I wish the show had better female leads. Both of the major female characters (Claire and Niki) are strongly determined by their roles as a daughter and as a mother, and that bores me. I wish there was a stronger independent female character. Eden was cool, but she bought it too soon (good death though), and the shapeshifter hasn’t had enough development to count. The redheaded waitress was fantastic, but ended up dying to motivate Hiro (sigh).
Oddly, I’m struck by how Northern-Hemispheric the show is. (Mostly because I’ve been reading too much American Studies stuff lately!) The “world” we see in the credits is the northern hemisphere (centered on America) revolving in from below - we see the northern hemisphere clearly, but once the equator crosses onto the screen, the world goes “dark” and we get the image of the eclipse. The “novas” in the show, while moderately racially diverse, all come from regions in the Northern Hemisphere (as far as I’ve noticed?) It seems implausible, given that there have been genetic mutations producing heroes for at least a few generations, that only humans in the Northern Hemisphere are evolving! This isn’t really a big deal - it’s just interesting that while the show attempts to be inclusive, the limits of it’s inclusivity are globally northern.
Enough for now! More later…
My first impression is that I wish the writing could match the design and production of this show. The concept is brilliant, the show has some great characters and performances (particularly Hiro, Mr. Bennett, Sylar, and the Petrelli brothers), and the cinematography and musical design are awesome. The writing, however, feels weak in places. Although there are a few very outstanding episodes (“Genesis,” “Company Man,” “Five Years Gone”), there are a number of episodes that feel almost awesome, but not quite. I’ve been trying to think of a word for this, and the best I can come up with is “goodiocre” (better than mediocre, but less that truly good).
Some example problems: “Save the cheerleader, save the world” is an awesome tagline for the show, but the way this plotline is developed becomes murky once you dig into it. It was clearly a great way to connect characters that would otherwise never have crossed paths, but Claire’s actual importance for the finale is somewhat obscure. Yes, it’s good that Sylar wasn’t able to regenerate (clearly that’s important), but the show seems to signal that there’s more to it - when Nathan comes to Peter, he indicates that he’s had a change of heart because of Claire, but… Well, the whole climax in the final episode baffles me. Why was Peter losing control of his powers? Why does Nathan have to fly him away, when he can fly himself? Why not put a bullet in his head, shut him down, and then pull the bullet out later so that he can regenerate, like he did with the glass shard? Or tranquilize him, like Clair did with Ted in Texas? I suppose many of my writing problems come down to the climax in the season finale - I don’t feel like many of the long-plotted storylines come to a satisfying conclusion. The Peter stuff in particular seems very weird and illogical to me.
Hiro’s story, however, was great. His takedown of Sylar was totally successful for me.
The show has a sloppy time-travel paradigm, though, which bugs me. I love time travel stories, but I think you need to figure out your fundamental “laws” or “axioms” of time before getting into such stories, or else you end up with lots of inconsistencies. In my mind, for example, the meeting between Young Hiro and Future Hiro in “Five Years Gone” is impossible. Young Hiro is supposedly meeting a Future Hiro who has not gone back in time to tell Peter to “save the cheerleader,” yet in this future, the message has already been delivered, and Claire is alive. But Future Hiro gets shot at the end of the episode, suggesting he could never have gone back in time to deliver the message. Inconsistent! I think they’re just fudging it, which bugs me. It’s not that hard to keep your time travel stories tight, people!
I wish the show had better female leads. Both of the major female characters (Claire and Niki) are strongly determined by their roles as a daughter and as a mother, and that bores me. I wish there was a stronger independent female character. Eden was cool, but she bought it too soon (good death though), and the shapeshifter hasn’t had enough development to count. The redheaded waitress was fantastic, but ended up dying to motivate Hiro (sigh).
Oddly, I’m struck by how Northern-Hemispheric the show is. (Mostly because I’ve been reading too much American Studies stuff lately!) The “world” we see in the credits is the northern hemisphere (centered on America) revolving in from below - we see the northern hemisphere clearly, but once the equator crosses onto the screen, the world goes “dark” and we get the image of the eclipse. The “novas” in the show, while moderately racially diverse, all come from regions in the Northern Hemisphere (as far as I’ve noticed?) It seems implausible, given that there have been genetic mutations producing heroes for at least a few generations, that only humans in the Northern Hemisphere are evolving! This isn’t really a big deal - it’s just interesting that while the show attempts to be inclusive, the limits of it’s inclusivity are globally northern.
Enough for now! More later…