Saturday, November 01, 2008

TV: Heroes

STARRING: Milo Ventimiglia (Gilmore Girls), Masi Oka (Scrubs), Adrian Pasdar (Judging Amy), Greg Grunberg (Alias), Hayden Panettiere (Guiding Light)
CREATOR: Tim Kring (Crossing Jordan)
PLOT: Ordinary people are developing incredible abilities such as stopping time, flying, reading minds, being indestructible. Havoc ensues.

FIVE OBSERVATIONS
4The first season was pretty good. The second season was terrible. This third season is mediocre so far. I’m being far more generous than the writers at Entertainment Weekly.
4 The cast is ginormous. There are about 13 main characters to keep track of, a dozen or so supporting characters (almost all with special abilities too) and they’re still introducing more heroes and villains to the mix. With such a large cast, we hardly get to invest in any of the characters. (Puppetmaster we hardly knew thee.)
4 Suresh is the most infuriating character on series television (even more than Peter Petrelli talking out of the side of his mouth). Suresh’s narration is grating to listen to. Suresh is often working for the bad guys and doesn’t realize it. Suresh is supposed to be this genius scientist who pulls the whole show together, but he has become the anchor that drags the show down. Kill this character please!
4 This show makes me appreciate Lost all the more. Heroes goes for quick fixes no matter how convoluted or unearned. Lost rewards those who stick around. Heroes overuses time travel to confuse the audience while Lost uses it flashbacks/flashforwards to illuminate and pull in its viewers. The characters on Lost are consistent from episode one to present. Watch the pilot of Heroes, Mama Petrelli as a mastermind of good/evil? I call bullshit on that one; there is absolutely no hint of her powerful position.
4 One of the episodes I liked this season was the pairing of HRG & Sylar to foil the bank job. A silly premise but fun to watch. It was like a buddy-cop show. But alas, Sylar was back to the brig at the end of the episode. Or is he out now? Or was that in the future? Or in the past? I really don’t know anymore.

RECOMMENDATION
Casual View (becoming Avoid at all Costs
if it doesn’t change its tune soon)

COMING SOON
TV reviews of The Office, Entourage,
My Own Worst Enemy (waiting for the fifth episode)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I decided to stop watching Heroes after last week. Characters are invincible. Twists dont actually take effect. Its become a game of guessing who is good and who is bad, rather than wondering how the good guy is going to defeat the bad guy.

One of the reasons I can't watch anymore is this bringing back the dead thing they keep doing...Ali Larter will have played 4 or 5 characters once its over.
I think they need to take some cues from Prison Break and kill off at least 1/2 the characters.

Sidenote
I am enjoying Kath & Kim!

mel

Unknown said...

Karina is still watching heros but I've lost interest. I can't keep track and there is so much flipping around from character to character that I don't know and don't care what is happening anymore. If they kill half of them and let me invest in someone then I might change my mind.