HEROES...as good as ever! Spoilers for S3 and S4 to last Monday

[rabid1st]

There are people who will tell you not to listen to those of us who claim Heroes is as good as ever this season. But week after week, no show consistently satisfies as this show does. More over, no other television drama has a more consistently coherent narrative line. Season after season, I can count on Heroes tying up all the loose ends into a tepid, but narratively satisfying finale. I can count on Heroes remembering that they put Mohindar into an asylum and left Hiro dying while in brain surgery.

Of course, it is the TEPID part that frustrates my fellow sci-fi nerds. They crave the special effects laden extravaganza they've come to expect from sci-fi television. They want shouting and emo rending of garments and...well...a RTD showdown where the hero cries and wails and is reborn with a fiery explosion, only to go on with a new adventure as if nothing ever happened to him. And instead, Heroes gives us The Wall...an episode where Peter is trapped in Sylar's mind and the two of them spend years getting to know one another while trying to escape from a lifeless world by destroying a wall. It's not BIG...it's small and intimate and...interesting.

Meanwhile, the villian of the season, Samuel, does a marvelous, mostly understated, turn as an abusive husband to his entire band of carnival Specials. He loves them, you see, and he will kill anyone who doesn't appreciate how much he cares. At the beginning of this season, I didn't really buy into Samuel...but as the season progressed, once again, the Heroes writers have gently manuevered me into a place where I am interested in how he will meet his end. They've given him layers and made him more interesting. Sure, he's a villian, but he's also a man who wants people to respect him and love him and is always falling short of his happy fantasy life.

And amazingly, Sylar is growing on me again. See? Unlike so many sci-fi fans, I am not enamored of the unstoppable villian figure, who keeps failing to die, yet, failing also to give up on his evil ways. I do not admire The Master, I find him yawnable and a waste of my time as a view. I would much rather see a new villian every season than visit the Daleks once again. Though...an occasional Dalek story or Master story is fine. The Sylar story worked for me in S1 and again when he was after the President in S3. But I've found his inner battle this season far more interesting than his killing sprees.

I thought the sick capture of Sylar in the S3 finale, trapping him in the life of deceased Nathan Petrelli, was inspired and it the fall out from that decision has made for a compelling season for me. I'm a Peter/Claire shipper...yes...still. But the thing about Heroes that is its most amazing conceit and its Achille's Heel...is that it meanders through randomness toward coherence. There is no real concentration on any one set of characters or their trials, there is only the over-plot and how the various people come together to thwart the "inevitable" end of the world.

I do think that the show is well worth watching as it is a master class in seeding a storyline and bring it fruitfully to conclusion. Out of 4 seasons, only S2 failed to deliver by drawing all the threads together, and that was because of the writer's strike cutting the season short. But, if you are hoping to delve deeply into a particular relationship...you can expect to be consistently disappointed. Like House M.D., Heroes offers an occasional bone to the shippers. This last episode played a card to the Peter/Sylar crowd and a few weeks ago, we Peter/Claire shippers finally had a lovely and intense episode as the two most important people in Nathan's life were given a long-coming chance to grieve over his death. I have enjoyed this season as much as I enjoyed S1 and that is saying something.

I hope we do get a S5...and I still hope that Peter and Claire turn out not to be related, so that we Paire shippers can have our dreams be a little less weird. The two things I haven't enjoyed as much this season was the peripheralizing of some characters like Mohindar...though really...I got very sick of him in S3...and the Claire/Gretchen storyline. The latter just seems so very forced, even though I like Gretchen as a character. I just don't buy into gay Claire.

Comments

[susanb03.livejournal.com]

It's funny, I started watching Heroes because I'd heard CE was a guest star... Watched the first seasone with CE and George Takei, but never got back into it... until this year with Emma (Deanne Bray) I love how she's allowed to be a REAL DEAF CHARACTER. There's so few of those in the tv world. Thanks for the remider to imdb and see which of her eps I've missed!

[rabid1st.livejournal.com]

Emma is pivotal this season. Though I don't think her relationship with Peter is going anywhere. She's got a huge part to play in next week's finale. And I like her as a character. I would be happy to see her and Sylar hook up for a time. Though...truly...nobody hooks up for long on Heroes. It is not a shipper show. And I feel that is one of the reasons it isn't soaring like it did in S1. In S1 there was a huge Claire/Peter storyline and also a very romantic and twisted couple in Jessica and Nikki and their husband.

Rae

[myemmie.livejournal.com]

Huh...you know I think you're the first person since S1 who's actually given me a real (and good!) explanation as to why the show is interesting - not just a "Because it's HEROES!" reasoning for me to watch.
I may get back into this after all!

[hoegh.livejournal.com]

Hmm... I admit that I'm one of those who still watch Heroes, even though I think it's sucked lately. I've wondered why I'm still watching (apart from the pretty), and I think you're right that it's the intricate web that still supports the overall plot. But I'm not tired of it because of a lack of action, it's just that I think the characters have become complete card-board cut-outs. There's no development and nothing that makes me feel empathic towards them - in the beginning there was a very definite feel that these were real people with ordinary lives that suddenly had to deal with something extremely extraordinary. I'm not sure when that fell by the wayside, but today I think the characters are about as deep as on Disney Channel. Whether it's due to the writing, directing or acting, I'm not sure. Probably a bit of all three.

[rabid1st.livejournal.com]

This is the thing. And I almost put it in my review, but I sort of ran out of steam. That thing took me hours. But...had I felt up to it...I was going to say that people would be more engaged with Heroes if they spent more time on character interaction. Heroes is very much what it pretends to be...a comic book on TV. It gives us sketches of character in small panels over a two page spread and then moves on to another character at the same time but elsewhere. And then there is the overall web of the plot.

I do feel that if they let the characters interact with more meaning...the fanbase would have stayed fanatical...because that is the one thing they lost from S1. In S1, we were getting to know everyone...so they HAD to interact with more meaning. And that pulled a lot of us into the web of the story. Now, as you say, the characters are more like playing pieces and far less effort is spent on developing them with any relevance to the other characters. It isn't that there isn't development...it is that the development serves the plot and is without greater character context.

What I mean is...Gabriel's journey this season has been interesting...but part of me doubts that it will be a lasting change...as he will be set into a new comic book position next season to play his cardboard part, too. I think that it is only the desperate actors that give us anything to hook onto as far as character...poor Hayden simply sleepwalked through her incomprehensible behaviors this year and, I felt, she had no conviction...even in her most passionate pleas. But Milo and a few others were still swinging for the fences as they worked toward some resolution.

Heroes would be better served next season in developing the few relationships people truly care about...Peter/Claire/Noah/Angela...Sylar...and Ando/Hiro...Charlie. Matt Parkman and Monhindar are both useful peripheral characters, but I would like to see (what is probably impossible) a final season with some lasting resonance surrounding these characters who started out as strangers and have now saved the world several times over.

Rae

[hoegh.livejournal.com]

Precisely! And re the desperate actors - I'll say that Samuel has grown on me, perhaps not so much because of the character, but there is something about Robert Kneppers portrayal of him that makes him more real than I think any of the others have been this year.

[hoegh.livejournal.com]

Oh, and by the way (I left a very late comment about this to your last post about supernatural) - do you think it was significant that Gary ordered a banana daquiri? I immediately thought "Doctor!" but maybe banana daquiris are just widely used props... though I believe Gary could very well be a Doctor fan.

[rabid1st.livejournal.com]

I don't know that it is any more significant than his closet full of Star Wars t-shirts. It is possible that one of the writers (or given this is Supernatural...the actor) is aware of the Doctor Who significance of the drink. I wonder if the idea of the Banana Daquiri having been invented by the Doctor is even largely talked about within OUR fandom. It is possible that they just wanted Gary to order the wimpiest Non-Sam drink they could imagine and Banana Daquiri was it. I mean Dean has already had purple nurples and sex on the beach and a few other weird drinks.

So...I don't think it has any REAL significance...but it could have been an adlib from the actor. Supernatural lets the actors do quite a bit of that, it seems.

[rabid1st.livejournal.com]

Well, I would like to entice you back to the fold. :grin: I am one of those people who feels that, for many people, Heroes is a show that is much more appealing on DVD than on television. People with busy lives, and frankly, no training for following a plot...are going to get very impatient and lost over the course of a year. It is a show that does lend itself to a strong and compulsively nitpicking online fanbase, though. And it appeals to storytelling nerds like me, with my obsessions about little details. I must say I get thrilled when the compass on Peter's arm works or when some thread that Hiro pulled in the plot six weeks earlier leads to a particular outcome. But I can understand how that isn't enough to entertain the masses.

I really wish that they would give more attention to character interactions that might become more meaningful for the viewers. The characters are too often treated like playing pieces in a chess game...they are given plausible reasons for their behaviors...but still they seem cut off from a larger reality. It is hard to imagine what they might do when they aren't saving the world.