So I’ve been slogging through the first season of Heroes on DVD just to watch all the deleted scenes and special features before the new season starts on September 24.
Watching it for the second time in a more compressed schedule really helps one to see the overall story and direction of the show. Sudden course changes and character modifications are far more evident when watched this way.
When Heroes started it was a great show. By the end of its first season, I’d say it was only a good show.
So when did it go wrong? I wouldn’t have been able to pinpoint it if not for my current watching of the season.
It clearly went from great to good when Hiro met Charlie.
Before this time, the show was full of suspense and awesomeness.
It kept itself moderately consistent with its own internal logic and wowed us every week with something new and exciting.
The buildup of the meeting of all of these heroes was something to be overjoyed at the prospect of.
There was just no way it wasn’t going to be great when it culminated in the saving of the cheerleader.
But then the 8th episode was aired — “Seven Minutes to Midnight.”
Most notably in this episode we see that Hiro has inexplicably chosen to drive through Texas to get to New York from Las Vegas. Not even airplanes take such stupid routes.
Then he meets Charlie who explains that she has just learned Japanese from a book that was given to her on her birthday a few weeks ago — a book that we learn was given to her by Hiro when he goes back in time to try to save her from zombie death at the hands of Sylar.
Only, she doesn’t recognize him. So she has a Japanese book she got from Hiro but Hiro hasn’t gone back in time yet so she doesn’t remember him, yet she has the book!?
As great of an addition as Masi Oka is to the cast of Heroes, time travel is a dangerous thing. Few writers have done it correctly, and Tim Kring proved that he can’t do it correctly.
After this episode, the world was shattered. Things that were beginning to make sense no longer made sense. There was never sufficient explanation for Hiro’s powers and where exactly the whole time traveling thing started and stopped.
It was as if Kring realized that he had created a character so powerful that fans could always argue that nothing was at stake (something goes wrong, just send Hiro back to fix it). So in an effort to show that Hiro had limits to his powers, he introduced the Charlie plotline.
Problem is he sucked it up and turned a great show into only a good one.
I’ll keep watching Heroes, but I’ll miss those first 7 episodes when it was all so perfect and the only thing to complain about was Mohinder being a whiny baby.
Ah yes, when Hiro met Charlie. I really liked the deli scene.
Oh – Charlie? Right. I think Hiro was too powerful – it’s kinda like Phoenix or Superman, you need a weakness. I did think it was a little weird about Texas, but one thing about this show is the characters seem drawn to each other, in Vegas, Texas, New York – I wonder if that’s something they haven’t revealed.
Are you keeping up with the comics, or are you waiting for the first collection?
I kept up with the comics during the show’s airing, but I forgot about them during the summer.
I’m totally excited that they’re going to release a hard copy of all of the comics. That’s probably when I’ll make an effort to go back and read them.
I really don’t like the way they’re presented on NBC’s site for reading. It’s a hassle.