I just finished watching NBC’s highly anticipated and much talked about Heroes. When I read a preview for the show on TV.com the reviewer likened the show to Lost, but with super heroes. So far that’s a huge clumpy piece of bullshit. The show has nothing in common with lost other than an ensemble cast of relative unknowns.
In fact, Lost had people hooked in the first half hour of the first episode. Heroes didn’t have me going until the final five minutes of the show, and even then it wasn’t the five alarm nerdgasm all the hype told me I would have after watching this show. Albeit the hook at the end was awesome, and there are glimpses of good fun, but over all the show was cliché. “I just wanted to feel alive.” is the response of the mother to the young male nurse, Peter, after he asked her why she was caught shoplifting. We learn her husband of 41 years has died and blah, blah, blah… cheese is cheese. Another cheesy moment is the angsty teenage hottie who is apparently completely… well… angsty about her newfound invulnerability powers. She survives a three story fall, walks through fire and even shoves her hand in to an active garbage disposal without much hesitation. It’s all very… dulling. This is the kind of angsty cliché I expect out of an indy emo band, not a series like this.
The show also suffers from a lot of dumb-isms. Dumb-isms can be found all over TV, but for a show totted as being smart I couldn’t help notice the convenience of having a clock above the head of Hiro as he fast forwarded time through his boring train ride home. Also, Hiro (HEE-RO?) That’s not clever, it’s ham fisted. Likewise, the obvious attempt to link all the characters seems more like an afterthought in the writing than a cleverly planned event. At the end the eclipse reigns down to let us all know that every mutant is connected in some way. Small key items throughout the show link each character as well. Like Hiro’s desktop wallpaper being a dragon and later Niki Sanders’ son reading a comic book with the same cover page. Speaking of Niki Sanders, the dirty whore slut with a child just trying to get by and make something for her son has been done to death. It all seems forced, melodramatic, and easy. I guess I’m mostly just pissed that everyone was hailing this as Lost with super heroes and it wasn’t anything like that. Fuckers.
Long story short the show so far is decent at best. It didn’t rock my pants off like The Office and House did in their debuts, but I’m willing to give it a second chance next week because of the two great cliffhangers. Hopefully all of this exposition will be over with and the meat of the show will be comprehensible soon because if the show drags its feet too much I spit on its grave.
