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More Or Less, Just a Sandwich
By bukkhead | October 1, 2007
TV REVIEW: ‘HEROES
Created by Tim Kring
NBC
Season 1: 23 episodes
We finished watching Heroes Season 1 on DVD about a month ago, a week after it hit the stores. We are fans of DVD TV shows as opposed to watching them in a normal broadcast fashion, since we don’t like to be toyed with, with regard to cliff hangers. And it’s this that best illustrates why I have not written the review for this long: I don’t have much to say.
What I mean is, had we been watching Heroes week by week, we would have seen the cliffhanger, agonized for 7 days (or more if a repeat was showing), and then been very disappointed at the often lame cliffhanger resolution. And by the middle of the season I would have gotten fed up with this. And then I would have written an angry review full piss and vinegar.
But because we watched all of the episodes more or less back to back, there was little cliffhanger agony, and little resolution disappointment. And so I really didn’t know what to write about when we finally got done.
For those that don’t know, Heroes is about several mutants who have secret superpowers, fighting a war led by a bald man in a wheel—wait, no, sorry, wrong story. The show is about some weird circumstances surrounding some very special people, and the two FBI agents who investigate—wait, no sorry, wrong again. Okay: Heroes is about some folks who discover they have heroic abilities, and they must come together to stop either the good guy or the bad guy from blowing up all of New York City.
The intrigue is in who knows what, and in this sense the JJ Abrams influence is clear, and good. The man knows intrigue, and that’s why, even though nothing much happened, I watched the show. In each episode, both the viewer and the characters deal with a Machiavellian web of facts, lies, suppositions, and conclusions. More or less, that leads them around, with a healthy does of future-sight justified deux ex machina to keep things on track.
But in the end, like I said, nothing happens. The good guys “win,” in as much as they don’t lose. And the bad guy “loses,” in as much as he doesn’t kill everyone, even though you can’t be sure that’s what he wanted to do. I have to hand it to the actor who played the bad guy, though, who portrayed his hunger for power expertly without knowing what the hell he wanted all that power for at all.
Too often, these fantastical stories require us to accept them as passion plays, good old stories about good versus evil and man’s struggle to be better than himself. Yawn. I’m going to need more than that. Sure, toss in a cute blond cheerleader, that will hold me for a while. And the wow factor of special effects, okay. But through the course of 20+ episodes, I’m going to need more than that. Patrick Stewart’s excellent acting, at least.
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