Heroes finale, meh.
UPDATE 2: See some Season 2 finale thoughts.
So recently I’ve been finding out that there are people in the world that think that Heroes is a better show than Battlestar Galactica. I know, crazy, right? Don’t get me wrong I love Heroes, I think it’s a great show and I watched it with great religion, but better than BSG? No. Please. This post is spoilerific so if you haven’t seen the last one, don’t click on more.
Still with me? Just in case, here’s your last chance to avoid any spoilation.
Ok. Keep in mind that I really like Heroes, but it does have some troubles and the finale exemplifies them. The main problem is that all these people have really powerful powers. The flying guy flies so fast he makes a boom when he wants. The other guy can stop time and teleport, the other guy can do all of the above, they are all really strong. But in order for the story to keep going they never can use their full power - they never can behave as I believe they would.
Take Claire jumping out the window. Flying man coulda just flown down and probably saved her before she hit and been on the roof before he otherwise would have been, or at least back in the room. Or when Hiro confronts Sylar in Isaac’s place. Sylar’s so confident and powerful he knows that Hiro can’t stop time before he can kill Ando. And yet, Hiro takes the time to close his eyes and teleport, Sylar? No reaction. Looks around. Kill Ando? Nah.. Oh, there’s Hiro, right next to Ando. Kill Ando? Nah. Now they’re gone again. Or Hiro? First of all, why announce your presence? Ok, you did, whatever. Now stop time and actually kill Sylar? No, teleport twice to save Ando and then don’t teleport back immediately right behind Sylar and kill him.
See? I won’t go into a whole history of problems with Peter, but let’s look at the ending. There was no pathos in his storyline, why? Because he can’t die. Why wouldn’t the cheerleader just shoot him? She knew he wouldn’t die, she just jumped out the window of a sky scraper. She pulled about a foot of glass out of his brain a few days earlier. Why does it matter? Shoot one guy who’s gonna regenerate in about a few minutes or don’t have millions of deaths on your conscience?
The fight between Sylar and Peter? That was just a big let down. I mean Peter can stop time, too. And do all the telekinetic stuff that Sylar can. But no, none of that. Hiro shows up about 20 feet away from Sylar and runs him through because although Sylar’s fast enough to stop bullets after they are shot at him, he can’t stop a man running several feet with a big sword.
And then Nathan comes by, with actually another thing that Peter could have done all along, you know, just fly really high. But no, instead he consents to kill his brother. Presumable Peter doesn’t die, because in the future timeline after the bomb he’s still alive. And Nathan opts to commit suicide? When in fact he hadn’t quite done anything super wrong yet, certainly you wouldn’t think suicide worthy. All this to avoid shooting Peter to kill him for a few minutes? I’m sure I didn’t get it.
The good news is like a good comic story arc, they wrapped everything up and can really shift gears next season. Also, you know Grandma’s a total bad ass, right? We know she’s got some power and I suspect we’ll find out what. :)
You watch the show and suspend your disbelief and suspend it a little extra because it’s comic booky and that’s fine. The show’s great - I love it and I’m surprised and excited that so many people also love it. But better than Battlestar? Better written and acted? Come on, don’t kid yourself. :)
UPDATE: sfsignal didn’t like it either, and shamus writes really didn’t like it. That’s some harsh words! I mean, I don’t think the writing was particularly the show’s strong point - but the plot was good and the characters got interesting. I think it just fell apart in the end.
May 21st, 2007 at 9:47 pm
You’re talking about the old Lorne Greene, Dirk Benedict, Jane Seymour “Battlestar Gallactica”, right? That was the BEST!
May 22nd, 2007 at 7:11 am
Heh, well.. I wouldn’t go that far. Old BSG was good, but new BSG kicks ass. :)
May 22nd, 2007 at 10:35 am
New BSG kickED ass IMHO. 1st 2 seasons were a gift from the frakkin gods. Season 3….not so much. I’ll watch next season of course, but not with the same maniacal glee that I had when it all began.
Sure Heroes has its issues but all in all I like it.
./Michael
May 22nd, 2007 at 11:02 am
PETER COULD FLY. HE COULD HAVE FLOWN HIMSELF AWAY AS SOON AS SYLAR WAS DEAD. HE COULD HAVE GRABBED SYLAR AND FLOWN UP IN THE AIR, BLOWN UP, KILLED SYLAR, SURVIVED, etc. etc. etc.
anyway.
my first use of all caps in… well, ever, I think.
BSG’s writing was really weak midseason, I think. I do not dig the romantic drama, love triangle aspect at all. Also, they all stopped acting like they were running for their lives, etc. Also, Sharon has super powers that can shut down the cylon fleet, but she only sorta uses them, etc, very heroes like in that regard.
I think of these shows and then I think of Deadwood, which is a show where no character large or small acts in an irrational way to drive the plot. The people writing these things have good ideas, but when you can watch an ep of heroes or lost or bsg and find dozens and dozens of things that don’t make sense (”why didn’t ____ just ____ when ____?”) then the writing is not there and I have a hard time watching.
Sylar monologuing was just too much. Real evil kills everyone in the room before they open the door.
May 22nd, 2007 at 11:49 am
It was a bad capper to the end of a great season. They spent too much time paying off emotional subplots that were hastily conceived to begin with (Mohinder and the little girl, Matt Parkman and the little girl, Hiro and his dad, and on and on) so the big battle, instead of taking up the bulk of the episode and being truly badass, happened almost subtextually, over a few minutes, while most of the characters literally sat watching offscreen.
I liked the Buffy-esque hint at next year’s Big Bad (”when I think of him, he can see me”), but they pretty much ignored all of the other lessons Buffy had to teach about how to end a season — which is to say, make it enormous, require the entire cast to actually do something that puts themselves in danger (Nikki: “Oh, I don’t have to help kill Sylar and save the world because Peter asked me not to. I’ll just stand over here looking worried”), etc. And for god’s sake, your characters should spend the time to make sure the bad guy is really dead. Buffy never stabbed a guy once and then went to get a smoothie.
If the episode hadn’t been so ponderous, I don’t think any of us would have noticed the useful powers that went unused.
I can say more, but I don’t have time. I gotta go eat Felix’s brain so I can acquire his powers and code better Perl.
May 22nd, 2007 at 1:00 pm
Michael - huh, you’re the second person I know who didn’t like season 3. For me, the beginning and end of the third was the best TV I’d seen in a long time! There was a bit of a lull in the middle, but then it kicked back in.
Anonymous - yeah, the middle kind of sagged, but I find in BSG that number of times you have to work to suspend your disbelief is pretty minimal. It happens with much greater frequency in Heroes. Don’t get me started on Lost…
kirkunit - Yeah, for me Heroes started off slow and then became awesome. I’m pretty bummed at the crap finale, though. Yeah, if the episode moved more any problems would have been glossed over (just like in all the previous/good eps). Please don’t eat my brain.
May 22nd, 2007 at 4:04 pm
I am probably one of the few people who liked Heroes enough to watch the day-long marathon all day Sunday. Or was it Saturday? On Sci-Fi. Not that I sat there drooling on my couch with three big bags of potato chips and a battery-operated six-pack soda sipper stuck to my bottom lip like Homer from the Simpsons, appropriately groaning or cheering with the action for an entire 18 hours of back to back Heroes action.
I was talking to kirkunit about it, and my main complaint was that they didn’t have to avoid the singular catastrophe after all. They had spent the previous several episodes moving the drama into the characters and their interactions, precisely to lessen the blow of the explosion. That’s why they jumped 5 years into the future! To show that “life goes on after the bomb.” I think they were keeping their options open, but finally just got cold feet.
May 22nd, 2007 at 11:41 pm
I agree with most of what was said. However, if Claire shot Peter in the back of the head he would not regenerate in a few minutes. We learned from an earlier episode that there is a place on the head that will prohibit self-healing if it is punctured. That is why Peter needed the piece of glass pulled out of his head before he came back to life in the earlier ep. Therefore, if he was shot in that place in the head, it is safe to assume that he’d be dead for good.
I’m with you on the Peter question, though. Why didn’t he just fly away by himself? No need to get the brother killed.
May 23rd, 2007 at 3:19 am
peter couldn’t fly because he was so overwhelmed by the power. remember how he fainted after he started glowing?
May 23rd, 2007 at 6:55 am
Amiri, you are an optimist! I think it was always understood that life would go on after the bomb - only NYC would be taken out. The point of going to the future, from how I saw it, was the opposite what you say - it was to show just how awful things get after the bomb - that more than just killing millions of people it actually plunges the world into this terrible situation where the heroes are set against each other, hope is lost and the president (Sylar) is about to start a genocide.
As for other problems. Sam, I’ll give you that peter might have been to overwhelmed to fly. But this whole dead for good thing I just don’t buy. How would anyone know what would kill Peter forever? The glass was stuck in his brain, so you pull it out and he’s fine. Shoot him and maybe he stays dead till you pull out the bullet. You know what? Let’s grant them comic book style license and say, ok, he’s got an achilles heel. Guess what? When his life and the life of all new york is at stake? You find a baseball bat and hit him over the head till he’s dead/unconcious. The glow stops, just like when he fainted. I stand by the whole Peter sub-plot, which was kinda the plot, was completely without any pathos.
June 24th, 2007 at 4:32 pm
you guys are all missing one little tiny thing… if you check the scene when peter is talking to nathan he says something like ” i can’t do anything ” or whatever. “anything” I think includes flying. also, nathan HAS survived. the actor who plays nathan has already said he would return for the second season, so it’s safe to assume that he hasn’t died. besides, while flying he could just drop his brother , and after the “big bang” come get him down again. and i do agree trick. if she shot him he would problably die.
July 16th, 2007 at 6:23 pm
just saw the episode again and although i loved it the first time just cos it was the finale and there were some nice teasers to next seson it annoyed the hell out of me. All the things you guys have said. Hiro sylar thing, not big enough fights and the whole claire shooting peter. From another watching i have a possible omitted piece of information (unless i just missed it). Fair enough he can’t fly cos he’s out of control and claire would not want to shot him if he died. But we established unless very accurate and lucky shooting him would not kill him and plus wouldn’ he explode maybe. So why even have the plan to shoot him. SO HERES MY IDEA FINALLY what if in the gun was the same sirum or liquid chemical used to kill the haitian in ‘5 years gone’. That would kill peter for good and be an obvious reason why she found it so hard yet it being seeminly easy to just shot him. Also if you look at the gun when you just find out HRG’s name Noah the gun looks like it has a chemical in it or something. looks a bit weird would have to go back and pause to check. so anyway thinking this has helped me out a little with dealing with the ending. hopw it helps you. let me know if you think is rubbish.
July 20th, 2007 at 11:20 pm
hi, i totally agree that the finale was a big let-down (sylar didn’t even use the melting power thing he got - just melt hiro’s sword haha) we were also just really expecting lots of action - claire as some sort of human shield (that maybe DL could then phase past), and maybe that girl that could manipulate EM waves (what happened to her?) and mica doing some combo action on electronic devices, or hiro teleporting to different spots to confuse sylar, etc etc
just a small comment on what raymund said, the actor playing nathan saying he’ll return for the next season might not necessarily guarantee nathan is alive - maybe just sylar copying nathan? as in the ‘five years gone’ episode :)
July 22nd, 2007 at 9:26 am
tom, the gun notion is an interesting one, but I don’t buy it - a plot point like that would need to be made clear on the show, since it isn’t going to show up later.. know.
calokoy - could be - with sylar around and time travelling and what not, there’s no guarantee that nathan’s gotta be current, living nathan. :)
September 26th, 2007 at 4:48 pm
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