SF Signal: Thoughts on the Heroes Mid-Season Finale

Thoughts on the Heroes Mid-Season Finale

Last night was the writers' strike-imposed mid-season finale of Heroes. And I have to say…meh.

I still maintain that, overall, Heroes season 2 has sucked. There was one shining moments two weeks ago (with the episode "Cautionary Tales") where it looked like there might have been a turnaround since some moments recaptured all that was good about season one. But that turned out to be an exception, because last week's episode ("Truth & Consequences") was just as bad, with characters doing things that made no sense other tan being shortcuts to move the plot to here the writers wanted to go.

Here are some ***spoilery*** thoughts on last night's mid-season finale episode, "Powerless":

Best part of the episode: Nikki go boom! All I can say is...it's about damn time. I feel bad for Micah, suddenly orphaned from two parents of questionable redeeming values. Wait a minute...never mind. He'll bounce back. He's the only character who's talking sense by suggesting that they actually act like the heroes they're supposed to be. Which is more than I can say of the others.
Peter has the conviction of a distracted gnat. Adam is able to control him through fear then Nathan is able to turn him back after a quick hallway conversation. Peter has become everyone else's sock puppet. I suspect if someone had a bridge to sell him...
How come Claire's creepy stalker boyfriend tries to talk her out of outing the heroes, then slowly takes to the sky in broad daylight? Lost: Common Sense. If found, please send to the writers of Heroes...
The whole HRG thing is weird. Claire wants to strike back at the company for taking her father, but that suddenly-alive father talks her into backing down while still departing from her life? How has Claire's motivation changed? She's still got no father.
And so we have Nathan picking up the torch of outing the heroes. Which makes his "surprise" death not so much of one. Nice to see super-evil mom, though.
Sylar gets his powers back? Again, it's about time, though I think that character has run his course. Heroes needs a new bad guy, or better yet, a team of villains that will force the heroes to band together as well. Let's see some organized crime-fighting, please.
Hiro seems so disconnected from the rest of the story, traipsing through time, doing his own thing. It makes no sense that, with time frozen around him and Peter, he could not simply explain the Adam situation and resolve the whole mess right there. Of course, then we wouldn't have had the dramatic vial rescue in the vault, which wasn't so dramatic seeing has how Peter has every power under the sun. Nice fate for Adam, though I wish it were Sylar instead.
When Maya caught a bullet, I though what a wasted part that was. But then I though, OK, she was dead weight anyway. Then she came back. Now that I already signed her off, she's sorta become the new Nikki.
And what is it with the super-healing power of Claire's blood anyway. Will Claire and any recipients of her blood live forever like Adam? More questions than answers. Again. Bah!

Overall, season 2 has been a mostly-steady stream of suckage. I've given the show more leeway than I have ever given others. (Cough-cough...Flash Gordon...cough-cough.) As far as I'm concerned, the scant good stuff I've seen in season 2 is too little too late. I'm not sure what they could do at this point to resuscitate the show.

I'm feeling a little more lenient towards the finale than you, I think, although I can't out and out disagree with any of the points made. In terms of tension and pacing this was one of the best episodes of this season (hardly a great achievement), as for the first time in many an episode I wasn't simply checking my watch. The two episodes of this season that have succeeded best at that were this one and episode nine (HRG being shot), because they both felt like they were actually going somewhere.

Too much of this season has been directionless, treading water whilst the writers awaited inspiration and drifting rather than steering through plot. Heroes: Unmasked told us that Tim Kring doesn't plot each season out explicitly, but instead has a general direction and a few key milestones then colours between those lines; perhaps this is what really needs to change if Heroes is going to rediscover its verve.

Posted by Matt Dovey on Tuesday December 04, 2007 at 11:25 AM

The finale was at least better paced than earlier episodes. If all episodes of season 2 had this much happening, I think I would have enjoyed it more. At least things happened, which wasn't the case for many earlier episodes.

The biggest problem with the series is that the stories, as told, require the characters to be phenomenally stupid. Peter is the world's biggest dupe: does his intelligence decrease with each new power he acquires? Nikki's and Nathan's deaths were wastes, in my opinion. It seemed that these were two characters the writers couldn't figure out how to work with, so they offed them. Not that they knew what to do with the other characters: their personalities changed from week to week and motivations changed from scene to scene.

All in all, a horrible season.

Posted by Paul Go on Tuesday December 04, 2007 at 12:13 PM

Watching you guys come to realize how awful this show is, but still refuse to admit that it was awful from the beginning, is like watching the Bush administration talk about Iraq. Even when they finally could admit that things weren't going well, they still insisted that it was news, that "we all fell for the same faulty intelligence", as if Hans Blix never told the UN that there were no WMD and as if there weren't massive protests all across the country before the war even started. They refuse to accept that they were lying to themselves from the start by lying to themselves now and convincing themselves that "no one could have predicted" that anything would go wrong. You guys are never going to admit that this has been a godawful show since day one. It's always going to be about how "season two sucks". You're so afraid to face that fact that you've been watching this worthless piece of shit for this long that you're going to keep pretending it's just seasons two to make yourself feel better about having ever watched season one. Because if you actually faced the truth, that you could have watched evern one season of a show this bad, you would have no choice left but to kill yourselves.

Posted by on Tuesday December 04, 2007 at 3:05 PM

"mid-season finale?" quitters!!! strike or no strike the show doesn't need writers because well, look how well it did with writers!!! besides, can't they just go online and steal some more storylines from other people?!?!? i mean, just don't get caught this time and you won't get sued!

on a different note, reading the previous comments from the liberal commie idiot are as painful as watching this show. if the democrats are so great, why haven't they brought the troops home already? isn't that what the people voted them into office to do last november, supposedly? bah! all democrats know is whine, stand in the way, and offer no real solution!

Posted by on Tuesday December 04, 2007 at 5:51 PM

I love it when these inbred Republican hicks assume it's all about the US... Clue for the clueless - the planet doesn't stop at your borders, Dwayne, now stop listening to so much country & western, watch less NASCAR and give your sister a break too...

As for the series, yes, agreed, suckage and really only watched on the back of the much better season 1. The last few episodes moved along with rather more pace though, which helped, and should maintain interest going into chapter 3.

Paul (not American, Democrat, Republican *or* Communist)

Posted by Paul Harper on Wednesday December 05, 2007 at 3:43 AM