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Heroes Season 4 – "Brave New World" Review

By | February 9th, 2010
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Some of you may have noticed that I reviewed only the first half of Heroes‘ fourth season. Once it got to it’s break, I said I couldn’t do it. Most parents tell you that if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all, and it had really come to that point with the show. Every episode I was just more and more disappointed about what a show I had enjoyed quite immensely had become. So I gave up with the reviews.

I did continue to watch, though. And last night, the finale for season 4/volume 5, “Redemption,” aired to 4.41 million viewers, the third lowest rating of the season and a 68.7% decrease in ratings from the first season (which had highs in 16 millions and lows in 13 millions). Heroes has been on a rather slippery slope with a great decline in ratings since the first season, and a renewal is not guaranteed anymore (despite what Greg Grunberg would have to say about). With all that negativity having been said, what did I think of the wrap up of season 4?

Poor, poor Heroes. I remember when Monday night was “Heroes night,” and me and my friends would gather at the TV and watch together, whether it be all in the same room or through constant texting. Now I watch out of habit just to see what happens. It’s kind of like when you really love a comic book title, and despite the creative team not handling your favorite characters well anymore, you keep on buying it just in case it gets good somewhere down the line. Considering Heroes originally wanted to imitate a comic book formula of story telling, I’d say that’s a fair comparisson, and considering I don’t have to pay to watch, it’s not too much on me to put it on while I work on my laptop from 9 to 10 on a Monday night.

It’s just so unfortunate though, because for those that remember, I started off by saying that this season had a lot of promise. We had intriguing new characters played by good actors and actresses, we had a new plot development that pushed the show in a completely new direction, and we were supposedly going to stay away from all of the problems we had previously had. That was what this was supposed to be – redemption. What we ended up with, though, was Heroes taking one step forward and two steps back into a safety zone. For example, the final episode of last season presented an epic powers battle between Sylar and Peter/Nathan that we couldn’t see and were brutally teased about as Claire peers in through a closed door. This seaon we started off with a fight scene between Peter and Edgar which got my excited, and that was about the extent of it. Even the final fight scene of this season was mostly just the actors talking while holding their hands out in a fierce position. Seriously, I haven’t seen this much talking in a super hero story that wasn’t written by Brian Michael Bendis, and even he puts in crazy awesome action sequences!

So what did we end with? Sylar is a good guy (again), the heroes managed to save the world in an appropriately anti-climactic confrontation, and the show is essentially neutered of all that made it an original and engaging concept in the first place. Our cast is all over the place (seriously – what happened to Mohinder?) and nothing is really resolved at all. In fact, Samuel was simply charted off, presumably to come back again later, and all the people who had been villains just walk off into the sunset, except Doyle. Then Claire announces to the world that there are people with powers, which is a plot thread they have been attempting to dangle out there for a while now. Ok, but so what? Bennet keeps teasing that the announcement that people have powers will mean that the public will react negatively, and that the heroes will be in danger. Oh… you mean like Volume 4 (season 3 part 2)? Oh, ok! Yeah, let’s do that again!

Continued below

I guess my biggest problem Heroes is that it is simply a scared little child when compared to what it used to be. The original show had balls and killed off characters left and right. There was always a sense of life and death. With the current show, even when someone “dies”, you know they’ll be back the next episode due to some miracle. Besides, you think that the characters/writers would have learned by now – having normal lives doesn’t work. It doesn’t fit the dynamic of the show at all anymore. Most shows like this would have formed a “team” by now, and that team would tackle various threats on a weekly basis that would go towards an over-arcing plot. Look at Buffy – the Scoobies had a new disaster each week and when all is said and done, each episode fits into an appropriate bin of one Big Bad. This formula works for tons of great sci-fi shows. Heck, even LOST (which was for a while the biggest show to compare Heroes to) has thematic plot elements that they use for weekly stories, and look how well that’s turning out in it’s final season.

The worst part about Heroes though is the fact that the best Heroes content you can get is not in the show. Heroes tried something new when it first started, and that was to create a weekly webcomic which helped develop the world of the show. Eventually, during breaks, they would take longer arcs and develop characters within the show’s universe that would never come to fruition in the show, and it slowly began to jump the shark. However, one of the most recent stories online is that Micah (who did not appear this season) went off to have cool techno-adventures with other super powered people (including CLAUDE) against super powered people. Essentially, it was a super hero comic. So what is going on with the show? Do they really think that the character’s personal lives are that interesting? Because they’re not. We get it – Peter has mommy issues, Matt’s trying to be a family man, Hiro is awkward, Claire is confused and hormonal and “all teenager-y.” But the show is not supposed to be about that forever. The characters need to grow up, and the show needs to move on. I’m sure the show has a budget for super hero fights, how about more than just one? All we ever get is a super villain getting mad and killing someone with super powers or, in this season, sinking a town.

What I’m trying to say is – in a show where comic books exist as well as people with super powers, someone should have thrown together a costume with friggen’ tights already and tried to fight some damn crime. Seriously.

Needless to say, my involvement in the next season, if there is one, is tentative. I doubt that anything the show is going to do in future season will really interest me at all, but at the same time Heroes is fortunate enough to follow Chuck, and since I’m always tuned in to Chuck, I don’t mind leaving the TV on an extra hour. But that’s not how the show should feel, this one or any one. It shouldn’t just be a time wasting endeavor. It should be something I want to watch. If this season is any indication, though, there’s just really no point anymore.


//TAGS | Heroes

Matthew Meylikhov

Once upon a time, Matthew Meylikhov became the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Multiversity Comics, where he was known for his beard and fondness for cats. Then he became only one of those things. Now, if you listen really carefully at night, you may still hear from whispers on the wind a faint voice saying, "X-Men Origins: Wolverine is not as bad as everyone says it issss."

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