The following review contains somewhat massive spoilers towards the episode as well as mild speculation on the future of the program. If you haven’t watched it yet, I wouldn’t recommend reading the following review. If you have watched it, however, please enjoy my weekly recap on the spectacle that is Heroes.
This week’s episode Heroes was incredibly Hiro-centric, and I really mean that in the biggest possible way imaginable. The show, while taking a bit of time to diverge and waste time on a useless Noah story arc, revolved around one of the biggest elements of the show from season 1 – the Hiro/Charlie relationship. We never really got to knew Charlie then, but the importance of the character development for Hiro that she bestowed has been felt ever since. It is then, with great trepidation, that I watched an entire episode this week where Hiro tries to change all of it. Now, before I even really go into dissecting the episode, can we just all note what a bad idea that is? Hiro has consistently noted that changing the past is wrong and creates what is known as the butterfly effect, and by rescuing Charlie he is changing the entire outcome for the biggest villain of the show, Sylar – because if Sylar doesn’t get Charlie’s power, and after the speech Hiro gives him, where does that leave Sylar?
Now, in actually debating the merit of the episode, we have both a good and bad episode to deal with. On the negative side, the show defies itself repeatedly over and over again with great presence. The whole idea is “You can’t change the past,” yet Hiro saves Charlie. Hiro changes the past, and then he notes to Sylar that Sylar’s future will not change. How does that work? How does that even remotely make sense? Apparently fate doesn’t include people who can time travel? Not to be overly rude, but that is a completely asinine concept. With Hiro rescuing Charlie, I flat out demand that everything change in the future, because that does NOT make sense if it doesn’t. See, the show has a terrible habit of throwing out ideas like fate and destiny but then leaving things to chance encounters and randomization. That doesn’t work. Pick a concept and go with it. Is it fate? Ok. Fine. Then stop changing it. The original idea was that they had stopped a bomb, but that a bomb was destined to go off so the doomsday plot returned in season 2. Then all the fans hated it, despite the fact that compared to what we have now, it (and Adam) were genius. You can’t go back and change things like this, and ultimately this is where this show loses it’s sight where a similar show like… oh, I dunno, Battlestar Galactica and LOST succeed. I’ve made note of this before, but those shows started with end goals and that kept the plot on track. We all assumed Heroes did too, but I think it’s pretty obvious that they’re just making stuff up as they go along.
I won’t even get into the Noah subplot. Please. Don’t make me. That was just a waste of time.
DESPITE ALL THAT BAD TIME TRAVEL CRAP THOUGH, this episode was actually really good. It’s saving grace is the undeniable charm of Charlie (Jayma Mays). Back when she first appeared, we all fell in love with her as quickly as Hiro did due to the overwhelming tragedy of her circumstances and, most likely, her adorable accent. And as much as it pained me to bring back this plotline (it seemed a very Jeph Loeb thing to do), it was handled mildly well (outside of time travel problems). Hiro tricking Sylar into helping him, as well as his dealing with the whole situation in general wasn’t too out of place, albeit a bit grabbing at ideas. You could tell the whole premise was a strain, but it did leave for a very enjoyable episode. By the end of it I actually welcomed Charlie back into the fold.
That is, before Samuel showed up and pulled the dick move of all dick moves. “Hey Hiro. Glad you got your girl back. Now I’m trapping her in time.” Well, I think it’s fair to just flat out call him a villain now, yes? This is the Linderman complex all over again – doing the right thing the wrong way. We don’t know what his right thing may be, but he is definitely going about it in a sinister fashion, and the show is slowly grooming him to emerge as a force to overcome. I love that aspect. What I don’t love is they brought back Mohinder. I hope I wasn’t the only person who groaned. I was so happy with a smaller cast this season, and Mohinder being gone was one of them. His character was ruined when he “got powers,” and it was very refreshing to see him axed. Now he’s back as a corpse? And Samuel wants to “fix” this, presumably to bring him back to life? Yeah. No thanks.
It’s hard to keep a good grip on Heroes. Most of the time I’m disappointed, but every so often I will end up with an episode that doesn’t make me want to claw my eyes out and mourn for the days when this was a worthwhile show. I think to continuously pretend that it’ll get better is my own folly, but we’ll see. Unfortunately, in true baiting fashion, next week will not deal with “eight weeks ago,” but even so. The show still has enough to string me along.
