It’s been a long and messy road since the NBC hit Heroes first began. What started as an absolute phenomenon quickly dissented into a sheer disaster of epic fan panning across the board due to poor writing and plot structure. Arguably, this can be pretty much blamed on a single man (Jeph Loeb), but it’s more than that. Even as Heroes reached the end of it’s Loeb-less third season, it was still grasping for air and doing it’s best to recreate a structure similar to what made the show so amazingly popular in the first place. Fan favorite Bryan Fuller was brought on to fix the mess, but when it was announced that he wouldn’t actually be staying for the fourth season, many once again became skeptics of the show. So now that the two-hour series premiere has aired and we’ve been given some time to digest it, what is the overall opinion? Is Heroes back to normal, and does the title of Volume 5 (Redemption) act as a fitting one? Or is Heroes forever left to be a show that just doesn’t know when to quit?
Warning: Epic spoilers abound. It’s been a couple days since the premiere, so if you haven’t caught up by now, don’t say I didn’t warn you.
In my personal opinion, I would say “Redemption” is in fact a fitting title. This does not mean that in one (two?) episode(s) I have forgiven all past sins and am ignoring everything that was ever wrong about the show, but it’s easy to see that they are at least trying to fix all the wrongs that had been incurred. Where Volume 4 placed everyone back into their “normal” lives before quickly bringing everything back into chaos with the new character Danko, Volume 5 places everyone into their normal lives and somewhat keeps them there. It’s a great place for the show to pick up, and while it obviously it won’t stay there, it’s nice to see it somewhat trying again.
So with this new episode(s), what new elements do we have? Well, for starters, there’s two big complaints that a lot of people had with the past 3 seasons that does not exist here. First, the show doesn’t START with the end of the world. In the first season, a bomb was going to go off in New York, and the heroes had to prevent it. This was a great goal to work toward. But when that idea was repeated in seasons 2 and 3, the idea grew very stale. In this season, not once is the end of the world or a giant disaster or anything of the kind even mentioned. In fact, more so than anything else, little seeds are planted here and there for the show to evolve while introducing one main new arc: the Irish mutant folk and their traveling carnival. You see, this season started with introducing a brand new group of characters who own a carnival who seemingly travel from place to place, and they all seem to be mutants. The main guy, Samuel, has the power to move the ground and soil, Darth Maul Ray Park is introduced as a man with super speed and ability to use blades (surprise, surprise) named Edgar, and there is of course the Tattooed Woman (Lydia). It’s through them that we get the main plot and the continued theme of “everything is connected,” as Hiro eventually brings us back in time to when he, as a child, visited their carnival. For now, we don’t know much about them other than they need a compass, and the man who had it was Danko, our previous Big Bad. So do the new characters pose a threat? Or, in the scene in which Samuel instigates Hiro into hero-dom, are they our latest allies? Obviously they will be a big part of wether or not this season is sink or swim because their characters hold all the keys, but right off the bat I’d say there is a good deal about them that makes them intriguing enough to keep watching.
And then there is, of course, the other big thing I noted about this episode: there was super powered human on super powered human fighting action. In the past, the show has greatly teased us when it comes to anyone with powers battling it out, most noteworthy of times being the end of Season 1 when Sylar and Peter first met. I will, to my dying day, defend why I believe it was a good move for the show not to feature a huge fight sequence at that time because, logistically, it didn’t make sense. However, as the show continued on and Peter became more adept at his powers and Sylar became more powerful, we all began to wonder where our fight scenes were. And at the finale of Season 3, we were brutally teased by having Claire look through a frakking keyhole at a bunch of lights in a scene clearly meant as a finger towards fans. As you can see to the right, however, this episode was not the case. Our new character Edgar was quick to bust out his knives, and Peter was also quick to fight back (no puns intended). While Peter’s ability has never been to understand how to use the powers, it is clear the character has grown from a whiney 20-something to someone willing to take a stance and actually put his abilities to the test, and let me tell you, it was great to have a fight scene that was worth something. Sure, it might not have been the longest fight scene and it might not have been the best visually (probably due to the budget), but I’ve gotta say, it was nice to clearly see them trying. As Peter and Edgar shifted speeds and tossed blades, we finally saw something we’d been waiting forever to see.
As far as the plot and the over all writing goes, let’s be honest here – we are never going to see the Heroes of days past. Where at first we had a slow build with great character development and mysteries, we now have a world where many things are generally established, and it’s the writers job to continue to build on that in elaborate ways. I’ll be the first to say that this show will never be as good as it once was, and already there are plenty things I would write out of the show. Ali Larter has definitely outlived her stay on the show, having now played 4 different characters (3 of them inhabiting 1 body), and I wouldn’t be very sad if Claire left either. While the cheerleader was an important element in the beginning, her story is already taking the exact same shape as the one of her and West, and we all unfortunately remember West, now don’t we? The other big point from Season 3 was that Sylar was now stuck as Nathan and no longer being Sylar, and while I love the new take on Parkman (having Sylar in his brain taunting him), I’m not a huge fan of Natlar already becoming aware of who he is. Sure, this is something that the show would have had happen eventually, but this could have waited until at least 10. There is a gap between the dates of the finale and the date of the premiere, and I’m sure there is more to see in the evolution of Sylar realizing what has happened. As much as I love the character and Zachary Quinto, the show needs a new apparent boogeyman running around, and for now I believe Sylar’s place is strictly in Parkman’s head.
There were many points when I said I’d stop watching Heroes, and I never did. I’ve stuck with it since day one and I’ve done my best to defend it even in it’s darkest of hours. I will probably be here until the end of Heroes, no matter how bad it gets. I can say one thing, however: while I definitely do not care about the show in the way I once did, this episode does give me a glimpse of hope for the future. With a smaller cast (not including the new carnival) and less dangling plot threads, I think Heroes stands to come close to how it used to be. While the past season definitely focused on shocking the viewer and pulling out the craziest twists possible, the premiere’s slower build up and remaining questions definitely make me a bit more excited to see upcoming episodes. While I won’t be running home every Monday night, biting my nails and making everyone around me be silent as I watch the program, I definitely have an urge and an interest in watching the show again. It’s not perfect and it has a long road to go until it’s the show it once was, but it’s definitely become a show that is watchable again.
