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Heroes Season 4 Review: "Shadowboxing"

By | November 11th, 2009
Posted in Reviews | 2 Comments


To be quite honest, writing about Heroes has become more my burden to bear rather than something I really enjoy doing. I made a commitment to cover every episode and I started out with such high hopes of the season, but as we go further and further along into the show it becomes more and more painfully obvious that the show I used to love is nothing but a shattered remnant of what it used to be. The characters have no pull to them, the story is rather slow and ineffective, and ultimately I am now with legions of people who generally trash the show on a regular basis. This is highly unfortunate because the show used to be really great.

But despite all that, I remain true to my word in that I bring as fair and balanced coverage as I can in every review I do once a week for the show.

Comparatively, this week’s episode was not as bad as episodes have been in the past. The show still remains rather directionless, but once you start to get into the groove that the show is no longer about over arcing mysteries (although it tries damn hard to act as if there is one) and that it is rather a show about a group of people, it becomes a little bit more bearable. I guess the idea is that by the end all of these people’s lives will cross at the carnival and it’ll be some big shock about how there is a community of “heroes” who live off the grid and play with their powers all day. Some of our heroes will think this is right and others will shy away and there will be some kind of showdown, yadda yadda yadda.

See, Samuel who once posed the greatest of mysteries is now Samuel the character who is interesting but somewhat see through at this point. We know we can’t trust him and we know he wants everyone to come live in his happy little carnival kingdom. We also know that he is a Magneto like figure who hates normal people and loves every person with any kind of ability. I get it, you get it. Unfortunately, unlike Magneto, we really can’t see much of a plan to what he’s doing, and that’s what keeps the character interesting. We may have him just about figured out, but beyond that we’re still in the dark for the overall purpose of the carnival. So that aspect is still alive, although it’s barely kicking. In fact, I’d think it’s fair to say that it got shot and is now being transported to the hospital in an ambulance.

Speaking of being shot, how about that whole Matt/Sylar thing? As I have beens saying over and over, Sylar is a dead horse that the show keeps beating, but for whatever reason this episode felt fresh for him. Sylar being allowed to move about again was cool, even if it was in Matt’s body, and to be honest I think that’s what really did it for me. I love the go between the two have and think that Greg Grunberg and Zach Quinto make a good pair (perhaps for a buddy cop movie?), so their interactions worked well. And of course, Matt finally figuring out how to defeat Sylar was pretty awesome and rather unexpected. Of course, we all know how that will end up next week. See, if the show still had some guts left, it would leave Parkman on the gurney and end it all. That would be totally awesome. I’m not saying that I don’t want to see Matt anymore, but it would have been a ballsy move and it would have worked so well for helping to push the show to new directions. However, since this is Heroes and Heroes loves it’s specific cast members, don’t expect to see them going anywhere any time soon.

And last we have Claire and Peter both in rather meaningless areas of the show. Peter moreso than Claire, obviously. Peter is in New York in a hospital with his new deaf girlfriend and both of them are doing a whole lot of nothing. We only see why Peter links into this episode at the very end anyway, so it pretty much seemed like they were just trying to keep him on our minds. Fair enough. Claire on the other hand still proves to be one of the shows most uninteresting characters yet without her we wouldn’t have seen Samuel at all this week, and it is a possibility that now Noah is on a more interesting path now that he realizes who Samuel is. Noah’s investigation, which only exists because Claire got Samuel to appear, could end up putting the show back to where it used to be with the character, because lately all he does is walk around in a suit and … well, do nothing. But him having a true goal again? Awesome. I support that.

I don’t like bashing on Heroes. I know I give it a lot of guff but in reality I don’t want to. Heroes was once my absolute favorite program on TV. I looked forward to Mondays for the rich story telling and mystery in the vein of super hero comics, and it was never afraid to go ahead and knock off a character everyone like to help keep things moving. Heroes today is a much different entity. It no longer shares the no-holds barred attitude it once did because instead it wants to help convince people it’s still worth watching. However, as it consistently loses interesting characters and it continues to move forward without a plot we’re ultimately left with nothing. As I said before, the show needs clear and present danger to work towards. It’s how the show used to move along. While we are ALL tired of the constant nuclear apocalypse threats that Hiro sees when accidentally traveling to the future and whatnot, we have to admit – having an end goal helped push the show along. Without that, without the show having a new Big Bad, it’s just a slow and staggered show about a group of rather uninteresting people doing their best to be interesting.


//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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