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Heroes Season 4 Review: "Tabula Rasa"

By | October 21st, 2009
Posted in Reviews | % Comments


Another week, anot-… oh, you get it. I’m really not that great at creating an intro paragraph to my articles all the time, especially when it comes to just reviewing Heroes. However, upon seeing this article I’m sure you can figure out that there is going to be a review of the latest episode of Heroes after the cut, so you might be better off just going right to that and ignoring this paragraph. Seriously.

When we last left off, Hiro had mysteriously transported into Peter’s apartment, Emma was confused at her somewhat violent display of power, and Noah was jobless and without purpose. Oh, and Sylar had just entered into the mysterious carnival that we’ve all been so curious about. How about that? The episode continues the character format I’ve been enjoying in the past few episodes, but I have to admit, all in all this episode was pretty dull. I don’t know what it was, but I never found myself overly drawn into the tale. I feel like part of me keeps flip-flopping with my interest in Heroes, because some weeks I sit religiously and take notes, and other weeks I.. well, I watch it because I made a commitment to reviewing it. Let’s face it – this show has definitely lost some of the magnetism it had when it first began, but it’s not due for lack of trying. You can tell the show wants to be good, but it just doesn’t hit the notes we, or at least I, need.

So let’s look at it bit by bit, starting with Sylar. I continuously claim that the show needs to abandon Sylar. They keep trying to reinvent the character and it never ever feels organic. When Sylar became “Nathan,” ok, I could buy that, but they got rid of this right away. Now Sylar is both in Matt’s head and running around with a severe case of amnesia. And how does this amnesia work? Well, he still believes he’s Nathan. So as he is hanging around with Samuel and the rest at the carnival, we simply have this weak excuse for a villain who is too afraid to really do anything. Fine – he can’t be the big bad right now. OK. It’s too early. But what is he instead? He’s pretty much an uninteresting character. Sylar is forced to see all the wrongs that he has done to the world, but he never believes any of it. Instead, he chalks it up as a trick and refuses to be who he’s always been. We’ve gone down this road already, haven’t we? I mean, how many times does Sylar have to have a crisis of conscience before someone just man’s up and offs the character? We’ve offed so many good villains, yet Sylar is still around? Don’t me wrong – I don’t want Zachary Quinto to be out of a job. But we’ve seen he can get a good following elsewhere, i.e. Star Trek, so why not let him go do other things and allow Sylar to die once and for all? Honestly, I’m just not amused by it anymore. Sylar was never a character we could follow other than a villain, and the show needs to just get it. I hate that I say this every week, but seriously.

Next we have Hiro and Emma. These two characters really aren’t that bad, but I just can’t help but wonder what the point of it is? So Emma is becoming more comfortable with her light/sound manipulation, and she enjoys playing the piano. Hiro likes entertaining children and wants to help everyone with everything. Well, ok. But so what? I’ll tell you what! Hiro is going to save Charlie! Allow me for a minute to complete ignore talking about Emma at all for the rest of the review and focus on this one point – saving Charlie. Really? When the episode ended up in this area, all I could think of is how much of a bad idea it is. First off, Charlie’s death in season one meant a lot. Why do we have to go back and erase all that? Forget the whole butterfly effect for a minute and just think about what is happening – we’re taking an epic character trope of Hiro created in season one, back when the show was gripping and addictive, and we’re making it null and void. That’s just offensive to fans. And secondly, doesn’t this change everything, i.e. the butterfly effect? Because if Sylar never got her powers, he wouldn’t be able to remember everything and learn things so quickly, meaning that he wouldn’t be able to cause half the chaos he was able to, meaning they probably would have caught him earlier meaning etc etc blah blah blah. Long story short: no! Bad Heroes! Bad!

To pick up the slack, we have Peter and Noah in a segment that I like to call “completely useless.” In this sequence of events, Peter travels to Noah to find someone with healing abilities in order to heal Hiro’s sick. Of course, that ultimately fails due to Hiro jumping shark to save Charlie, but never the less. They travel to a boy who accidentally killed his parents with his healing abilities (because healing abilities can evolve into not healing abilities), and Peter proceeds to get shot, healed, and then he takes the healing powers. Ok. And? While all the other characters on the show really go out there and do something, these two are pretty dull in their experiences. So Peter can save Hiro now. Yay! We all knew it wouldn’t happen because that’d be too easy. And Noah? After wanting to not be a company man for so long, Noah has once again decided that being a company man is the only thing really worth his time and abilities. Talk about spinning in circles. HRG was cool when his named was HRG. Noah in his current incarnation is broken down man with little to no character, and I’m sorry but I’m just not interested. His segment of the story really brought nothing to the table except for yet another venue in which Peter can fail.

There are only so many ways in which I can bring the show down at this point. I noted at the beginning of this season that I had high hopes, but as time passes I lose faith more and more. I used to LOVE Heroes and now I watch it out of habit. This was the first episode in which we saw a lot of the carnival people, but the fact that we had a ton of build up only to have Sylar chosen as their new boy makes me very uninterested. I don’t know how many times I can say Sylar is holding the show back, and at this point I find myself annoyed at how repetitive I am sounding. It’s just rather unfortunate what the show has ultimately turned into now, but I know that as long as nerds like me keep watching this show is going nowhere. I suppose that, ultimately later in the season, I could eat these words, but right now? This episode was just a low low point in my career as a fan of this show.


//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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