Toob Talk

If you haven’t been watching Heroes, you’re missing out.

Yes, this season isn’t quite as tight as the first season was. There’s no “Save the Cheerleader, Save the World” type catch phrase (a failure on the part of the marketing department, in my opinion). But there has been a “Who am I?” theme running through the show.

A lot of that paid off tonight as we finally found out what happened to some of our heroes in the four months that passed between when the first season ended and when the current season started.

It was impressive stuff.

The best, though, is seeing Kristen Bell playing a distinctly non-Veronica Mars type character. In fact, Elle, here shocking (literally) sociopath, is much closer to the character she played (briefly) on Deadwood than her young, cute, smart and sarcastic PI on Veronica Mars.

With only a handful of episodes left before we may be done for the whole season, there’s a lot more loose ends and half-told stories to tie up in some way.

We already know one way it could go–we’ve been shown that, much like we were shown the destruction of NYC in the first season. But the question is how the prophecy will be twisted, misunderstood, used and sidestepped (if it is avoided).

I, for one, can’t wait to see.

Picking up four months after the events that closed out the first season, Heroes has returned with just as much style and bite as ever.

For most of the world, not much has changed. Most knew nothing of the disaster that had been diverted–or the price that was paid–by those special few. Most of the familiar faces from last season have gone back to their normal, low key lives. Some hiding on purpose (like Claire and her family). Others wallowing in obscurity (like Mohinder who is lecturing about his research and his father’s work to sparsely populated hotel ballrooms).

We’re introduced to two new faces, Maya and Alejandro, who are making a desperate run for the U.S. border through Central America.

Hiro is still in the past, face to face with his childhood idol. His father and Ando are still waiting for his return.

The plots set up in the season opener are intricate and sure to intertwine in interesting place as the season unfolds. The characters, as always, are engaging and just complex enough to be believable. Probably the best news is, even with the dark tone some of those threads have, there are more than a few light moments to keep things from getting too grim.

Unless the writers, producers or network do something supremely stupid, there is no reason why this show won’t keep running strong all season. Though it will be interesting to see how it scored in the ratings against the second half of Dancing With the Stars.

This week’s episode of Heroes took us five years into the future of the show we’ve been watching all season.

As has always been the case with the show, it was done with style and punch. For those that are familiar with the super hero genre, though, none of what we saw was particularly new.

In the classic X-Men story Days of Future Past, we were shown a similar track of events and a future similarly dangerous to those who are special. That was back in 1981 and the image is still echoing in the genre. Heroes did a very good job of it.

The future we see in Heroes has half of New York in ruins, only barely better than it must have been in the days following the explosion the heroes have been trying to prevent from episode one. We see that Hiro isn’t the only one that has become darker in the five years since the explosion.

We also get some questions answered and are left asking some more. (more…)