Heroes: Series One Retrospective

I haven't said much about the NBC series Heroes here, mainly because I've been catching up. I saw the last episode of the first season yesterday, though, and I've some thoughts I'd like to set down about it. For next season, I'll probably be providing episode by episode commentary.

The first is that between the careful maintenance of the "comics feel" and the huge interactivity of the official website, this is the first American series I've seen that's been carefully calculated for maximum appeal to fans. The BBC do this kind of thing well, and Lost made great strides in the right direction, but Heroes is superb in that respect.

After that, I'm in considerable admiration of the way in which multiple plotlines and multiple characters were carefully drawn together over more than twenty episodes. There were plot swings I couldn't predict, which always please me, and there were characters you ended up liking, and disliking. And those likes and dislikes were not necessarily on the good-guy/bad-guy axis - Matt Parkman is firmly in the good guy category, and I can't stand the dumb lunk. Likewise, Sylar is a genuine dyed-in-the-wool bad guy, and I really like the character, even as I want the others to take him down.

The series finale, I felt, was solid, but could have been better; it was a touch on the anti-climatic side. And while I appreciate that Mohinder's voiceover is meant to echo the narrative boxes from comics, it still annoys me a bit. I am very much looking forward to the second season, though, and I'll be following the comics from the NBC site as they come out.

A few major questions left in my mind: What is Mrs Petrelli's power, if she has one? Did the late Mr Petrelli have a power? How about Hiro's father? There's the obvious question: Is Nathan dead? Peter almost certainly isn't; it was fairly well established that he could survive the explosion, and if he can do that, freefalling from the stratosphere isn't going to be a difficulty. Can he only use one power at a time - and if not, why didn't he fly or teleport away? What's going to happen to Ando? ... and those are just the major ones; I have about a hundred more that I want answered.

Peculiarly, there's not much information about Tim Kring available...

Posted by Drew Shiel at July 16, 2007 4:33 PM

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I am getting this as a blind buy Tuesday on HD DVD. I haven't seen a single episode, but people pretty much unanimously say it's great.
Looking forward to seeing it.

Posted by: mlankton at August 26, 2007 4:02 PM