Heroes: Season 2 – DVD Review

DVD Reviews, Reviews, Top Story

Available at Amazon.com

There are few villains that are more deadly to a good series than a “sophomore slump” and if you’ve listened to reviews and opinions about the second season of Heroes, you would think the super-powered NBC show had been the latest victim to the trend. With sinking ratings, it appeared that Heroes was actually one of the few shows that actually benefited from the long hiatus forced by the 2007-08 Writer’s Strike, letting the series regroup for a 3rd season before falling any further. Thing is, watching the episodes back to back on DVD, Heroes: Season 2 is surprisingly compelling, with characters and storylines that we actually care about far overshadowing the weaknesses of this second year. Though not as strong as its first year, the second outing by this superhuman group is hardly its downfall.

That’s not to say that this season doesn’t have major faults. New South American characters Maya and Alejandro Herrera (Dania Ramirez and Shalim Ortiz) are both very poorly written characters, and tend to bring nothing interesting to this season at all except for being a convenient vehicle for working in perennial series villain Sylar (Zachary Quinto) into the overall proceedings. Also, with Sylar playing mind games instead of really getting to let loose with his homicidal tendencies, one of the series’ most fascinating characters is constrained and anchored to this easily dupable duo for most of the episodes. To be fair, it looked as if the half of the season that never was might have fixed some of these issues, but as is, these are gaping holes to the overall storytelling.

This season was also short on the overall drive that made the first year so gripping, as the “Virus” plot was slow to develop compared to the frenzy built up by “Save the Cheerleader, Save the World” or the climactic New York showdown. Again, with an entire season to develop this plot, this could have made for some amazing drama, but as it is this can’t help but feel like an underdeveloped overall arc. In addition, there are some pretty big threads that never get addressed by the abbreviated season, and hopefully they’ll be taken care of by the end of the third volume.

Still, though, with all of these problems, Heroes still remains entertaining throughout because of the work done to develop many of our favorite characters. Perhaps the best work done by anyone on the entire cast this season was by Adrian Pasdar as Nathan Petrelli, a character whose back and fourth nature made him so frustrating in the initial year of the show, but whose search for redemption this season was done with subtlety, humor and just the right amount of gravitas. His inner demons manifesting in a scarred mirror image were haunting, and his search for his brother Peter (Milo Ventimiglia) mirrored his own journey to regain his soul.

It was also a stroke of genius partnering Petrelli with Season 1 do-gooder Matt Parkman (Greg Grunberg), who takes his mind reading act to the east coast and joins the NYPD, but also starts to toy with newly found darker features of his abilities which include the power of suggestion. This is brought on by this season’s “Nightmare Man” storyline, in which Parkman discovers some horrible secrets about his past, which may send his character in a totally different direction in Season 3. Grunberg’s work here is solid throughout, especially when it comes to the “Buddy Cop”-style relationship with Nathan and the exploration of his Father issues when it comes to protecting young Adair Tishler‘s human radar Molly Walker, who has now come under his care.

While unpopular with some, I also couldn’t help but love the time traveling heroics of Masi Oka’s Hiro Nakamura. Sent to 17th century Japan, Hiro gets to both live out some of his boyhood dreams as well as grow up somewhat when he discovers that his living fantasies can have irrevocable effects on history. The biggest blow to Hiro comes when he learns Takezo Kensei, his favorite legendary hero, is not all that he should be and our bespectacled everyman makes it his quest to put things as they should be, which ends up being a decision he might regret.

While the storylines for Peter Petrelli, and Clair and Noah Bennet (Hayden Panettiere and Jack Coleman) are on autopilot for far too long here, the addition of mysterious characters from “The Company”, Bob (the awesome Stephen Tobolowsky) and his electromagnetic psycho daughter Elle (Kristin Bell) make terrifically ominous supplements to this already strong cast. The shrouded intentions of The Company keep you guessing, and make for a compelling grey area, not letting know whether to love or hate the characters. Then again, maybe Bob and Elle are a bit of a metaphor for the season as a whole.

It’s safe to say that Heroes: Season 2 doesn’t live up to its predecessor, but never stops being watchable, and even finds its own rhythm after a few episodes. Proceedings with the Bennets and Petrelli’s start hitting on all pistons after a while, and the season finale is much more invigorating than one would expect it to be. Still, the feeling that this season is stifled is one that is hard to shake and keeps this season from reaching the heights you really want it to.

Just like the first season, this second volume looks pretty terrific on DVD. Presented in 1.78:1 Anamorphic Widescreen, this gorgeous transfer looks absolutely super all throughout. The sound on this print is also excellent, never having problems balancing dialogue or effects.

Audio Commentaries – You get tracks for every single episode from this season, with a variety of cast and crew on each one. These are actually all pretty good and are really informative when it comes to how the creators had to juggle scenes and footage in order to be able to put episodes together.

Heroes: Season 2 – “A New Beginning” – This Featurette encapsulates the journey for all of the characters on the show, telling us where the paths have turned for each of them from the first season and who all the new characters are this volume as well. It’s interesting enough, but not thoroughly memorable.

Takezo Kensei: Sword Saint – This is a fake documentary about the Kensei and how he changed Japanese history, complete with narration from Shogun’s John Rhys-Davies and actors playing historians. This is really goofy, but fun to watch. Going about 25 minutes, we see how Kensei changed the world.

The Drucker Files – A fake news program about a man named Richard Drucker, a man who made a fortune on the Internet. Now Drucker isn’t actually on the show at all as much as I can tell, but this has some peripheral connection to the series.

Genetics of a Scene – This is an interview with Producer/Director Alan Arkush and others goes through the production of different scenes from the series. This goes in deep about how complicated it is to shoot this show and is pretty fascinating for its 25 minutes.

Season 3 Sneak Peek – This is a cool little look at the upcoming season, which looks a lot different from this second volume.

Generations Alternate Ending – This is the original ending, which was shot when the storyline was to continue with the Heroes cast dealing with a deadly virus that would wipe out the entire world. It’s not as exciting or satisfying as the actual ending.

Inside the Alternate Ending of Generations – This has Creators Tim Kring, Jeph Loeb, and Jesse Alexander talking about this alternate ending and where the show was going for most of the remainder of the proposed season. This is a pretty interesting “What If” type scenario that you rarely get in a show of this magnitude.

Untold Stories – This is footage from episodes that were already being worked on, but ended up being scrapped when the ending of the season was changed due to the Writer’s strike. There’s some really cool stuff here, especially the disturbing footage of Sylar on a rampage, as well as Elle’s fierce search for him.

NBC.com Featurettes – These are odd viral marketing Featurettes that have buildings blowing up and video footage of Nathan and Peter as they’re about to explode over New York.

Tim Sale Gallery of Screen Art – This is a look at the art used in the show by brilliant artist Tim Sale.

Deleted Scenes – There’s an absolute ton of deleted footage from a lot of these episodes on this set.

Yes, Heroes: Season 2 has its problems, but taken as a whole its still very entertaining. New characters like Elle and Bob, plus the development of Parkman and Nathan Petrelli far outweigh the problems of underdone plots and the annoyance of Maya‘s addition to this show. On top of that, this set is one of the best TV DVD sets I’ve ever seen for the sheer amount of extras. Overall, this one’s a winner and sets us up nice for the upcoming Season 3.

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NBC/Universal presents Heroes: Season 2. Created by Tim Kring. Starring Hayden Panettiere, Jack Coleman, Sendhil Ramamurthy, Masi Oka, James Kyson Lee, Milo Ventimiglia, Greg Grunberg, Ali Larter, Adrian Pasdar, Noah Gray-Cabey, Kristen Bell, David Anders, Stephen Tobolowsky, and Zachary Quinto. Running time: 482 minutes. Not Rated. Released on DVD: August 26, 2008. Available at Amazon.com.

Robert Sutton feels the most at home when he's watching some movie scumbag getting blown up, punched in the face, or kung fu'd to death, especially in that order. He's a founding writer for the movies section of Insidepulse.com, featured in his weekly column R0BTRAIN's Badass Cinema as well as a frequent reviewer of DVDs and Blu-rays. Also, he's a proud Sony fanboy, loves everything Star Wars and Superman related and hopes to someday be taken seriously by his friends and family.