In yesterday’s Romo’s World, Matt Romanda laid into Heroes. According to him, “The cracks are beginning to show in my favourite new series”.
I couldn’t disagree more.
Heroes is still easily the best new show on television and possibly the only drama that will be on more than one season. I’m enthralled and, even after the third episode, I can’t get enough.
To address the first point(s), those involving Ali Larte’s character Niki, the character isn’t boring at all. A simple bit of Dissociative Identity Disorder, wouldn’t give her the ability to slaughter two mob goons, drag them out of the house, put them in a car, and immaculately clean up a vicious double murder scene with nobody seeing. As for her backstory, it isn’t that complicated. She had a son, the father was either convicted or suspected in a string of homicides, and he escaped custody. The father left her with no money so she took a loan from the mob to get her son into private school, to try and pay the bills, she was running a web-cam site. Her son is a borderline musical genius, which may or may not be the result of her abilities.
If anything, her backstory is one of the more interesting ones in the show. She obviously has a past that involve mob ties. Her baby daddy is likely going to show up somewhere down the road and, as is all the rage these days, likely be connected to one of these characters. In fact, I’d be wholly unsurprised if it ended up being Syler.
Next, Claire’s injury and the autopsy scene. I have no real insight into how they perform autopsies, but I do know they are always performed. An autopsy is performed on a prisoner who dies from lethal injection so I don’t think it’s out of hand to have one performed on a random carcass found on a high school football field. Also, I don’t know the order in which pieces of an autopsy are performed, but not removing the offending object from the body seems to be consistent with they way they do it on CSI. Whether or not that’s for dramatic effect or the way a coroner actually does things, I have no idea.
Claire’s scene was a piece of lazy writing, I agree. The evil high school quarterback raping the cheerleader under the stands was a clichéd setup, but it had a purpose. First, her power had to manifest in front of someone so she had a reason to leave Texas. As far as everyone in Texas is concerned, including her father, she’s dead. We don’t have any concept of how much time passed between the two scenes, but we can assume it’s at least a day, and the body was visible enough that everyone thinks she’s gone. She can’t go back to school, so she’ll have to go elsewhere. Second, it was grounds to show us that she can be “killed” at least temporarily”¦ and I’m fascinated to find out what happened to her while she was dead, both inside her head and around her. Who found her? What did her “dad” do? Did her body regenerate organs? What actually prevented her from healing? What happens when her body vanishes from the morgue? While the set-up was weak, it delivered what it should have.
As for Sylar, all that’s been proven so far is he’s some form of telepath or telekinetic. The murders, according to the FBI, were accomplished with no sign of physical contact, which means he’s able to do all this stuff without touching any of the objects”¦ and he’s a little bit crazy. I don’t think this power is any more ridiculous than some of the other powers that have been described thus far. In fact, at this point, the guy who can stop time is probably more powerful than a poor-man’s Carrie. The girl who really can’t be hurt short of a spike lodged through the brain is probably more powerful than Syler. The only difference is that Syler is a bit unstable and using his powers for evil, instead of just good. This makes him one of the more interesting characters on the show. What happens to someone who is apparently unstable in the first place and they find out they’re better than everyone else? What if that makes them even more unstable? At this point, he’s the only character to have had his power long enough to realize how he can abuse it. It will be interesting to see how many of the characters go down Magneto’s route, and how many characters go down Professor Xavie’s.
Cracks beginning to show? Not in the slightest.
