And there were some really fine scenes - my favorite was Molly and Micah going into the elevator, signifying the next generation of heroes (the third, as far as we now know)...
Heroes accounted very well for itself in this debut season. It carved out a universe, in a provocative, ever-expanding, but consistent way. And left us a lot for the next and subsequent "volumes". (Interesting how television seasons have taken on new names of demarcation in the past few years ... 24 deals in Days, Heroes gives us Volumes...)
Among the interesting hints of what the future holds in store for us and the heroes is Molly's mention of someone "worse than the Boogeyman" (the Boogeyman was Sylar) - someone who could see her when she was locating him.... Goosebumps kind of thing.
And let us not forget about the infinite possibilities of time travel. We see Hiro land centuries in the past in the peek we got of Volume Two.
And if Hiro can get to the past ... who knows, maybe he can figure out a way to save Nathan and Peter. Optimism can spring eternal in a universe in which time travel's afoot.
Star Trek, Star Wars, Superman, - Hiro feels as if he's one of those heroes in those classic stories, he tells Ando.
Is Heroes the series (the volumes) yet in that category? It's off to a good start...
Useful links:
Lost, Heroes, and The Sopranos: A Comparison of Real and Future Endings
How Star Trek Liberated Television
Ten Reasons to Like the Clones
Why the Man of Steel Did So Little to Stop Hitler and Tojo
13 comments:
I made a lot of predictions about how Heroes would end, and every single one of them was completely wrong, even the minor ones. Let's see how I do on Lost.
:) I was right only about Peter dying in Heroes (though I've got a feeling he and Nathan may both have survived...) (I was also right about Ando surviving, but that one was easy...)
Let's see how we do with Lost tomorrow...
I dunno... we just watched the episode, and I have to say that I was pretty underwhelmed.
The first season of Heroes has been consistently good, with very little filler and a series of ever escalating threats, or astounding revelations, so it's depressing that I really felt like there was very little going on in this climax... If Lost and Battlestar Galactica are creating a trend of almost losing their way but then pulling it all out of the hat in the season finale, I hope that Heroes isn't going to go the other way, with the safest, least charged decisions being made at the end.
Having said that, I don't feel that any of the situations should have ended any other way... it just seemed that in a show that has excelled at charging every scene and circumstance with potency and a kind of relentless and inevitable energy, this final episode just kind of... sat there, with overwrought overwritten self-help book philosophising and soap-opera overemoting taking the place of tempo and meaningful detail... And wasn't it strange that, after weeks of feeling these disparate plot threads and characters come together, when they did it felt like they were never less connected?
As I think you noted in your discussion of the penultimate episode, they seemed to quite mercilessly take that opportunity to clear the decks for a less intricate but explosive finale, disposing of key instigators and antagonists like Linderman and uh... Julia Robert's brother with refreshing lack of preamble, and looking like they were going to dispatch DL, and at the very least pitch the two prominent human characters against each other in a fatal battle of wills... the writers seemed to be leaving themselves room to focus on developing and satisfying key concerns, such as Ando's death, Sylar's fate, and the final twist of the exploding man.
But ultimately I felt that those potentially distressing, dramatic and awesome plotlines got utterly overwhelmed by some pretty drab goings on... Peter's key power is actually his unconditional love... really? That's the revelation that's going to save New York? Home is wherever your family is? That's the key conclusion that comes out of the journey that Bennett's character has been on? Seriously?
Don't get me wrong... I really enjoyed all the points that you mentioned... loved the little shiver of Molly's revelation of the next awful villain... and the cute "next volume" bit featuring feudal Hiro was nice... but I think it's a stretch to say that ALL of the Heroes had a role in stopping the bomb, when in most cases it only amounted to the slightest cameo of what they could do, and compared to previous episodes, none of them really stretched themselves or were inventive with those powers.
This by no means diminishes the strength of the rest of the season, and I'm definitely on board for the next, but I guess the risk you run when you make a season where each episode has tons of brilliant little "wow" or "ooh" moments is that a lacklustre, by the numbers finale REALLY stands out.
And another thing...
Did Sylar kill Claude? It would seem a terrible waste disposing such a good character totally off-screen (although to be honest, I don't see how Sylar could have managed it), but at least twice in the final two episodes, Sylar just appears out of nowhere, totally foxing the heroes. Now, this is tv, and it's always easy to sneak up on people in tv, so maybe I'm reading too much into it.
Also, did Sylar use Eden-voice in the penultimate episode? Because I'm pretty certain he didn't manage to steal her powers.
AND why couldn't Claire just kill Peter temporarily, if only to shut him down long enough for his chain-reaction to die down? Or Peter just fly himself out of harms way? My partner and I came up with a few reasons why that might not be possible with how his powers work in this circumstance, but the viewer isn't really supposed to come up with their own macguffin on such a major plot point, surely?
Thanks for the excellent comments, Nicolas. I'll just address a few of the points in your second comment:
1. One of the interesting things about Heroes is how the powers overlap, enabling the heroes to do pretty much the same thing, in some cases, with different powers. My take of Sylar magically appearing was not that he'd taken the invisibility power from Claude, but some shape-changing power from some other hero - maybe derived in some way from that cockroach he was looking at in his cell...
2. Here's my take on Claire: Nathan saved her from the agony of having to shoot someone she loved. As for why Peter couldn't fly away himself - have we ever seen him use more than one power at the same time? I'm not sure...
But I don't hold such ambiguities against the show. They can cut either way - and, for me, they add depth to the story.
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But that said, I do think that Five Years Gone, not last night's finale, was the easily the best episode of this Volume...
Paul, thanks for the reply!
I'd come to the same conclusion about Sylar's sudden appearances... I just hoped that Claude's death wasn't what they were getting at... I have an incredible soft-spot for Christopher Eccleston that goes way back, and it was SO much fun seeing him in Heroes.
And I agree that Heroes is good enough to forgive it it's minor glitches... we talked about it a bit more this morning, and I stand by my feeling that none of the conclusions or actual EVENTS that happened in the finale were wrong, it was just the pacing that felt a little off. And only because it's normally so strong!
As to Peter, you may be right... I'm not sure if we've ever seen him access more then one power at once, although we've seen him use powers in such quick succession that it might seem simultaneous... for example, Sylar killed him with glass while he was accessing invisibility, but he was still able to regenerate, although it took him a hell of a time...
(Heh... it's at this point that it becomes clear that I've been reading superhero comics for too many years!)
well i think that their are different types of powers in that some might be used conciously while others(like regeneration) are always active the reason peter didnt regenerate quikly was because as we have seen their brains play a big part in the function of their powers so if he had a piece of glass preventing the regeneration to take effect that would pause it until it was removed(as we saw)also just speculation but if he was shot in the same place and let say part of his brain matter flew out i think that would kill him.
Nicolas - I agree with you about the pacing - and compare with the finale of Lost, for how to do it just right...
But it's hard in the first year to do everything right in a finale - your main goal is to touch all the bases, and pacing is probably secondary.
anon - I agree with your analysis. Another point which I'm not sure was ever addressed in the show: are Peter's powers (and perhaps Sylars, too) ever seen to be weaker than the originals, because they are in some sense second-hand or copied? (This of course would apply less to Sylar.)
Hey, seems like you're hooked up with many series, how could you miss Prison break ???
I did miss it - but I'm going to catch up with Prison Break this summer - I heard it's excellent.
I'm not convinced that Peter or Nathan is dead.
Nathan could have easily flown Peter up over the Atlantic, dropped him, and kept flying. This would easily allow for Nathan to remain alive.
I also think that although Peter explodes, he is protected from the damaging effects of that explosion. Look at Ted, when he was going into a meltdown in the Bennett house, he came out completely unscathed - combine that with Peter's regeneration abilities...I would find it extremely hard to believe that Peter is dead.
I can't imagine the show without Peter for that matter. It seems he shares the spotlight with Claire as being the most important character (although I think Peter is more important then Claire overall).
It's funny to see Milo as such a star in the show - he was in Gilmore Girls forever before this. I liked him then, but I like him so much more now!
Oh, and Prison Break was ok - right up until the last Season Finale - complete drivel, the show should have ended.
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