Yesterday I finished watching Heroes. It’s been a long journey. Sorry for this geeky post. I started watching this show exactly a week ago, and since then I’ve been consuming it like a zombie with the result that I now feel like someone ate my brain. It sure is a lot to absorb, but at the same time it’s relieving to be at the end of the journey. That’s the impact a simple TV show can have on you ?! This definitely isn’t the easy Friday night entertainment you’d expect it to be. On top of that it’s quite graphic (though I’ve never really been disgusted by this, which is unusual for me… I don’t mind most gore, but I usually don’t like head stuff)

I had first seen the pilot episode on Christmas, when my brother told me a buddy of his recommended him this show, and we watched the pilot episode together. Unfortunately we didn’t really have a lot more time to watch more episodes back then. This is the part where I have to confess that the pilot episode didn’t hook me. After Christmas I didn’t go ahead and looked for more of the show online, for whatever reasons. I actually thought the show was pretty much an X-Men rip off and that there was nothing more to it. I also thought it was really over dramatic with the whole destruction stuff, and I’m really no fan of apocalyptic movies or shows because they are just plain depressing. The only thing that I found majorly attracting was the voice (which includes a pseudo-British but great accent) of the character Mohinder Suresh, plus his narrations …

So eventually, half a year later, I awakened from my boring daily online routine and found some websites which gather shows like this on the internet, and since lots of people kept telling me how awesome Heroes is, I gave it another chance, watched the pilot episode again, and another 4 episodes on the same day.

I still couldn’t get over the idea that this show took a lot of inspiration from X-Men because some similarities are extremely obvious (with the exception of Ted – him they stole from The Simpsons), but this is still different. Unlike in X-Men there are no silly groups of good guys and bad guys with silly nicknames fighting in each other in silly costumes. This has a believable connection to the real world, and it is much more character driven and much more dramatic. Which is probably why it’s such a big hit – people love to see supernatural things, but they want to be able to believe in it and be able to empathize with what they’re seeing. And who doesn’t wish they could regenerate, or fly, or move things with their mind, or read other’s thoughts, or see the future, or remember everything they read, or stop time, or create fire with their hands, or heal others, or walk through walls, or know where people are, or metamorph, or be invisible, or see how things work…

Heroes actually consists of many different sub plots on different places on the world (that’s exaggerated, it’s only the States, India and Japan). At first the show concentrates on getting more depth to all of those small stories, for example the guy in New York who thinks he can fly or the girl in Texas who seems to be indestructible, but in the end they all merge into a big main plot – sort of…

Despite all those characters with supernatural powers and abilities, I still thought that the most interesting character was the Professor, Mohinder Suresh, and he’s probably also the one who did hook me in the end, or rather, his enthralling voice and his charm. He’s my hero. In the first few episodes he sort of seems like the main character who is gonna connect all the different characters from the sub plots, because he is a geneticist and continues his father’s work on studying all those ‘special’ people. Unfortunately his character then twisted a little to something less prominent and important-seeming, but I still thought he was the most interesting to watch throughout the whole show.

The second most interesting was probably Peter Petrelli, but if I told you why, you’d totally be spoiled. 😉

Unpredictability is also part of the show – there are characters with which you never know of they’re good, or bad, or good, until the very end.

Even though I was hopelessly addicted (well, there’s not so much of a choice since every episode ends with a cliffhanger), I always had mixed feelings about the show. It was very captivating, but even over-dramatic shows like Six Feet Under have left me with a happier feeling than this (if you don’t count the 4 final episodes of SFU – I cried waterfalls. I didn’t cry during this). Which might be another sign of excellent character-driven storytelling – you care so much about those characters that you are scared shitless for them until you can watch the next episode, because you know that boogeyman could break them in half like a match within one second.

Despite all the suspense and action and overwhelmingness, the season ended exactly like I thought it would. Not really so many surprises there. Some things in this show are see-through, with others you never know what you get. There are some errors in continuity and logic, but only geeks like me would notice – why do people who walk through fire never burn their hair? Why’s a Hindu guy talking about god? Why don’t they use their powers more efficiently to do something about the bad guys? Does not feeling any pain whatsoever come automatically with regenaration? Wouldn’t it genetically make a lot more sense if members of a family would have all the same abilities? And of course, considering the big big behind the scenes plot line: “Huh?”

The show obviously tries to be very multi-cultural, but it still is very American (of course). What I always asked myself is why the Japanese people speak Japanese with each other, but the Indians don’t speak Hindi. Obvious reasons might be that most of the Indian actors are American or something, but it’s still one of those things a geek like me would notice. Actually the Japanese are also mostly American(ized) and as far as I read they all have a tiny American accent when speaking Japanese, but whatever. At least now I know what ‘destiny’ and ‘death’ means on Japanese – 5 endless to go 😉

I think I will watch this season again, and I actually might get myself the DVD, even though the mood of the show is very apocalyptic and depressing. I’m very curious how this show will develop in the future. As far as I read on the net, they wanna do a mini spin-off called “Origins” with 6 episodes, where people can vote for the character they want to appear in the next season. I don’t know, sounds a little ridiculous, but I guess we’ll find out sooner or later how that works out. I have no doubt once it’s out I’ll turn into a zombie again. For now, back to life.