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Milo Ventimiglia as Peter Petrelli ; NBC Photo: Chris Haston – Check out more photos here
Heroes Chapter 3: Villains kicked off this week on September 22nd on NBC with a 2-part premiere: “The Second Coming” and “The Butterfly Effect”. Though ratings for the premiere were down, BitTorrent downloads set an all-time record. So, what does all this mean? Has Heroes hit its stride, or missed the mark?
Well, here are my thoughts from the premiere:
- It’s gone from “superheroes, cool!” to a dark and complex mystery, and I like it!
- All the characters seemed to instantly become more complex – that’s not an easy feat for 2 hours to achieve. It made some of the motivations hard to grasp, but they did a good job at it.
- Everyone made bad choices, and that’s pretty realistic
- Some elements of the show were hard to swallow – like, why didn’t Claire heal her own head as Sylar was cutting it, like Peter did with her abilities?
- I missed some of the light-heartedness that gave this show some of its spunk – Hiro was a lot more troubled, for example
- Too many characters added to quickly?
- We begin to ask who is good and who is evil and what made them that way
- We wonder how much the “new” kids are messing up the timeline, and how much the parents did to set that up. It’s a mess.
So, I left the premiere loving the show, but missing some of its spunk. I think this new Heroes has more lasting power. It reminded me of Lost in many ways – in the twists and turns and dark corners, and the ability to raise more questions than to provide answers. I personally think this was a smart move.
What did YOU think?
Read another review of Heroes from Superhero Profiles.
708 days ago
I hate what they’ve done to Mohinder’s character. He’s supposed to stand as a moral compass for those who want to abuse these powers, and to show that being normal doesn’t equal powerlessness. Knowledge is power! Season 1 Mohinder would never have injected himself (even with more detailed testing) or pursued Maya so forcefully.
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708 days ago
Yeah, I did find it a little weird that he was so jealous of people with powers. But I think the Maya thing was perhaps not so odd – if all his senses are wired up, then his recognition of pheromones must be crazy high.
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708 days ago
Hi-
The first two episodes of the season were well acted and technicaly excellent, yet I walk away thinking why should I care?? After all, characters are multiple images (good/bad) in multiple time lines (now/future) that we know will be flipped at the writers whim to service his preconceived plotline and nobody takes seriously the danger any charater is ever in since they will be simply be reincarnated by some lame technicality when their presence is requred in future episodes to move the story along. There simply is no longer any way to grab the viewers attention, like in the pilot episode when Claire/Hayden unsuccessfully tries to injure herself, since we have become desynsitized over time to all the writers tricks. This is starting to feel like a redux of the last season of Twin Peaks, i.e. an exercise in grandiose style but no substance of meaning.
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693 days ago
[...] up after my last review of Heroes, I stand by my asserting that Heroes is kicking butt this season. But so confusing! I don’t [...]
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354 days ago
I was watching first two seasons breathlessly. I haven’t seen something so interesting for a while. I couldn’t wait for a next episode. But when the third season started I was so disappointing. I couldn’t believe that they can make such a big turn to worse. Pity.
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