Heroes: The Good, The Great, and The Mediocre

Heroes is in many ways a televised comic book. The first year had a season-long story that connected all of the characters together, but smaller story arcs were told across three or four episodes, while each episode told a thematic story about the various heroes. These episode-long thematic stories and short arcs serve to build up our characters and reveal their motivations and experiences to us, which ultimately impact how they act in regard to the main story. Speaking of which, this grand story involves a nuclear explosion in New York City. Two characters' abilities set this story in motion; Isaac Mendes paints this bleak future, which allows the New York-based heroes to begin finding ways to stop it, while Hiro Nakamura accidentally traveled to the date of the explosion and experienced it before returning to the present day. This set him and his friend Ando Masahashi on their quest to New York, where Hiro hoped he would fulfill his destiny of becoming a true hero.

For the most part, the structure of the mini-stories feeding into the big one works very well. Everything that happens somehow directs the characters to be in a position to somehow deal with the New York storyline; Matt Parkman's manhunt for Sylar brings him to New York to pursue the killer, while Nathan's dealings with criminal Linderman gives him a new perspective on what it means to be a hero. Claire's search for the truth about herself leads The Company to finding her, forcing Mr. Bennett to relocate her to keep her safe.

Speaking of which, I'd like to bring up the episode "Company Man", which was written by Bryan Fuller. This is an example of Heroes at its best; there are a lot of characters on the show, some of which seemed unnecessary, and most episodes tried to feature each of them. While this worked for the most part, there would be times when we felt like our favorite characters didn't get nearly as much screentime as we would have wished (and this forced their episode storyline to not be as fleshed out as possible). "Company Man" focused only on the Bennett family, Parkman, and Ted Sprague, a radioactive man who is on the run from the US government, and they were all involved in one story. Parkman and Sprague believed that The Company was responsible for their abilities, which were beginning to cause grief for the pair. Mr. Bennett is one of the most compelling characters on the show; his murky morality and secretive past (and present) led to some extremely great conflict both within himself, with his family (notably Claire) and other powered characters, like Parkman and Sprague.

Since the entire episode followed Parkman and Sprague attempting to hold the Bennett family hostage, the story had a more complete feeling than other episodes. This was the dramatic conclusion to the Parkman-and-Sprague-hunting-for-answers mini-arc, which was contained in the entire episode, as opposed to having the conclusion either truncated or spread across two episodes. "Company Man" also contained revelations for the characters (Mrs. Bennett learned about her daughter's powers) as well as for the audience. Bennett's boss was introduced (Eric Roberts rocks), Bennett's history with invisible man Claude (who we'd seen earlier as a sort of Yoda-esque character for Peter) was shown in flashbacks (and Claude was certainly a different man back then), and one of the season's most touching scenes ended the episode. Hopefully, we'll get a few more episodes that only focus on three or four of the characters in the future (SPOILER!!: I really hope that we get a Nathan-centric episode, assuming he pulls through the shooting).

I've mentioned how the immense cast can sometimes be a detriment for episode-by-episode storytelling, and that is the biggest flaw the first season displayed. Taken as a season, this is pretty forgivable, and it is much easier to deal with on DVD, since we can just pop in the next episode. There were a few other problems as well, though. Lack of explanation about certain characters' powers (Nikki) led to some confusion, while sometimes logic was sacrificed for the sake of story (Peter tended to be associated with these things). Finally, while Heroes was excellent at setting stories up, the conclusions weren't always as dramatic and astounding as they could have been; a lot of people complained a lot about the final battle of the season. I agree that it was less than what I was expecting, but it was by no means awful.

Fortunately, the first year of Heroes was a pleasure (if a slightly guilty one). The show proved that ubergeeky superhero stuff can be compelling drama and had the potential to be the next big superhero universe in a world that is dominated by superheroes decades old from two universes.

EDIT: I can't believe I forgot to mention this, but the world of Heroes is expanded online through an internet comic strip (that was later printed as a trade paperback containing the first bunch of stories; I don't know if this will continue though, since I have not heard anything about a second volume) that is updated every week. This serves to introduce characters (Hana Gittelman, who was in one or two episodes of the show, was barely a character on TV, but was a huge player in the comic stories) and reveal backstory about featured characters (Linderman's past with the father of Nathan and Peter Petrelli was told in these comics). I think that the writers have said that there is more material than airtime for the characters, and this allows them to flesh out their characters more. This is certainly a cool idea, but there are definitely fans who don't read the comics (I stopped after a while because the writing quality was definitely a step down from the televised stuff), and there are certain plot developments revealed in the comics that make the things on TV easier to follow (Hana's motivations and a possible return of Adam Monroe are revealed in the comics).

Up next: And then there was Season 2...