Heroes Pt 2: Days Of Evitable Future Past Apocalypse

Last time I wrote about Heroes, I mostly focused on the negative. That's gonna be true for this post as well, because nobody ever wants to read about positive thoughts, but this time I'll lead off with the good. Nobody wants to read my blog in general, but still. The point remains.

The villains are totally badass. I love Marlo's character, who gets stronger by feeding off of fear of anyone nearby, strong enough to punch a whole through the short-lived Magneto-like character. There was the guy who could emit sonic blasts, before Sylar killed his ass, the puppeteer guy, the Haitian's voodoo god-like brother, finally a speedster with Daphne, Bubs' (from the Wire) character who could produce black holes and was killed off too quickly, the guy who could turn his arm into metal, and finally, Arthur Petrelli, who showed Adam Monroe what being a bad guy was all about. "Welcome to Season 3 Adam. I know you were the main villain last season, but now, you're dead. Syonara."

Heroes needs to abandon it's playing with the future, because time travel always hurts my head, and it's almost always not done well, so when it's introduced to a show, the show suffers. Ahem, LOST. Having Hiro travel back to feudal Japan to help as well as become the legend he read about as a child was fun and funny, but also extremely paradoxical. Showing the dystopian future with an emotionless Claire and dead Peter who came back in time to shoot Nathan and give him a religious awakening that made little sense and seems to have vanished...damn I lost my point. Oh yea, STOP DOING IT! Peter's been to the future to see how bad it is how many times? And the future is never fully explained or makes sense. Speaking of not making sense, how did Arthur get back in time to steal the catalyst from Hiro, along with his power, last episode?*

However, my main beef with the show lies with Isaac Mendez. Not his prophetic paintings, which I sort of liked, and now that he's dead, those done by the African guy, who I sort of liked as well, until his head was separated from his body. Isaac's comic book, 9th Wonder, which has become a deux ex machina that doesn't even make any sense, and now his "last sketchbook," is what angers me. Ando, Hiro, Parkman and Daphne (nemesis, haha) don't know what to do next, so they check the comic book to see where to go next, which is written in the comic that they'll do, and they don't even think to check ahead a few pages to see if anything bad might happen. It makes the future immutable, but at the same time, they need to change it, because otherwise the world will end, and things seem to not be leading to the clips of the future we've seen, like Claire becoming cold as ice or Sylar becoming a family man, what with him burning Elle's corpse and all.

I also didn't like the trip back to the past to see how it all started, which gave me very little further appreciation for anyone or any relationships, except for Sylar, Elle and Noah Bennet. Why did they have to make Flint Gordon Claire's mom's brother? Isn't it enough that Nathan, a man given his flying powers through science, and her, a pyrotechnic, are Claire's parents and it doesn't make sense how she got her powers, whereas it does that Peter and Sylar both have slightly altered versions of Arthur's powers? Why do Flint and Meredith both have the same power as well, though he spits blue flame and she spits hot fire? Also, finding out that Arthur tried to kill Nathan, and then seeing Nathan find out and still run to Daddy's side in a later episode made me lose even more respect for him.

Again, don't get me wrong. I haven't missed any episodes of Heroes, except for the last minute and a half that TiVo keeps not recording. I think Hiro as a kid and loving waffles is hysterical, I get chills from Sylar, and I keep wondering which villains will come back or what will happen next. However, if they don't kill off Daphne, who has the shittiest villain story and her "romance" with Parkman is based off a dream he had of the future where he was in love with her, soon, get Peter his powers back and do something of consequence, I'm going to be mad and may even not watch. That is, until they get a character who has powers like Green Lantern.


*HD has since explained that Arthur stole Peter's powers, which included time travel. However, if Arthur can take away people's powers by touching them, including all the ones acquired, and Peter's power was to gain people's powers that he was in contact with, how come Peter didn't also have all of Sylar's powers? Ponder that, until your head explodes.

**By the way, I actually traveled into the future to watch the episode, then wrote it in the past, which is why the posting date is 12/9/2008, instead of 12/9/2020, when I watched the episode.