Heroes: Dying of the Light or Poor Writing?

October 21 2008 22:01 Filed in: Television
theman

With the World Series getting ready to roll let’s make with the baseball analogies. I’m starting to believe there are no Home Runs left in Heroes. Maybe it’s like the curse of the Bambino. The Red Sox traded Babe Ruth and suffered decade after decade of pain. Heroes traded it’s sanity and soul and is in the midst of hell.

The most recent installment, Dying of the Light, is a bloop single, possibly a ground rule double. Maybe it was a single with second base taken on a throwing error.

First, let me stray off topic for a moment and see if anyone else finds it odd that Mohinder Suresh, the character that was the good soul of the show and narrator in the first two season is still the narrator even though he’s suddenly turned it some freakish disgusting villain? Huh? It’s just a demonstration of some of the weirdness and inconsistency of the show. I just don’t get it, really.

Overall, Dying of the Light isn’t horrible. For the first time in a while, Hiro and Ando had some great light-hearted moments, especially Hiro trying to utilize time travel to outwit the African precog. Daphne and Matt Parkman moved toward becoming interesting, well almost. Robert Forster as Arthur Petrelli is The Man. You have to love what he may bring in the show even though they’ve basically turned him to one of the “Power of God” heroes that are bring the show down.

Also good was this week’s Claire dilemma. It was adequately tense as she is forced to play a sick form of Russian Roulette with both her real and adopted mothers. It seems as if they are setting her up as Hero in a year where the writers are spoon-feeding us these simplistic, hard to believe turns of some of the established characters.

Even though it’s hard to swallow in the context of the story so far, I’m actually finding myself preferring Zachary Quinto’s portrayal of Sylar now that he’s being repainted possibly as an emerging good guy. Even so, caution needs to be taken with this road. Even if he goes good, he still has the baggage of being guilty of countless sadistic murders that it would be hard to see go unpunished.

I still believe that the show is just in a troubled state. The powers of our characters are getting out of hand and now that the cats out of the bag with that, it’s going to be a hard road to get it back in. I can’t say that I wasn’t pleased to see Peter Petrelli get his godlike powers sucked from him by his real father, but really, how long do you think the writers are going to let that stand?

Whether it’s the good, bad or neutral characters that basically have the power to destroy the world in a couple of waves of the hand it still cheapens the show and makes it more and more difficult to paint believable and real drama.

I also think this whole “secret formula” storyline is just a big stinker that’s weighting things down. If they can possibly turn this into some way to utilize the formula to tame and pull back the characters powers maybe they can start fresh at some point, but it’s still a daunting task to get the toothpaste back in the tube.

I’m not sure that show is going to make it for a fourth season even it can right the ship. It’s going to be hard to bring lost viewers back. We’ll move to next week…

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