Heroes Season Finale quick review

I haven't seen the 24 season finale yet (and for me it will be the 24 series finale), but I did watch the Heroes season finale, How to Stop an Exploding Man. This entry definitely has spoilers, so don't say you weren't warned.

For how much the show has developed over the last eight or nine episodes, I found the ending (including the Hiro part) a little lame. And by a little, I mean, it epitomized anti-climactic.

First, I thought it was going to be two-hours, so by 9:54 or so, I was thinking, things are set up well, the next hour is going to be great. And then the whole thing with Nathan picking Peter up and flying with him? Lame. Wouldn't a nuclear bomb going off in the atmosphere be about a thousand times worse than it detonating in a city? The invisible guy knocked Peter out with his hand, couldn't they have done the same (or similar) thing? Peter going back in time to talk to the old guy was the best part of the episode; I guess he did absorb Hiro's power after all.

With all the set up though (in the episode and prior to it), everything resolved itself far too quickly. I don't think comic books would have done it like that in one fell swoop, and the fact that the show resolved that story line in that particular manner shows an utter lack of creativity. And while they attempted to set themselves up for a worse villain than Sylar for the next season through the girl (who was scared he would see her), they also had Sylar crawl away into a manhole so he didn't really die either. Hopefully Sylar kills the new villain or vice versa.

In the end, I stand by my belief that Heroes was one of the best new shows on television this season, primarily for being original. But if they were trying to move away from doing a serialized show and wrap everything up in one neat bow with some carry over for next season, they did a piss poor job. Very unsatisfying. Even if they had just had Peter stop glowing and everyone just walk away that probably would have been better than what they did.

Hopefully the previews for "volume II" are a little bit better than seeing George Takei fighting people in seventeenth century Japan and Hiro appearing in the middle of the conflict in the final scene. Hopefully they abandon that storyline pretty quickly, but after tonight's episode, it would be difficult to predict with any certainty how they could change the storyline. Or maybe Hiro's father's "gift" is that he lives forever, like the guy in Highlander, and Volume II will copy that show much like it did to the X-Men. Regardless, the last five minutes were the worst of the season and hopefully didn't completely kill all of the momentum the show had gained over the past few months. So, if you didn't see the last five minutes and turned it off, you will probably get as much out of your imaginary ending than you would for the real thing.

Back to reading bar outlines.

Tags: nbc, heroes, how to kill an exploding man