Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Heroes Season 1 Finale

I guess you could say that I'm a fan of the show, and usually I don't have very high expectations of the show - I guess as high as Lost. I'm not fanatical about it to the point of going to forums and speculating future plot points, but the season finale did leave me feeling empty and slightly used. If you're not a fan of the show, beware as this post will begin to dive into geek territory.

Okay, there may have been a lot of things I was hoping to see in the season finale - the show had been tauting New York exploding and millions killed for the whole season. All the episodes had been revolving around who would explode, how to stop it, and the face off between Sylar and Peter, and Hiro and Sylar.

None of that really happened. There was a face-off, but there was no tension and the action was just a fraction of some of the better scenes that had happened earlier in the season. There was an explosion of sorts, and there was a fight of sorts, but they were all interrupted frequently by posturing, one-liners, and a lackluster spectacle of superpowers.

All grumblings aside, say I had this script and this was supposed to have gone down this way, and the effects budget and location feasibility of shooting in NY was considered, this are a few things I might have changed about the finale:

Molly needs to shut up. Seriously. The little girl who's a radar of supers, has the worst "Dah dah DAHHHHH!" lines. She's like a little Haley Joel Osment. Her lines are hammy as hell and too over-dramatic. I'll add them once I review the episode for the exact lines.

Peter needs to like, leak. Seriously. His hands were glowing and his nuclear power couldn't be controlled any longer, and he was losing it. Yeah, but it didn't seem any different from the last few times he's almost lost it. When Ted lost it, people were burning up. A house was destroyed. Claire was burned alive. Peter's hands just glow. There's no sense of impending danger. A little bit of environment danger, like windows blowing out, the water in the fountain to begin boiling, the actors having to move away because of the intense heat... something. But no, his hands just glow, like they always have. Whoop De Doo.

Hiro and Sylar need to learn the Art of War. Lesson 1 would be - STOP ANNOUNCING THAT YOU'RE GOING TO HURT SOMEONE. SERIOUSLY. Everytime there's a confrontation, there's so much pause and one-liners before there's a punch or a slice thrown. Sylar's proven to be a dangerous person, and the theatrics are just old after a whole season of it. Just kick ass, and stop yapping. The reaction time of all the characters can be incredibly delayed. Just like the Incredibles have taught us, just stop monologuing.

The pacing was so off for me that I recut the finale fight - starting with the commercial break that was inserted at the beginning of the fight. Please! Talk about a momentum killer. Then shots of Parkman being tended to after being shot were taken out because Parkman is fine - that scene at the end when Molly cheeses it up with "Don't die, Officer Parkman!" sums up that he's hurt, but will likely live. Micah saying, "Mom, Dad needs your help!" is stupid - Dad's been bleeding for the last half hour, and he's not going to die any faster if Nikki isn't around. In fact, Bennett should've been thrown against the wall and passed out right there, instead of laying around, then passing out.

Finally, a scene that's not in my recut, and is disputed on the boards, is why Peter couldn't just fly his own ass into the stratosphere, and needed Nathan, who apparently has really great hearing and sight to be able to finish a conversation from hundreds of feet in the air and seeing the right people from that high up, to save him. I know it's to show that Nathan does indeed have a heart, but the plotting seems a bit loose.

All and all, a blah season finale isn't going to curb me from checking out the show the following season, it's still a great show overall. But I think the Tim Kring will have a lot to go off on when he hears that collective shrug of indifference from all the fans that's been let down. Oh well.

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