Is Heroes about to blow our minds?

Elizabeth’s back guest-clacking for us again, after sharing her thoughts about Fringe last time.

So it’s hiatus time, and of course Nathan’s dead again. For real this time. That body Sylar/Nathan and Peter found in the storage unit did look suspiciously well-preserved, though. As daring as it would be for them to make it stick this time, I for one am going to miss Nathan.

As opposed to Sylar, Nathan was always the creep with the heart of gold in the end. He was generally more likable than Peter, and in a lot of cases more of a realist than almost anyone else. You almost have to wonder if it’s a running joke with the writing and production staff — you know, “and then Nathan dies.” At least he finally mentioned Claire. It’s seemed odd to have their relationship so completely ignored after it was so emphasized last season. They seemed to become so close, but they haven’t seemed to be in touch or even to be talking to each other anymore. Claire’s been going through a lot this year, so no doubt it’s going to be tough on her when she finally finds out — and hard for Bennett to support her after losing her other father.

This volume has the opposite problem of the last one: “Fugitives” started so well but lost direction and faltered in the last few episodes, and “Redemption” seemed to be going nowhere at first but is now finally hitting its stride. The real problem now is that the stakes have still never really been established.

There is no mission. Samuel’s recruiting for the carnival would work better if we knew more about what his real agenda is, other than world domination. The suggestion of some kind of vendetta against Bennett is promising, though. All of this might even (*gasp*) be tying into Hiro’s story. Could this be a real attempt to get back to the glory days, when a variety of slowly building stories came together, to save the cheerleader and save the world?

The show’s attempt to trim down the storylines has worked out for the better, too. It’s made some of the storytelling a little choppy, but they’ll have less trouble making the overall plot more coherent heading into the climax. Part of the reason they’ve taken so long to set up the end-of-season mission is that, like the beginning of season two, this is in many ways an aftermath story in the wake of everything that happened last year. Now the show finally looks ready to move on, and since the end-of-season mission is usually the best part (ignoring last season’s crash and burn), we can hope that this show is about to totally blow our minds in January. Like Hiro, I prefer to think that anything is possible.

Clacked by Guest Clacker
on Dec 07, 2009 @ 13:00 EST5EDT