Heroes: Back to the Future (again)

Last night's season 3 premiere of "Heroes" succeeded in pretty much every area where last year's premiere tanked.

The two-hour, back-to-back episodes, entitled "The Second Coming" and "The Butterfly Effect" were action-packed, directly addressed last season's cliffhangers, and laid the groundwork for the rest of the season. I recently re-watched season 2 on DVD, and while it wasn't quite as horrible as everyone remembers, there were plenty of things that were problematic. I'm not going to waste time rehashing all of those, but I will mention that the stakes for the season — the Shanti Virus' apocalyptic effect on the world — weren't even brought up until episode 6 or 7.

By contrast, the stakes for this season were established almost immediately as we caught up with Peter four years from now in a future where heroes have been exposed and are evidently hunted (by other heroes with flattering hair dye).

In my gushing about the season premiere, I didn't mean to imply the show was perfect. I mean ANOTHER doomsday future scenario? Really? Still, despite the fact that all the time-hopping makes it a little tricky for slow viewers like me to keep track of who the hell is where and when (thank you, DVR!), the show did a good job of quickly establishing what was on the line, while still providing some mystery (what would possibly make Claire hunt her beloved uncle in the future).
Peter (pictured, left with future Claire) quickly deduced that he had to travel back to the present day, where Nathan was about to out all those with superhuman abilities. It was a neat twist to have Future Peter as the shooter who took out Nathan (it would've been even neater if I hadn't stupidly read about it in online a month ago). Future Peter wasn't done wreaking havoc — after Present Peter and Parkman gave chase, we eventually found out that Future Peter had banished Parkman to a desert wasteland and Present Peter into the consciousness of a dangerous, prisoner of the Company. My favorite part of the aftermath of Nathan's shooting was the clever idea that what seemed like Future Peter's most insignificant interaction with a fellow hero (the phone call from Claire while he was in the ambulance with Nathan) eventually leads to future being screwed anyway.

Future Peter (in present Peter disguise) tells Claire to stay in California, which leads her to get attacked by Sylar, which leads him to getting Claire's power, which allows him to break into the company and bust out the level 5 villains (including present Peter) and set the tone for the future (for both the characters in the show and the audience). Think about it — we only saw a glimpse of what those bad guys can do.

Sylar got from New York to California pretty quickly (too quickly?), but the confrontation between him and Claire was horror-movie-quality creepy. Eventually, he caught Claire and took her power "Hannibal"-style, but left her alive. Later, Claire's mom asked (without asking) if she had been raped. Claire said no, but there was no doubt she'd been violated in a profound way by Sylar, who left her questioning whether she still had a soul since she could no longer feel pain.

She sought advice from Peter, who was inexplicably acting like an idiot and brushed her off. Milo Ventimiglia is probably the most frustrating actor in the cast, in the way he runs hot and cold. For example, he's often served as the heart of the show, and he's doing a decent job portraying two decent characters, but sometimes his acting is kinda laughable. It's especially laughable whenever he's in a scene with the excellent Cristine Rose as Angela Petrelli, who can easily sell a potential silly scenario like Mrs. Petrelli asking her Future son what he did with her Present son (got that?).

It's also nice to see Sylar back at close to full-strength after spending 99.5 % of last season completely powerless and stuck with (ugh) Maya and Alejandro. Sure, Sylar really DOES need to stop monologuing and just take care of business at times, but you can tell Zachary Quinto is having a good time.

Another highlight was the breakout at level 5, which reintroduced us to Bennett (once again, Jack Coleman is the best actor on this show, along with Cristine Rose). Sylar had taken out Bob (that was kind of a cold way to write Stephen Tobolowski out of the show — I thought he was pretty decent) and taken his ability (the turning things to gold thing was FINALLY cool when he made that gun gold). He almost did the same to Elle, but she (involuntarily) sent out a shockwave that knocked Sylar out — and allowed the rest of the villains to escape. Oops. Mrs. Petrelli (now running the company) kicked Elle out, which was shame because I'd finally come around to enjoying the character once Elle showed her vulnerable, damaged side towards the end of season 2 (what does that say about me?) Now it's up to the Company and Bennett to hunt down the escaped villains.

As I recently re-watched those season 2 episodes, I realized what a truly strong actor Masi Oka is. Sure, he's always been a fan favorite and the main source for comedy relief, but the guy can really bring it when it comes to dramatic moments too — which is why it was such a disappointment to see him saddled with such a ridiculously stupid storyline.

I liked the idea that Hiro — one of the few characters who embraces and cherishes his gifts instead of being all emo about it — was bored out of his mind with no quest and no purpose. However, the idea that Hiro's father, Kaito (hello again George Takei!) left behind half of a secret formula that could destroy the world for Hiro to guard is contrived beyond belief. Let me get this straight — Kaito had access to his secret and told his son about it, knowing full well his son would open the safe anyway, leading to disaster. Why not keep the safe a secret or at least throw away the button that gave Hiro access to the safe? Also, why make the password Hiro's fingerprint? Well, obviously the answer is because if Kaito did any of those things, then there would be no way for the show to introduce Daphne the speedster who stole the formula right out of Hiro's hands (leading to some admittedly cool special effects). Unless Kaito meant for the formula to get stolen, this doesn't make any sense.

The best thing to come out of this is the interesting Hiro/Ando dynamic going forward. Hiro took a peek into the future and saw his best buddy zapping him right before Japan was demolished. Since that time, Hiro was very hesitant to trust Ando, which is probably what will lead Ando to turn on his friend and is the kind of self-fulfilling prophecy thing I like.

One thing I wasn't so hot on was something that must be a real challenge to the writers — avoiding the temptation to bring EVERY character back from the dead. It must be hard for them not to do it since they have time travel and Claire's regenerative blood, among other tools at their disposal. So, while I was delighted to see Nathan back from the dead courtesy of Linderman (it's good to see the charismatic Malcolm McDowell again), his resurrection takes some of the punch away from his emotional death. I was also less delighted with his awkward/cheesy (or is it hammy) religious speechifying.

I was surprisingly more intrigued by the way the show brought back Ali Larter as Tracy, an aid to Gov. Malden of Texas who thinks the governor should team up with Nathan, and not as Nikki, the super schizo. As we all saw, Nikki very clearly died in a fire in New Orleans at the end of last season, so seeing Larter as a completely new character was a bit disconcerting at first. Then again, I remembered Bob telling Nikki during an episode in season 2 that some hero's psyche becomes fractured upon receiving their powers, resulting in multiple personalities. Maybe Tracy is just another result of that. Either way, I'm definitely interested in finding out what's up with Tracy (and her ice cold touch) than I was in anything Nikki did last year.

My point is that pretty soon, the list of people who haven't died on this show is going to be shorter than the list of people who HAVE kicked the bucket (Claire, Peter, Nathan, Nikki, Maya, Bennett, etc.) Please writers — next time you kill someone, keep them dead.

May I suggest Mohinder or Maya? It's no secret that I'm no Mohinder fan (and I'm not alone), but last night took things to the heights of ridiculousness. Every scene was a disaster, from the way Maya was oddly glammed up for her scenes in Mohinder's grimy apartment and lab to the overacting contest between Sendhil Ramamurthy and Dania Ramirez.

And that was before Mohinder discovered a way to give ordinary people superhuman abilities with Maya's help. Maya urged him to throw the formula away, which led to a faux-melodramatic scene where Mohinder pretended like he was going to toss the serum (a garbage can would've been fine, I think), but instead injected himself. Mohinder said each person injected with the serum would have powers manifest in different ways, so Mohinder became the Beast, minus the blue fur. Side effects include creepy cockiness and a tendency toward sex scenes that were probably supposed to be hot, but turn out embarrassingly funny. Also, your skin falls off eventually.

It's frustrating because the one thing I DID like about the character of Mohinder was that he didn't have powers and (along with Bennett) gave the audience an outsider's perspective of these superpowered beings. Now he's just like everyone else. So can he please die like everyone else, at least once?

So what'd you think of this episode? Is it an upgrade over last season? I wasn't the only one who thought Matt was reading the turtle's mind, right? ("Thank you, turtle" was my favorite line of the episode) Did you notice that after Tracy iced (get it?) the reporter, the camera lingered on his remains for just a little too long? (Or am I reading too much into it?) When and how do you think Peter gets his scar? Finally, if you had to kill off one character (that stayed dead!) who would it be? (I think you know my answer to that one.)