Hooked on Heroes

Every fall the television networks begin their programming years, and most of the new shows meet with a collective “so what” from the viewing public.  This response is to be expected when much of what is programmed is little more than crap (to use the more polite term).  It has been no different this year, with some of the better new shows such as Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip and Friday Night Lights receiving critical acclaim but no substantial audience, and most of the other new shows failing to receive either acclaim or viewers. 

One of the exceptions to this is the series Heroes.  I have written about this excellent new show before, but I just want to commend it my readers once again.  The acting, directing and writing are all topnotch, and I have found myself increasingly drawn into this “comic book” TV show (and as a former consumer of comic books, I do not use the term in a derogatory fashion).

Heroes presents us with a world where disparate people are beginning to discover that they have various “super powers.”  This new phenomenon is exciting for some and terrifying for others, and part of the fun of watching the show is seeing how these “heroes” react to their gifts.  My favorite character is a young Japanese businessman named (appropriately enough) Hiro, and out of all the folks we meet in the series, he is the one who is most thrilled and enthusiastic about his newly found powers (which in his case involve the ability to both stop and travel through time).  Hiro’s glee is infectious, and I look forward to the segments that feature him.

Other characters include a psychic cop (now that would come in handy in his job), a somewhat seedy politician who can fly, a woman with a past who also has a split persona, which takes care of some of the nastier aspects of her life, and an invincible cheerleader (yes, a cheerleader) who heals instantaneously and from all appearances cannot be killed, though her imminent death may be the cause of the world’s untimely demise as well. Of course no show focusing on superheroes would be complete without a villain, and Heroes appears to have a real supervillain to plague our friends.  It seems that his area of expertise is to kill the heroes and by directly accessing their brains (and I mean that literally), he absorbs their powers.

I realize it all sounds farfetched, but that is the real glory of comic books and of this show - the ability to create a new world with its own rules and internal logic and place the reader or viewer within a world that is both similar to and different from his or her own.  I for one am hooked on Heroes and consider it the best new show of the fall TV season (Studio 60 is a very close second). 

Heroes airs on NBC on Mondays at 9:00 pm e, and is also shown on Fridays on the SciFi Network at 7:00 pm e.  In closing I want to add that NBC has been doing an excellent in promoting Heroes.  I am in total agreement with The TV Addict, which states:  

“the true super-powers belong to the NBC promo department. They are capable of ensuring I sit by my TV every Monday at 9PM in the hopes of seeing something remarkable

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