« A Really Funny Joke I Just Made Up | Main | Weekend and Then Some »
May 7, 2007
Heroes Update - Heroes on TV
A hidden world exists alongside our own, one in which good and evil have specific roles to play, with specific champions pitting their incredible abilities against each other.
This is the premise behind countless fantasy TV shows, from the wildly successful Buffy the Vampire Slayer to the dismal flop Point Pleasant. It's the driving story arc of the Harry Potter books and it's the tacit assumption of Men in Black.
It's also the plot of the TV show Heroes.
Heroes has all of the essential moments required for any good fiction-- the AHA, the YES, and the OH MY GOD-- and generally has a couple of them per episode. The major complaint is that the characters are scattered all over the map, but in the more recent episodes they've been more scrupulous about giving you the character names and places each time the narrative jumps, and that helps a lot.
Part of the appeal of Heroes is wish-fulfillment. Humans all want to be special, and most of them would like good and evil to be a little easier to spot. But Heroes has a deeper message, and a profoundly conservative one, all about children and self-sacrifice and redemption. If you've been watching 24 all season, consider catching Heroes when everything goes into reruns next month. If you've already been watching it, the review continues with spoilers below the fold.
IMPORTANT UPDATE: Previously, the article said the show was on Friday nights. Actually, it's on Monday nights. I apologize, but the weekdays all look the same to me.
The amazing thing about Heroes is that unlike the standard dark supernatural show where people are being constantly tempted by evil, instead you have people tempted to be good.
- An amoral businessman is given a baby girl to raise as his own, and he becomes a hero-- not a superhero but an ordinary-guy hero-- because he finds out he loves her more than anything in the world.
- A supposedly corrupt politician turns out to be involved in a secret plot to take out a top crime boss.
- A tormented drug addict redeems himself with a clue before dying.
A slightly more complex interchange in a recent episode illustrates this more clearly. A guy with invisibility powers tries to teach the most powerful of the good heroes-- Peter Petrelli-- how to control his abilities. He explains that people are distractions and you have to get them out of your mind. Peter claims his girlfriend Simone is different. To disprove the point, the invisible guy lets Peter see Simone embracing her ex. It's the classic Romantic Misunderstanding scene we've scene a million times before. Generally it drags on for half a season, but Peter snaps out in five minutes. It turns out that the secret to controlling his powers is remembering his friends, not forgetting them.
This is typical. The good guys have serious problems, but they don't spend a whole lot of time whining. It's downright refreshing, and we need more of this.
Anyway, I have no idea how long it will take to break bad, but for now, at 9pm Mondays (8pm Central), NBC has a little oasis that will make you feel like there's real hope for our world. We really need that now.
Respectfully submitted,
Ferdinand T. Cat
# At Mon 1:23 AM | Permalink | Trackback URI | Comments (2) | More Heroes Update | Tags: conservative culture family fantasy Heroes hope science fiction television
Trackback Pings
» Ky Derby Open Trackback Weekend from 123beta
Unfortunately, I have to work most of the day on Saturday - but I will be home for the 133rd Running of the Roses... [Read More]
Tracked on May 7, 2007 6:22 PM
Comments
Posted by: Angel at May 7, 2007 8:04 AM
Posted by: kimsch ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.conservativecat.com/nav-commenters.gif)
at May 8, 2007 2:39 PM
| HTML is not allowed in comments; however, if you put in a raw URL (http://www.somewhere.com/page.html) it will automatically be converted to a link.. Also, it is likely your comment will not appear unless you refresh the page manually after posting it. |
