So Close, So Far
I finally got to watch the final episodes of Heroes last night. I really enjoyed the direction that they took the series, the '5 Years Later' episode was fantastic. Bringing back the little girl from the second episode as a major plot element was great and suggests a lot of foresight and planning, which always makes me happy. I absolutely loved the twist of Sylar having taken Candice's power and altering reality so that he appeared as Nathan. Brilliant. The fight that started between Sylar and Peter was executed very well, with just enough setup so that you knew it was going to be an epic showdown and then going down off camera. You can't go showing your super epic fight when everyone knows that these guys are going to be confronting each other at the end of the season.
That setup got me really excited that these guys were going to NAIL the final battle between these two. Unfortunately, the final battle was a total disappointment after that. Peter was basically impotent until Niki showed up, and she would've easily killed the hell out of Sylar, that was a huge failure on the writer's part, completely ruining Peter as a hero of destiny. At the very least Sylar should've thrown her into a wall with his power, so that Peter didn't feel like a chump. "I've got this!" Yeah you do, after she took the wind out of his sails and could've finished him with another swing or two, all you dog. Hiro's bit was fine.
The ultimate resolution to stopping an exploding man was extremely anti-climatic.
Massive holes. Just let Claire shoot him! He can regenerate! Why would Nathan have to fly him away? Peter can fly. Ok, maybe being about to blow up distracted him to the point where he couldn't focus enough to fly, but the regen power is obviously an autonomic function at this point so that seems like a no-brainer.
As a comic fan, I was also a little bugged by the blatant Kingdom Come moment. I know most of the people watching the show haven't read the book, but it's still a little insulting how often Hollywood rips off iconic comic book moments and fronts like they're a pack of geniuses. (I'm looking square at you Singer, shooting Supes in the eye? Supreme Power much? You could've at least stolen from SUPERMAN comics.) There are a number of shows going on that are pretty good, but when I see these images and plot lines basically plagiarized I get a little worked up.
The most disappointing part of the whole thing was the lack of resolution. I got a very Lost feeling at the end of the season. The status quo was mostly maintained. Linderman was killed, but they've already intimated that he was just the most public of the puppet masters, so he's easily replaced. The Eric Roberts character was a non-entity as far as I'm concerned. Oh noes, DL is on the verge of death as well, and so is Parkman! What happened to Peter and Nathan?!? I'm sure they're dead, NOTHING could have survived that! They won't possibly flash back to that moment in the first episode of the new season and show Peter somehow kicking away from Nathan only to explode some (safe) distance away! (Yawn. /sarcasm)
Syler crawling away to the sewer really broke me.
These new shows always do really bold things in their first seasons to capture an audience, then once they get their long-term contracts everything gets screwed. They think the show is better served by maintaining the status quo so that they can be on the air for 8 seasons, so they enter this holding pattern where things that look really exciting in 'next week on...' become nothing more than cheap red herring. Viewers are drawn into a loop of 'maybe next week will be better', and it never is, because the people working on the show are too worried about breaking their magic formula to try anything. All they care about is that equilibrium is maintained and you come back week to week so they can secure their advertising dollars. So something that at first was an effort of capturing the attention and imagination of an audience and entertaining them, becomes an effort to rope them in week after week for as long as humanly possible. The shows start using soap opera formulas, except instead of the exciting changes coming at the end of Friday's episode, they come at the end of a season.
Have we learned nothing from Buffy the Vampire Slayer? Ending a storyline does not ruin your show! I love your characters, feel free to have them deal with something new and not bring back the same tired challenges over and over again! You don't have to end every season with a pseudo-cliffhanger, Lost is broken, do not emulate them.
/rant