TV Series Review: HEROES – Season 2 (2007)

Judging the 2nd Season of HEROES isn’t really fair, as the season had to get shortened due to the Writer’s Guild Strike during production that year. HEROES did make a valiant effort to wrap up story lines and end the season with only 11 Episodes. However, the same things plaguing the show from Season 1 continue into Season 2. It’s not problems, it’s just an overall attitude from the show’s makers.

better… but still shit.

As I said in my Season 1 Review of HEROES, there’s continuity being fucked with on purpose, stories not being developed properly, or not even being mentioned at all and a whole sleuth of other shit wrong with Season 2 as well.

I addressed in the Season 1 review, that despite Mohinder being Indian, from India… in the show all the Indians speak perfect British English. But scenes between Hiro and his father are all in Japanese. This was taken even further this Season when Hiro visits Feudal Japan. And this season we’ve got two Hispanic characters whose interactions are all in Spanish. Yet again, even street urchins from India speak perfect English. It’s just fuckin’ annoying.

she’s got a crazy messed up power… don’t mess w her…

The story this season is about how Hiro is stuck in Feudal Japan, and the aftermath of the plans of a few that didn’t come to fruition at the end of Season 1. The big mystery factor of Season 1 saw how a few characters, mostly parents of the characters we’ve met so far, were involved in a huge conspiracy that saw Peter (our boy who can absorb the powers of others) inadvertently blowing up all of New York city, to fulfill their dastardly plans. However, all that went to shit, when the self-serving politician and brother of Peter, Nathan, averts disaster at the last minute, sacrificing Peter. Or so it seemed.

So Season 2 deals with the fall out of all those plans of the mysterious people, Peter’s assumed death, and the new plot point for the season. In the group of people that wanted NYC to go Boom, included Peter & Nathan’s mother, along with her colleagues from the past are all attacked or killed. Apparently some other big mysterious baddie is out for revenge, or something. At the end of it all is obviously, the end of the world, which our leads have to save, again. It’s not even freakin’ subtle!!

Season 2 is a helluva lot more interesting than the first Season, as there’s no exposition about the world, people with powers, etc. We can get right into the characters’ back stories, which they constantly add to by the way. For Example: Peter starts to show that he has powers, and his mother knows the father of another person with abilities, Hiro… but apparently the mom always knew about other people with powers (maybe she has powers of her own) and is actually involved in a massive conspiracy/plan that deals with heroes for the last 30 years… along with Peter’s dad too. It all just brings up so many more questions than the writers actually ever answer. Moving on…

This season sucks for the same reasons that Season 1 did, there’s just a lot more going on this season to distract from the shittiness of the writing. Hiro’s subplot of being stuck in Japan is definitely a lot more interesting than anyone else’s. I realize that Milo Ventimiglia’s Peter character is supposed to be, more or less, the lead of the show. But his character is a dumbass that always causes more problems than he’s supposed to solve. The dude ends up helping, plotting and being sidekick to the big ass baddie of the season, that he JUST met, and ends up trusting him more than any one of his buddies from Season 1. Way to go Pete. Nathan’s is probably the one who evolves the most this season, as we see him go from being a selfish clichéd politician to a man distraught by the ‘supposed’ death of his li’l bro’.

Season 2 also features a side angle of the Future. Very briefly touched upon in Season 1, the future is a desolate place that sucks. That’s why Future Hiro comes back to try to help them ‘save the world’ in Season 1. Apparently, them saving the world did shit all, as the future is still a shit hole. Some more details reveal that the shitty future was kick started by a virus that ‘The Company’ is responsible for. (The Company is that organization that Noah Bennett worked for, who apparently ALL the parents, like Peter’s mom and all had founded back in the ’70’s) Yea, it’s stupid.

Also: The big baddie from Season 1, Sylar, does shit all this season. Seriously. Shit. All. It’s great… in a go nowhere, do nothing sort of unfulfilling way. But let’s just chalk that up to the shortened season.

What can’t be excused due to the shortened season is the Premiere. Season 1 saw Matt Parker (mind reader) make up his wife, and they had a kid on the way. Season 2 starts with him living with Mohinder and raising the human GPS little girl, Molly together. No explanation. Sure, a couple of episodes in we find out that his wife cheated on him and that the kid wasn’t really his. But then later, it’s implied that the kid WAS his and he just walked out on her anyways. WHAT?! None of that is ever resolved going forward in the season.

Nathan is shown in the beginning as a broken down drunk, as his actions at the end of Season 1, caused the death of Peter, as far as he knows. So we immediately see him with a beard, and apparently his wife and kids left him because of his drunken ways. So… his family is intact and strong enough to survive his wife’s accident that left her paralyzed. But… Nathan going dark side after his freakin’ brother dies, which is understandable AS HELL… makes his wife leave him and takes the kids. BRA-fuckin’-VO writers, you really know how to write logical emotional situations.

HEROES is pretty kick ass for the reasons of getting to see live action powers and death depicted on the small screen with the gore similar to how it’s depicted in comics. However, the makers of the show seem like amateurs, because the show is plagued with all these stupid mistakes and errors that just… kill it. Characters do retarded things without explanation and just against what they’ve been set up as, by those very writers I might add. Those things are what really kills HEROES from being a realistically enjoyable show.

Get Season 2 on Blu ray