Heroes season three is not terrible like many people say it is. It's definitely not the best television out there, but it's at least better than the poor second season the show suffered from. This review is very spoiler heavy, so only look at the star ratings I give each volume if you haven't seen them. Instead of writing huge paragraphs for each volume, I'll just give a list of what I liked and didn't like about this season and the individual volumes:
VOLUME THREE: VILLAINS - 3 stars
VOLUME FOUR: FUGITIVES - 4 stars
SEASON THREE
The good:
- This season expanded the the role and depth of secondary characters like Ando, Angela Patrelli, and Sandra Bennet. These characters are well acted and usually counter-act dumb decisions made by the main characters. Example: Hiro creates a stupid plan to get one half of The Formula from The Haitian. Hiro gets the attention of the Haitian to start his plan, but Ando just sneaks up behind The Haitian and knocks him out.
- Claire matures and becomes stronger as the season goes on, and it's a good change from the ditsy cheerleader she's been for the past two volumes. She is less reliant on HRG to protect her, and can take care of herself pretty well by the end.
- The heroes use their powers more often than they did in the previous volume, Generations, and this makes season three a lot more exciting. It gives you a better feel that they actually do have powers.
- Sylar was humanized in this season. In volume three, Sylar was shown glimpses of a normal life with a loving family. In volume four, Sylar goes on a personal quest to find his father and discover why he's so messed up. Sylar was no longer a bad guy just for the sake of needing a bad guy, and it showed that he just wanted to be loved by someone this whole time.
- This season was more action packed than Generations, and has a couple fights that kept me on the edge of my seat. I was a disappointed that there were no epic battles, but the fights they did have made good use of the abilities everyone had.
- The characters began to question if the means to justify the ends. Many times the characters do gray things to accomplish their goals, and it's interesting to see how they react.
The bad:
- Nathan's family is completely forgotten. This could have added a great conflict within his character like it did in season one, but the writers don't seem to like them at all. Claire's boyfriend West was completely forgotten about too. No one ever mentions them, and they never show up. They're not even back in the current fifth volume.
- This season reused old plot devices from the previous seasons way too much. How many comics did Isaac Mendez paint and write before he was killed? Does everyone and their mom have the ability to paint the future? How many flashback episodes are we going to have? Oh, and Heroes tricks you into thinking Nathan died... AGAIN. That's three times by now. These are particularly annoying in volume three, but Heroes start moving away from them in volume four. There were also way too many opening narrations in volume three.
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VOLUME THREE: VILLAINS - 3 stars
The good:
- Villains gives us the luxury of actually knowing the heroes' mission from the first episode. In Generations, the heroes' mission wasn't clearly presented to us until the seventh episode. This volume is about trying to stop The Formula from falling into the wrong hands. The Formula gives anyone abilities when it is injected, and it will eventually destroy the world if it is allowed to be mass produced.
- Mohinder gives himself abilities, and then starts to mutate as a result. I thought this was a good way to give Mohinder motivation, as he needs to perfect The Formula in order to reverse his mutation. It was also a very human thing to do. If I had been studying people with super powers, but didn't have any myself, I would jump at any chance to get one. Wouldn't you?
- Once the volume found its footing, it was very streamlined and better paced than Generations. One complaint I keep hearing about Villains is that every episode had a different direction, and that Heroes kept creating and dropping storylines each episode. This is true early on, but stops at about episode six. Starting with this episode, the writers quit screwing around with the storylines and got their act together.
- Angela manipulating Sylar into thinking she is his mother. This was pretty cleaver on Angela's part, and showed that Sylar just needed a parental figure to guide him. Sylar too showed that he is capable of compassion, but he still has very low self-esteem even when he's happy.
- Arthur Patrelli is the best villain yet. He put his wife into a coma, wants to kill his son Peter, wants to manipulate his other son Nathan into becoming a puppet president, steals any power he gets his hands on, killed Adam (he was really getting on my nerves by the time Generations ended), and the actor playing him is wonderful.
- Daphene is a great addition to the Heroes gang, and her character becomes very well developed in Villains. Matt's storyline was pretty blah before he met Daphene, but after that the two worked very well together. I liked her relationship with Matt, and she gives you the most realistic sense of having a power out of all the heroes and villains this volume.
- Hiro being suspicious of Ando because of what Hiro saw in the future. Their arguments were a great vehicle for giving Ando a voice, and it showed that he wasn't just a nameless tag-along like in seasons one & two. Hiro loosing his memory was a good twist, and worked to show us a lot of his past. This storyline had lots of fun writing to complement it, so these guys on screen was usually a high point for Villains.
- This volume fixed Peter's and Hiro's powers to be more balanced with everyone else on the show. I know this divided fans, but they were just getting too powerful for them to be in any real danger. Now Peter can only have one power at a time, and Hiro is powerless for a lot of volume four.
The bad:
- The creating and dropping of various storylines. I'll go into more detail below.
- Tracy Strauss. She was a terrible, terrible way to replace Nikki. She's a triplet sister of Nikki? Are you really going to insult with that kind of excuse? Her character overall is pretty good, but wow that was stupid. There was nothing to hint at this before, and they never even think about trying to find the third sister. So it's a stupid character replacement AND a dropped storyline. Come on writers, we're not goldfish.
- Sylar's Hunger. Why was this needed? Sylar's reasons for taking peoples' abilities was already well established. There's no need to add another thing which was never mentioned or hinted to at all. It was an interesting twist when Peter gained Sylar's ability of understanding (and subsequently the Hunger) to save the world, but all it did was make Peter do stupid things. The Hunger thing was dropped when the volume ended, and to add insult to injury, Peter didn't even need Sylar's power to save the world anyways. Nice going guys.
- Mohinder traps people in these cocoons for no reason what-so-ever. They never even give a throw away line to explain it. He just does it for to look creepy, and nothing else. This is also dropped half way through the volume.
- Heroes tries to link solar eclipses to people's powers. This is wrong. Heroes already showed that the main characters gained their abilities months before the first solar eclipse (season one episode "Six Months Ago"). They use another solar eclipse to temporarily shut off everyone's powers (which is actually interesting), but those episodes are poorly written and are pretty lame overall.
- The Level 5 Prisoners. I was excited about these guys when they broke out, but then they become a total non-issue the very next episode. Oh, and one of them is killed for no other reason than Sylar can't control his Hunger. Please don't make me laugh Heroes.
- Peter's story was changed way too many times early on. First he was trapped in a Level 5 escapee's body, then he was brought to the future and absorbed Sylar's ability. He absorbed Sylar's ability of understanding to know how to change the timeline, but all it did was make him evil for no reason. He's then put in a chemically induced coma for a couple episodes, beats the crap out of Sylar, looses his all of his powers, and THEN the writers stop messing with him. I swear I almost got whiplash from his story changing so much. Peter got better after they stopped messing with him, but he was pretty painful to watch for a while.
- Some characters acted dumb way too many times. I already explain Peter's dilemma, but Claire and Nathan also do lots of stupid things in the first half of Villains. Claire becomes smarter as the Volume goes on, but Nathan is pretty dumb throughout.
- Maya. She was already useless and annoying enough in Generations, but she's even more useless and more annoying in Villains. Every second she was on screen I felt like offing myself.
- The writing and acting is very uneven in some parts of this volume. This happens mainly in early episodes, but also ruins the two part episode "The Eclipse".
- What happened to Matt's family? I already explained about Nathan's family, Matt's disappeared for this volume too. Peter also forgot about his girlfriend trapped in the future.
- They retconned Sylar and Elle into a relationship. Turns out that Elle, to spy on Sylar before he was evil, was in a relationship with him. She was found out, and Sylar started killing people because of this. It's not because of the well established reason of Sylar having mommy and daddy issues. The reason which is used as one of the main plot devices in this very same volume. If they had developed a relationship without the retconning, it wouldn't have felt nearly as forced as it did.
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VOLUME FOUR: FUGITIVES - 4 stars
The good:
- Fugitives is about the government rounding up people with abilities to keep the population safe. Nathan, HRG, and new villain Danko leading the operation, and this creates resent from Peter and Claire. Danko, while not as evil as Arthur, is certainly a man on a mission. He'll stop at nothing to capture everyone with abilities.
- Fugitives goes back to the simpler story telling that the first season had. No jumping back and forth through time like Villains did, and less storylines get more screen time each episode. Plus no super-Peter and super-Hiro makes things more tense now.
- As I mentioned above, HRG and Nathan are leaders on the round-up. This causes major rifts between the Patrellis, and they become more fractured than ever. Slowly though, they come together after going through hell and back. This shows that the Patrellis, under all of the bizarre events and hate that flies between them, have an unbreakable love for each other.
- Claire feels guilty about HRG protecting her from Danko, so she forms this type of Underground Railroad for people with abilities. Sandra and Claire form a deep mother/daughter bond through these hard times, but the Bennets break apart after Sylar and Danko manipulate them. It creates a very neat contrast between them and the Patrellis.
- Daphene is pushed out of the way early on. She was very good in Villains, but she feels forced and annoying in Fugitives. Her being shot also gave Matt good motivation to resist the government too. She ultimately ends up dead by the end, so she can't annoy us anymore.
- This volume explores Sylar's real family history. We get to see how washed up his father really is, and why Sylar was given up for adoption in the first place. Sylar's last shreds of humanity are destroyed with this, and he goes on a crusade to destroy the world after meeting his real father.
- Heroes begins to move away from its tiring plot devices with this volume. Most episodes aren't narrated at all. There is some future painting stuff early on, but this is dropped after the first 3 episodes.
- Former co-executive producer Bryan Fuller was brought back in the middle of Fugitives. He started moving the show in the direction of the season one episode "Five Years Gone". He penned the season's best episode "Cold Snap", and changed the volume's story when he learned Sylar's dad was originally going to be the main villain.
- We're given insight into the founding of The Company and the history of Angela. It gives a lot more depth to her and clears up the confusion about her connection to The Company.
- Hiro must deal with having no powers, and is jealous of Ando having powers. This creates another interesting dynamic, and is a nice change from the mainly playful Hiro of the past 3 volumes.
- Matt's family returns this volume, and he even has a son. It gives him a sense of purpose after Daphene dies, and it shows real world issues like his wife Janice worrying about the safety of Matt and their son. It's nice to see the writers haven't completely forgotten everything from season one.
- The writing and acting are more consistently good compared to Villains. The early episodes are much, much better compared to Villains too.
The bad:
- Mohinder is non-existent this volume. He has some small parts, but for most of it he's left in the dark. It seems like the writers had no idea what to do with him after he got powers, so they just decided not to do anything with him.
- There are very few secondary characters in this volume. With the previous ones almost upgraded to main characters this season, there isn't much extra to spice things up. Sylar had one that made no difference, and Claire had one that ended up doing nothing in the end too.
- For over half of this volume Tracy was locked in a cell, and didn't make much of a difference until the last few episodes. What a great way to under-use another character.
- The final battle is cut out. This is the dumbest thing Heroes did the whole season. Peter, Nathan, and Sylar are having an epic battle, and all we see is Claire's reaction to the scene. Really, if you don't have the budget, don't have it at all!
- The writing, while on average is better than Villains, is still not as good as season one. It got close a couple times, but missed the mark.
This season is still not close to season one material, but it's getting there. Season two was just so boring that it killed a lot of the show's momentum. I think the good out weighed the bad in both volumes, but the show is still healing. Season three is not worth $60 in my opinion, but it's your money. The current season (Volume Five: Redemption) is the best since season one, so let's see if Heroes can truly redeem itself. |
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