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"How to Stop an Exploding Man" or "How to Stop a Season from Kicking Ass"

May 23, 2007 2:41 AM

ue to my tardiness with this entry, my esteemed colleague Mr. Vice has already posted his thoughts on Monday night's Heroes season finale. I'll offer my own thoughts here, but I have to say that I agree with almost every single one of Mr. Vice's criticisms and, overall, I was extremely disappointed by the finale.

First, I think that the Sylar-Peter fight was so lame I can't believe the writers, editors, directors, actors, and producers actually offered that worthless attempt at a confrontation. After literally a whole season of building up the confrontation between the two most powerful people in the Heroes universe, we get a telekenetic choke hold and a few punches? Sure, Peter was super strong thanks to Nikki's annoying presence, but so fucking what? I know that Heroes isn't necessarily about the action--it's about the characters--but that was completely inexcusable. We waited all season for a pay off, and we got the television equivalent of blue balls. It was simply unfair for the Heroes people to cock tease us like that.

And that's my second criticism: although Heroes is supposed to be about characters, and that's what made this season so awesome, at least early on, last night's episode was a complete character development clusterfuck. Parkman is brave and noble, but he's not stupid--he wouldn't go all vigilante on a suicide mission. Hiro's been struggling all season with having to come to terms with the fact that being a hero isn't all fun and games--it also involves having to do hard, unpleasant things. But, while I liked the story with his father and the training sequence, it was simply unbelievable to me that Hiro would suddenly have no problem with killing Sylar. Nikki and Jessica have been fighting for control all season. But then Jessica--for no discernable reason at all decides to give up control and encourage Nikki. Who then kicks Candace's ass and--voila--no more Nikki-Jessica conflict.

And Peter. All season, he's had to come to terms with his destiny. Although he was initially happy being a humble nurse, he's had to increasingly face the fact that he's going to have a much more dramatic effect on world events. But he's unsure of himself, and he doesn't know what he can do on his own. I thought it was unconscionable that he would lie to Claire and take her to Nathan, though. And his subsequent inability to control Ted's ability was, well, lame. The conflict was over, there was no stress, it just started happening. It was as if the writers decided that one completely unsatisfactory climax wasn't enough, so they needed a second anticlimactic thing to happen.

And that brings us to Nathan. Although I think that Nathan's been somewhat hesitant about the whole blowing up New York thing, I do think that his entire change of heart was a little unbelievable, although not to the same extent that Mr. Vice does. But this brings us to my third major problem with Heroes as of late: either the writers have gotten lazy, or stupid, or they think that the audience is stupid.

There are always going to be plot holes and mistakes. But instances of complete fictional-universe unbelievability in the finale were unacceptable. Sylar can stop bullets but not a pudgy kid with a sword (even though we've already seen him stop the same pudgy kid with a sword)? In Odessa, we saw that when Ted lost control of his ability, it has such concussive and thermal consequences that only Claire could get close enough to sedate him. And that's why Peter gave Claire the gun--if he started going nuclear, he knew she could get close enough and survive. But once Peter actually does start going nuclear, everyone's standing around like nothing's happening! And Nathan can not only approach him and touch him, but also carry him away!?

And that brings us to the worst plot hole of all: Peter can fly himself! This is perhaps the most infuriating one, because all the writers needed to do was include an exchange like this:

Claire: Peter, try to fly away!
[Peter concentrates, tries to fly]
Peter: I can't--I can't use any of the other powers!
Nathan: You don't need to . . .

It would have taken five seconds and it would have solved a huge problem for me. And these are just a few examples. There are so many inconsistencies and plot holes that it's just not cool. It demonstrates that the writers are just going along doing whatever they happen to think is cool for a certain episode.

In short, although the episode had some cool ("Call me Noah.") and even very cool ("You look bad ass.") moments, it was a completely underwhelming and disappointing finale. I will absolutely watch season 2, but I'm not nearly as excited as I was for season 1. And that's sad.


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