"Heroes" Ends with a Bang

Without a doubt one of the best-written shows of this recently-ended television season is "Heroes" on NBC. It was a bit of a risk, taking on a show about super-heroes in modern life. It could easily have been a disaster. I know I didn't exactly hold out much hope when I first tuned in. With that many characters, it seemed unlikely that the writers would be able to weight each other equally and that some storylines would stall.

While the whole storyline with Ali Larter's character and her Nikki/Jessica split never quite turned into the compelling story I am sure the writers intended, it was still good enough not to drag the show down. They also managed to create one of the best TV super-villains in a while and some extremely enduring and popular hero characters.

In comic books the villains are always better and more-interesting than the heroes. They have cooler powers. Being villains, they play into our dark side. The villain Sylar, from this show, certainly did that. His powers were never totally explained in a way that made sense to me. He seemed to be able to absorb the powers of other people with powers, but exactly why he had to remove their brains to do that is unclear to me. At one point a character mentioned he had to "eat" their brain, but he was never really seen eating anything.

Throughout the entire season the build-up was between a showdown between Sylar and the heroes to try and stop New York from exploding. While there seemed to be some similarities between the concept of destroying half of New York for positive ends and the graphic novel "Watchmen" I am not faulting them for at least choosing a classic source for inspiration.

For the first half of the season the heroes had to save the cheerleader to save the world. The cheerleader was Claire, a teenager who is indestructible. She can jump off of rooftops and not be injured. It turns out her father is really Nathan Petrelli, a rich man running for senate who also has the ability to fly. Nathan's brother is Peter who also has the ability to absorb the powers of other powered people, but without having to kill them or eating their brains.