Is it just me? Save the cheerleader, save the world. Mind reading, mind control, invisible men, super strength, time travel, seeing the future, changing the future ... Yeah! I can't get enough of Heroes.
My favorite character is Hiro, the reluctant, humble, Japanese office worker who finds himself with a super power and an obligation to save the world. In a way, he's similar to the Jimmy Stewart everyman of the old movies, the ordinary guy who stumbles into a situation in which he must draw on strengths he didn't know he had.
The show has become so popular that NBC plans a new season with 30 episodes which would include six episodes of a spin off titled "Heroes: Origins." Hopefully the writers can keep the show interesting enough for all of those episodes. And here's an interesting development. The NBC website comes complete with blogs for some of the characters. Here's Hiro's blog, written in character with entries "Posted by Hiro Nakamura."
Part of the show's popularity must come from the Superman phenomenon. Superman appeared in comic books in 1938 when the world was in turmoil and the U.S. watched from the sidelines as the super villain Adolf Hitler was building his evil empire. So like then, as we watch an evil menace try to envelop the middle east, the appearance of super heroes on our small screens gives us momentary relief from the threats to the world.
There's this one little problem with the show, but it's such a common theme that most of us accept it as simply a byproduct of the Hollywood mentality. The super villains are all white guys in suits. If we look at the major threats in the world, we see the face of Islamic terrorism. But just like Jericho and Prison Break, the evil and powerful conspirators are white guys in suits, either in government or corporations. Soooo 1970's.
I don't find that plausible, but if we are going to believe that those characters have all of those powers, then why not? And after all, according to Rasmussen, "Overall, 22% of all voters believe the President knew about the [9/11 terrorist] attacks in advance." So given that such a sizable number of people are willing to buy into that, then the the gov/corp super villain probably isn't that much of a stretch for them.
In any event, I'll be anxiously awaiting the season finale on May 21. And here's hoping the show comes to some sort of finality and doesn't simply end with a cliff hanging "To be continued." If it does, it might be good for NBC to remember that absence might make the heart grow fonder, but it's as likely to make the heart forget.
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