tvthatdoesntsuck

Don’t forget to tune into FOX at 8:00 tonight to catch the new J.J. thriller Fringe.  I’ll give a review of it by tomorrow!

But until then, we’ve got TV on DVD to chat about.  The second season of HEROES just came out, so I figured I’d give you all the DL on if it’s worth buying or not. People have been uber critical of this season, and I’m here to give you the skinny on whether or not those criticisms have merit or not.

“Heroes” set a really high bar for itself in its fantastic first season. It was truly a hard act to follow, and judging from the fandom’s strangely critical reaction to the first season’s stellar finale, the fans would be sure to crucify the show if it didn’t produce a Season Season that was even better than the first season. It’s true that this, the second season of “Heroes,” is a step down from the first season, but there is no way in the world that this is a bad–or even an average–season of television. There is a lot of great stuff going on here, and the good far, far outweighs the bad.

Let me start off with the not-so-good stuff, to get that out of the way. The Micah (and, to a lesser extent, Nikki) plot definitely wears a bit on the patience, but that’s no different than Season One. The writers try to put those characters in new settings to spice up their arcs a bit, but compared to the rest of the season, it feels like filler. I wasn’t so keen on the Maya/Alejandro/Sylar plot for the majority of the season, though it does get quite a bit better by the last few episodes. I was wary, in general, with the idea of bringing Sylar back. He wasn’t a threat until the very last episodes, and I think that Hiro’s character arc would have been so much stronger if they had just let Sylar be dead. In fact, the only major, major mistake that the writing team makes here is never letting a main character die. It appeared that five characters were dying in the end of Season One, but every single one of them survived that battle. Much in the same way, what happens to Noah Bennett in the end of “Cautionary Tales” was a very bad decision. Like any television season, it has its imperfections. They’re no where near enough for me to buy that any person could watch this and give it an unbiased one-star rating, but the flaws do put it a notch below the first season.

Now for the good stuff. And there is a lot. The character arcs for the most part are great, and what makes this even better is that all of the actors have improved immensely and are able to add a lot of emotional weight to their performances. Mohinder Suresh is taken on such a journey this season, and even Hiro’s story–which, when I first heard what it would be, sounded awful–was one of the most entertaining stories told this season. I loved what happened to Peter and Nathan and how they were kept apart for most of the season, which really added tension to the scenes when they’d mention each other. The new characters that get introduced, both heroes and villains and morally ambiguous people, are thrilling, especially the sadistic yet vulnerable Elle, played perfectly by Veronica Mars’s Kristen Bell, who helps to make this season great. The consistent quality of each episode is quite high, though the last third of the season definitely steps it up to the quality we had in Season One.

This was the season I was most looking forward to buying on DVD this summer (where I watched it for the first time), though it was also the season I was most scared to watch, due to the negative reviews. Perhaps its a better season watching it as a whole, but fans who were worried like me have nothing to fear. It’s not quite as good as season one, but the drop in quality is only a very small step. This is still very, very good television.

8/10

Trackback URI | Comments RSS