Heroes – Volume Two, a bitchy review by Mike Gold

Mike Gold

ComicMix's award-winning and spectacularly shy editor-in-chief Mike Gold also performs the weekly two-hour Weird Sounds Inside The Gold Mind ass-kicking rock, blues and blather radio show on The Point, www.getthepointradio.com and on iNetRadio, www.iNetRadio.com (search: Hit Oldies) every Sunday at 7:00 PM Eastern, rebroadcast three times during the week – check www.getthepointradio.com above for times and on-demand streaming information.

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19 Responses

  1. Rick Taylor says:

    Mike – Isn't that what happens with most teevee shows? They come up with a good premise and start, then they don't know where to TAKE those ideas. It's like no one has an overall plan. I'm really bored with the 'splash page' credit sequences.I had exactly the same problem with Smallville (Superman 90210). Interesting slant on the legend but first season was half a rip on X-Files and then it just wandered around for YEARS. If everyone in that town doesn't know Clark is from another planet they're all dumber than I thought. Then they introduce their 'Oliver' in Supergirl. Talk about a show that clearly has no idea where to go.

  2. Luigi Novi says:

    I've been enjoying the season so far, but I agree that I've also perceived a bit of the usage of comics' worst tendencies to move things in circles. Specifically, the Sylar storyline should've ended in the first season's finale with Sylar unambiguously DEAD. The guy's an irredeemable scumbag multiple murderer, and the writers need to stop coddling that type of person. By revealing both him and D.L. to be alive–only to then kill off D.L. yet again–struck me as the sort of going-in-circles mentality that I've only seen on the part of comic book writers /corporate bosses who just don't know how to let go of certain characters in order to move on to creating and developing new ones. Fortunately, this does not compromise most of the material on the show, and like I said, I've been enjoying it. Let's hope Sylar eventually gets killed off for good.

  3. Paddy says:

    This season wasn't a patch on the first season. But that last episode was exciting. Really really exciting. A little all over the place but good fun.

    • Mike Gold says:

      That last episode suffered from too much in too little time. I respect Loeb and Arkush for pulling it off in 48 minutes, but it would have been nice if they had resolved a few of these plot lines earlier in the run.

  4. mike weber says:

    I haven't even gotten around to watching the *first* season.Or any episodes of "Lost".And i missed the third part of "Tin Man" tonight.

    • Marilee J. Layman says:

      It's being rerun Sunday. I've been taping them and realized last night that I was likely going to run out of tape so sortof watched the last 10 minutes and taped the last three on the other VCR. I think I'll have to watch it tonight before I accidentally tape over those three minutes of the end.

  5. Matthew Ceplina says:

    I completely forgot about Tin Man. Oh well. Sci Fi may re-air it. As for Heroes I'll comment once I watch the last two episodes.

    • Rick Taylor says:

      All episodes of Tin Man is going to be rerun this Sunday. Check your local listings.I thought it was 'OK'.It's tough when you're trying to re-imagine something everyone knows so well.Like I say, it's 'OK'.

      • Rick Oliver says:

        If I ever make a really, really bad movie, I'm going to hire the guys that the SciFi channel uses to create my ads and trailers, because they can make almost any pile of crap — even Mansquito — look great. Tin Man is a classic example. I was really looking forward to it, and against my better judgment I didn't give up after the first episode. Now that's six hours of my life I'll never get back.

        • Rick Taylor says:

          Rick – I think your expectations were really high after getting to work with Eric Shanower on all that really great Oz stuff. Going into it I pretty much decided they were just going to re-use the original concepts but when they tied it to the original stuff I pretty much predicted how it would end. The thing that was toughest for me to get past was the evil witch-tart played one of Brandon's dopey girlfriends on Beverly Hills 90210. At least she learned how not to do this weird face-thing she used to do on camera.

      • mike weber says:

        Actually, judging by the comments on IMDB, something that everyone *think* they know so well.A goodly proportion of the comments slagging it that actually give reasons amount to "It wasn't like the movie", and a lot of those are reacting to things that reminde dme of the book(s).Of course, i hold that the Garland movie sucks dead rat through a straw compared to the book, so i may be in a minority.

      • Matthew Ceplina says:

        Thanks. Hopefully, I remember to DVR it.

  6. Adriane Nash says:

    Tim Kring apologized for the lousy season 2 last month to Entertainment Weekly. Which was a little comfort as I suffered through the total lack of a sense of impeneding doom.read it here: http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20158840,00.html

  7. marie says:

    I was annoyed they brought back Sylar as well. It dragged on enough in the first season as it was. I was really look forward to a few more answers such as what the older generations powers are and who exactly is Peter and Nathan Petrelli's father. The Mya story was pointless plot filler. On another note though, I am hoping it redeem itself so I will stick with it for now. I just hope it doesn't go down the riduclas route that lost did.

  8. John Ostrander says:

    I was going to do my own review of the last episode and this last season (half season?) of "ZHeroes" but Brother Gold struck first and hit the same nails I was going to pound on for the most part. So I've doing something else in my column this week.What I WILL say is that the Season/Storyline lost focus. I didn't CARE about the South Anerican Wonder Twins trying to get to the U.S. It got boring and repetitive. The real threat didn't emerge until late in the story while, in the first year, the threat of everything blowing up was front and center pretty quick.There's also a rule in storytelling — "Kill your darlings." It's not supposed to be literal but Zheroes could have benefitted from it. The biggest problem is that arch-villain Sylar should have been dead at the end of the first season. Dead dead dead. The story really demanded it. Instead, they bring him back and now he has his powers once again. Doesn't that mean he can blow up a city? For that matter, doesn't it mean that Peter should be able to? He and his brother Nathan supposedly sacrificed themselves at the end of last season but, nope, both returned back to life THIS season. So the sacrifice didn't really mean anything, did it? It suggests that the creative team has only a few ideas. Knowing that creative team. I don't believe it.Creator Kring supposedly has learned from this last storyline's mistakes. I'm willing to wait and see. He has a strike-enforced layover to do some serious re-thinking. I WANT Heroes to be good. I was a big fan of most of the first season. But not the storyline that finished up on Monday.

    • Kevin Mowery says:

      I'm not as hard on the season as a lot of people were. I liked Hiro's adventures in feudal Japan, and I don't think the good guys or families are all flawed to the point of dysfunction. Sylar probably should have died for good at the end of the first season, but if they find something interesting and original (not just more brain-eating) to do with him in the third volume, I'm okay with his survival. If nothing else, maybe Sylar's survival means that we'll get a truly epic Sylar-Peter throwdown later, which will hopefully end with the absolute death of Sylar).As Mr. Ostrander noted, the South American Wonder Twins and the general lack of urgency were big problems with the second volume of the story. The lack of urgency was caused by poor pacing. That was fixed by the end, and hopefully it won't repeat.The South American Wonder Twins were a bigger problem. Part of their story could have been fixed by changing the pacing: Instead of having them start in Honduras, have them start in Mexico. First episode introduces us to their powers. Second episode, they meet Sylar and get across the border into the U.S.Their other problem is harder to fix, though. They didn't do anything important for the entirety of volume 2. If Sylar had stolen a car and driven to New York, the end result would have been exactly the same as the entire adventure of Maya and Alejandro. It's possible that the writer's strike meant that the end of the season had to be reworked and Maya's part got reduced to virtually nothing, but it still ended up as the most pointless plot on the show.

  9. gyyv says:

    I have felt Heroes has been poorly handled from the start. In the very first episode, all of the main characters saw the eclipse. This would have been OK, if they were all in New York when the eclipse happened which is confirmed by a photo, on the front page of newspaper that Charles Deveaux is reading. Since they were not, then they all could have not seen the eclipse, I knew from that moment there was no way a consistent story line was going to be developed. I've told many people (who raved about the show) this, and they have all came away from this show seeing it for what it is…poorly thought out. Too bad, because having this oddity happen is a great chance to have alternate time line/universe stories… but alas no.

  10. Anonymous says:

    Heroes season 2 was not great but still watchable. Can't believe they are bringing people back from the dead..that has ruined it for me. Bit like Superman spinning the world backwards to reverse time….

  11. Rosalind says:

    I liked pretty much all of the first series, especially the cliffhangers, but I did feel let down by the second. Most of the new characters did suck – the only ones that should have been kept were possibly Bob and Adam.Did anyone else get annoyed by all the romance floating around? Hiro and that Japanese woman whose name I've forgotton, Claire and West, Peter and Caitlin, Sylar leading Maya on… I don't think anyone cared. I'm not saying that a sci-fi show can't/shouldn't have romance in it, but a mainstream show like Heroes should try to keep it believeable and preferably between characters that the audience already know and like.Maybe it'll be like Star Trek:TNG. The first two seasons sucked, but it had picked up by the third.