Heroes Season 1 Review: Part 2

Sendhil Ramamurthy
(Mohinder Suresh)

Power: None

I originally thought that Mohinder was going to play the role of “Professor X” for the show.  While young, he does seem to know more about what’s going on than any of the Heroes.  I thought that setting him up for the role of “leader”.  However, as the season progressed it appeared that Mohinder was getting dragged further and further out of the loop to the point where he was unknowingly helping the bad guys.

Acting Grade: B

He came off a little cheesy at times, but that was probably more a product of his lines than his acting.

Santiago Cabrera
(Isaac Mendez)

Power: Precognition

Isaac is the guy who can paint the future, and his apocalyptic vision of New York City is what sets up the storyline for Season 1.  To be honest, I thought that Isaac was an awesome addition to the show.  His cryptic paintings were a really cool way to guide the characters.  Unfortunately, once Peter Petrelli gained Isaac’s powers,

See, that’s what I mean about Peter becoming too powerful. After a while, what’s from stopping this show from becoming “Superman” instead of “X-Men”.  If he can already do what everyone else can, what’s the point of teamwork?  Anyway, I was sad to see Isaac go.  He was a fun addition, despite his horrendous taste in women.

Acting Grade: B-

Hard to say if he was the bad actor, or just forced to do scenes with a lot of other bad actors.

Power: None

Originally, Noah, or “Horn Rimmed Glasses” as he was referred to for a while on the internet, appeared to be the one of the bad guys.  And in actuality, he was, except he thought he was a good guy. You see, he was just duped into working for the bad guys, and then when he figured it out he became a real good guy…

…Yeah. How’s that for confusing? But if you watched the show, it makes sense.  And again, Mr. Bennet is yet another example of the writers throwing a ton of twists at us. It wasn’t

Acting Grade: B+

While a little cold at first, and probably intentionally so, Jack Coleman made Noah Bennet into a likeable guy.

Power: Telepathy

Greg Grunberg is one of the few actors on the show that actually had something meaningful attached to his resume’. In his case, it was a reoccurring role on ABC’s Alias. However, after watching Grunberg on Alias and then again on Heroes, it’s pretty clear that he’s playing the exact same character, except this time he has psychic powers instead of spy equipment.

You would think that “mind reading” would be about as

Acting Grade: B+

Good on Alias.  Good on Heroes.  But there’s a reason he died rather quickly on Lost.

Power: Phasing

Raise your hand if you were at all emotionally invested in the D.L./Nikki melodrama.

Anyone?

Yeah, me neither.  I really thought they missed the boat by letting D.L. live in the finale.  As it stands, Peter’s got no love interest and D.L. is keeping him from Nikki and bringing nothing to the table. He’s by far my least favorite hero.

Acting Grade: C-

Can’t say he ever did anything to horrible.  But I also can name something he did well.

Power: Technopathy

As far as selecting a child-actor, I don’t think they could’ve picked anyone better than Noah Gray-Cabey.  The kid definitely has talent.  But as far as Micah Sanders goes, I can’t say I’m to impressed.

For some reason, he just came off as a kid who was too smart for his own good and liked to whine a lot.  They never really endeared him to the audience by making him do funny kid stuff.  Instead of

Acting: A-

He did a good job, his character just needed some tweaking.

The addition of Ando as Hiro’s sidekick was another great idea by the writers.  Together, they formed one of the most likeable duos in television history.  Seriously, you could probably ditch the entire cast and run a half hour sitcom called “The Adventures of Hiro and Ando”.  I guarantee you it would be a hit.

Acting: A-

He was good, but not quite Hiro.

Power: Multiple Acquired Abilities

Sylar is the last of our main characters.  Unfortunately, this character review does not fit the mold of “saving the best for last”. I thought one of the biggest flaws in Season 1 was the casting of Sylar.

I get the fact that the writer’s didn’t want Sylar to be this hulking brute.  He was supposed to be a dejected watch maker.  However, while a bit of a pencil-neck, Zachary Quinto looked a little too much like a model to pull it off.  And

Acting: D-

It was just awkward.

And by the way, from here on out, we’re dropping the actor ratings, because the remaining characters/actors received minimal screen time.

Power: Healing Others

I felt that the casting department really hit the nail on the head by brining Malcolm McDowell on board to play the role of the infamous Mr. Linderman.  Of course, this made it all the more surprising when the writers killed him off.  In a show where the actors are dragging you down, it’s imperative to hang onto talented cast members. And when you add in the fact that Mr. Linderman was definitely one of the show’s most intriguing characters and

Power: Memory Removal, Power Negation

I have about as much to say about “The Hatian” as he had to say in the show.  However, the concept of the character was very cool.  Too bad they made him extremely boring.

Power: Radiation Manipulation

Even though Ted was one of the “fringe” heroes, I’m including him because he was so important to the overall plotline of Season 1.  And also, because for some reason he just grossed me out.  He seemed… dirty.

I just felt like mentioning that.

Powers: None

When Heroes premiered, the #1 flaw I saw with the show was that Simone was Peter Petrelli’s love interest.  For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out how the creators expected the audience to get behind a Peter/Simone romance.  What I’m about to say has nothing to do with race, but they just don’t “look” like they belong together.  Add to it the fact that Milo Ventimiglia started out as a very shaky actor and Tawny Cypress was a train wreck, and you’ve got an

on-screen romance with absolutely zero chemistry.  It was just awful.

So why do I bother to bring this up and even add Simone to the review when she was killed off early on?  It’s because she WAS killed off.  This simple act speaks volumes about the creative forces behind Heroes.  The fact that the writers had the insight to realize that the whole Peter/Simone angle was just painful to watch and subsequently had Simone knocked off, shows that the people in charge of this show have enough self-awareness to realize that something’s not working and are flexible enough to correct those mistakes.

Now it’s possible that Simone was always meant to die to create further conflict between Peter and Isaac and give Peter some dark demons to wrestle with.  But somehow, I just don’t see that being the case.  They were selling us on Peter’s unrequited love for Simone a little too heavily if that was the case.  It’s far more likely that they were grooming her to be Peter’s “Mary Jane Watson”.  The fact that Peter currently has no love interest further supports that theory.

So killing Simone had to be a huge blow to what the writers were originally intending.  Having her die would completely uproot any plans of an epic love story that were planning on creating.  But when it became painfully clear that the the romance just wasn’t working, they didn’t stubbornly force us to watch it play out.  The fixed what wasn’t working and moved on.  That’s something that you don’t see all the time with TV shows, and that’s also the reason why I think we can expect Heroes to keep going strong for a long time.

So that’s the Heroes Season 1 Review.  I know I harped on the acting pretty hard, and after looking back at the acting scores they actually weren’t that bad.  I will admit, I was being a little generous as I didn’t want to come across as someone who was just tearing people’s performances to shreds.  Overall, the cast managed to pull off the show at the end of the day and that’s what’s really important.  Sure, the cast of Lost would almost get straight A’s across the board, but not every show can be Lost.  At least this wasn’t 7th Heaven with super-powers!