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  • TV Series: Heroes
  • Episode: An Invisible Thread
  • Starring: Jack Coleman, Greg Grunberg, Hayden Panettiere, Adrian Pasdar, Milo Ventimiglia, Zachary Quinto, Masi Oka, James Kyson Lee, Sendhil Ramamurthy, and Cristine Rose
  • Written By: Tim Kring
  • Directed By: Greg Beeman
  • Network: NBC
  • Series: Heroes

Heroes: An Invisible Thread

Logic-Free Zone

By Rob Vaux     April 28, 2009


Mania's review of the season finale of HEROES: An Invisible Thread(2009).
© Mania.com/Robert Trate

 

It’s a thin line between love and hate; they're not opposites as many people believe. The opposite of love isn't hate. It's indifference: honestly not caring one way or another how it all comes out. The exasperation generated by Heroes stems not simply because it's bad, but because it has the potential to be so, so good. Every episode, even the worst, brims with the potential of those early first-season wonders. So do the characters, who might be some of the greatest on television if only the writers would let them breathe. Funny thing about fictitious characters, though. They don't always do what you want them to. If the plot demands that they behave in a manner inconsistent with their personality, you can't change them; you have to change the plot. Heroes repeatedly gets the equation backwards… and in so doing demonstrates why that's such a bad idea.
 
Consider how dangerous Sylar (Zachary Quinto) is supposed to be. What a grave threat he is to everyone. How many times these characters have sworn to kill him and how close they've come to disaster by declining to do so. And yet when they finally nail him at the end of the season, they concoct some half-baked scheme to keep him alive. Why? Because Nathan (Adrian Pasdar) is dead and they need a substitute to call off the government witch hunt. Sylar is apparently the only candidate, the only one on Earth who can do that… except for--oh yeah--PETER (Milo Ventimiglia) who absorbed Sylar's abilities and was doing a pretty damn good job of impersonating the President just a few minutes before. We can't ask him to take on Nathan's mantle? We can't let him play U.S. Senator for a few weeks, set up the new Company and then quietly fake his own death? Oh. We can, but that would take Sylar out of the game for good (assuming they can find a molten steel pit, nuclear testing site or deep-space satellite to plant him in). So instead of following the tenets laid out by the characters--their stated goals and reasons for pursuing them--the characters must bow before the needs of plot. Plausibility, logic and common sense get chucked by the wayside, along with any consistency that marks these figures as human beings.
 
Such idiocy does a further disservice to the genuinely positive elements onscreen. Take Hiro's (Masi Oka) new dilemma, for example. Every time he uses his power, it may kill him. How will he follow his heroic instincts now, knowing they could be fatal? That's a question well worth pondering for a season or so. Similarly, Tracy's (Ali Larter) return held the precise kind of chilly, unnerving suspense that Sylar is supposed to carry. Such possibilities give us reason keep tuning in, to check things out next season, to hope for better things on the horizon. But because they come wrapped up with such a rickety, ill-conceived and intellectually insulting central question (when is "Nathan" going to remember who he really is?), the joy which may come from them drains inexorably away.
 
No one's saying that Heroes' complex plotting is easy. And yes, with so many balls in the air, mistakes are bound to happen. (Marvel Comics actually turned such errors into a great PR device with their famous No-Prizes.) But these aren't little mistakes. They're pivotal foundations of major story threads, the sort which someone on the writing staff needs to spot and correct long before the cameras start rolling. To do otherwise--and to do so as often as Heroes does--suggests that the creators have no interest in the quality of their work. Instead, they patch up the narrative with lazy hand waving and don't care a whiff about the huge, gaping plot holes devouring their TV show raw. Yet they ask the viewers to care, to invest themselves in these characters, to follow the "clever" twists with baited breath every week to see how it all turns out. That's where the exasperation comes from: asking us for a level of devotion that the show itself simply cannot reciprocate. We love Heroes or hate Heroes, but Tim Kring and company appear for all the world to be indifferent to Heroes… and if they don't care how the show looks, then why the hell should we?
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okonomiyaki4000 4/28/2009 5:47:33 AM

 This season was just awful. I think it's pretty much over for Heroes. I don't see any way they can fix what's wrong with the show now. 

hanso 4/28/2009 6:08:45 AM

Nathan's dead?  Oh wait, not really.  Take 2 shots.

Tracy is back?  Great, take 2 more.

Plot hole?  Down the bottle!

hanso 4/28/2009 6:48:20 AM

FEAR THE SWINE FLU!

DaForce1 4/28/2009 7:15:36 AM

Nevermind the fact that Claire's blood can bring back the dead. Because they've already used that macGuffin twice or three times when they back themselves into a corner. No need to have all the characters involved (two of whom have been resurrected by Claire's blood before) remember that small little detail.

Don't pay attention to the Sylar/Nathan plot ripped off from the Proteus/Morph plot in the comic The Exiles. Because supposedly Tim Kring doesn't read comics. It's just a coincidence that the turning Sylar scene is an almost panel for panel ripoff (excuse me, 'homage') of The Exiles turning Proteus into Morph.

I haven't seen this much writer indifference to past occurances and cannon since Star Trek TNG was on the air. Seriously, do any of the writers know anything about the characters and plot they're supposed to be writing about?

kwsupes 4/28/2009 7:17:38 AM

I like Heroes, but this latest volume fugitives was pretty lame. Hopefully they can pull it back together especially since Fuller is back in the mix. However NBC better renew Chuck after renewing Heroes because last night's finale of Heroes was bad enough to get it cancelled. Chuck however was on the top of its game regardless of what Lackey says. That show has gotten consistently better over the last two years whereas Heroes since January has taken a nose dive. Time will tell if Heroes gets better, but I think if they cancel Chuck and renew Heroes and the show still sucks people need to be fired.

goldeneyez 4/28/2009 7:37:07 AM

Alright Rob you got me.  I've been defending Heroes all season, but that finale was just God awful.  I whole-heartedly agree with the D .  What in the HELL were the writers thinking?

Also when did Ali Larter's powers change so much.  I thought before she could freeze people, now she's like Hydro-man?  I do remember the episode where she froze herself, was shattered, but still seemed to be alive (blinking eye).  However, they don't seem to explain it.

I guess my other thing is they refuse to kill people.  If they killed Nathan, he should be dead not "pretend" Nathan.  They kill off Ali Larter's character only to come back as the triplet we didn't know about.

Finally, I'm sick of Hiro & Peter not being at full strength.  Maybe Hiro having "hero cancer" or whatever the hell it is might be a good idea, but I'm just starting to get tired.

monkeyfoot 4/28/2009 7:57:10 AM

I enjoyed the big twist at the end with Sylar becoming Nathan but you are right this season was very uneven and full of holes. Like everyone said hopefully with a better creative staff next season things will be better.

I don't think there was a big change in Larter's abilities. We as an audience simply didn't know the extent of them, she did and used it to her advantage to save herself. 

killerville 4/28/2009 7:58:08 AM

Good job this week, Rob...

I feel like the writers kept referencing the fact that this season sucked. Mama P even said at 1 point "Now we've put that ridiculous mess behind us."

 

I see a major retooling next season.
 

JDK008 4/28/2009 8:15:15 AM

Wow.... this was a terrible finale.... What happened to the vision this show had in the first season? I just don't get it.... I'm also sick of Peter not being at his full capacity like he was portrayed in the beginning of th series.... I want him to beat Sylar's ass... or at least a huge showdown.... or something!!!! I loved the show in it's first season... like I said... now it's just random dialogue..... I hope this next season has some serious restructuring....

invisioner 4/28/2009 8:28:49 AM

 For some reason, I assumed the original trek of this show was to introduce different people and stories every season, MAYBE have an original or two cast member along for the ride, but this show would have been so much more interesting if every season, a new group of people dealing with new powers and a new threat would have been much better. 

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