Hayden Panettiere as Claire Bennet on Heroes
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Welcome Back My Old Friends: Part 2

Last week I started playing catch up with some of our favorite series that’ll be back on for the Spring before you know it.  I looked at The Unit, 24, Battlestar Galactica, and Prison Break. Today I’ll finish up with Heroes, Jericho, LOST, and a look at a new series The Dresden Files. 

Heroes 

Premieres 1/22/06 

Easily the best new series on TV and one of the best nighttime dramas period, just behind BSG, Heroes offered us a variety of ups and downs in its opening 11 episodes.  We had a bit of a slow start as the series took its time establishing the multitude of characters and defining the parameters of the lengthy story arc that was to come.  Things seemed to really be kicking into overdrive with “save the cheerleader, save the world” but the short story arc led to a bit of a disappointing outcome, at least so far.  While the series didn’t answer nearly the number of questions it promised to answer, it did give us more than LOST did, and it continued to ask even more intriguing questions.   

More interesting than the actually hyped “save the cheerleader, save the world” is the fallout after those events in the episode appropriately titled “Fallout”.  Claire tells her father about her powers, and he in turn has the Haitian erase those memories from everyone that knows but Claire.  The Haitian tells Claire that her father has ordered him to do this and that he’s done it to her mother many times.  He tells her that it is important that she retain her memories but pretend she has been erased.  Claire has been one of the more interesting characters from the beginning and now that she is totally isolated her character is set to get even more intriguing.   

After the fantastic team up of the Haitian, Bennett, and Eden to take down Sylar he comes back with a vengeance and kills Eden before she can do the same to him.  This sequence blew me away and set a standard that many series don’t dare to set.  She was not only a main character but an extremely interesting one.  So, this begs the question; who’s next? 

Finally we have a painting of Hiro, fighting a dinosaur with a sword.  His realization that he needs this sword is a perfect example of why he’s such a fan favorite.  So, what does this mean?  Is the painting literal, will we see him fight this big beast or does it just represent the epic-ness of the battle to come?  I’d lean toward the latter.  But who knows he could time travel and find himself in a battle with a real beast or it could be as simple as a little kid holding a toy dinosaur near where the nuclear explosion is to take place.  What do you think?  Peter also got a glimpse of himself exploding in the city with many of the heroes nearby.  Are we to believe that he somehow siphons this power from the radioactive man and accidentally uses it?  This is an answer I don’t believe we’ll get this season. 

No series on television has as many plot threads as Heroes.  With this little look back I’ve only hit the high points.  I haven’t even hit on the Nikki/Jessica story arc, which I’m sure will work as filler for the Spring season.  By the end of Fallout we had a dead Eden, Peter sick in his brother’s arms, Hiro and Ando learning about the sword with the painter finally accepting his destiny, Claire all alone with the realization that she can’t trust her father like she had hoped, Sylar back on the streets, and Mohinder with a list of potential heroes.  One thing I’m anticipating in the coming episodes is meeting Hiro’s father who will be played by none other than Mr. Sulu himself George Takei in episode 13 “The Fix” set to air on 1/29/06. 

The Dresden Files 

Premieres 01/21/06 

There’s no recap here as this is a brand new series from The SCIFI Channel.  I’m placing high hopes on this series by putting it in the company of these other great shows but the SCIFI Channel has had a fantastic track record over the past couple of years with hits like Battlestar Galactica and Eureka.   

Harry Dresden is a wizard, a real one, that advertises in the Yellow Pages of Chicago.  He uses his powers and his spiritual advisor Bob, to help people with supernatural problems for 500 bucks a day plus expenses.  He has a dark past that he is trying to overcome that I’m sure we’ll learn about in small doses throughout the series. Seems a bit like The Equalizer meets the X-Files with a healthy dose of snarky humor.  The series is based on the best selling novels by Jim Butcher. 

LOST 

Premieres 02/07/06 

OK, I’m a LOST fan.  I was there from the beginning, no catching up with box sets, I was there from the broadcast of episode one.  So, I am no fair-weather fan, but I have to say that this season has been extremely weak.  Nearly all of the Fall episodes have been filler, attempting to drag out the series, and they may have done irreparable damage to the fan base.  This series was designed to run four seasons, and regardless of how popular it gets, it should be left to do just that.  LOST is not a series that can afford so much padding. 

We only got 6 episodes, so there isn’t much to recap.  Jack, Kate, and Sawyer are prisoners of the Others with Jack held in an underground bunker.  Ben apparently ahs a tumor that will kill him soon so he offers Jack anything he wants in exchange for the surgery.  In one of Jack’s badass moments he refuses.  Ben says he’s disappointed and Jack says at least you won’t have to be disappointed very long.  This is one of my favorite moments in the season.  Meanwhile in the zoo, after Sawyer learns that the whole pacemaker thing (one of the most ridiculous storylines on TV) is bogus he also learns that they are all on a separate island and that there’s nowhere to run.  Of course he and Kate admit their love for each other and they do it in a sloppy muddy on surveillance camera mess.  Jack who was let out of his cell by Alex (a mysterious woman who wreaks havoc occasionally like a bad plot device) sees Sawyer and Kate post coital on the surveillance monitor and agrees to do the surgery.  During the surgery Jack tells everyone that Ben will die in an hour unless Sawyer and Kate are let go and she radios him when they are safe and tells him a story she told him before. 

At the end of Season Two, Desmond and Locke didn’t push the button causing the hatch to implode.  Soon after in a most inconsequential way one of the series cooler characters, Mr. Ecko is killed.  During his burial Locke homes in on a bit of scripture that will play a part in the coming story arc.  This all ties into how Locke has felt the island communicating with him since the implosion and that he must fix what he has done.  Desmond seems to have a new ability after the implosion, the ability to tell the future.  I’m sure Desmond’s new ability and Mr. Ecko’s scripture will play major parts in coming episodes.  In coming episodes we’ll also get Juliet’s (Ben’s assistant in working with Jack who also seems to be going against Ben behind his back, or is she?) back-story, we’ll get more Desmond back-story, and more Jack back-story.  I’m interested to learn more about Juliet but I really hope the overall Q&A we’ve had with this series makes some real headway. 

Jericho 

Premieres 02/14/06 

I love a good Mad Max style post-apocalyptic movie or television series.  Well, this ain’t exactly that, but it’s still a really great new series.  The United States has been attacked with Nuclear weapons.  Many major cities across the country have been hit and much of the country is without power or communications.  The small town of Jericho and its inhabitants are struggling to survive without power and running out of food and not knowing what has really happened.  Throughout the first half of season one they’ve seen a garbled Asian broadcast on television, heard a recorded message on the phone, and toward the end of the first half of season one bombers fly over Jericho dropping food and supplies all with Chinese markings. 

Gray, the town paranoid, begins to play on the citizens emotions as he runs against Johnston for mayor.  When Gracie, the mean and greedy old woman that runs the shop is killed the town is even further divided between Gray and Johnston.  Johnston wants to investigate the situation and find out who killed her while Gray thinks he knows who the murderer is and he wants to get a group together to make an example of Jonah, then man Gray believes is responsible for the killing.  Gray eventually wins the election with the people feeling more connected to his paranoid approach to more action and less talk. At the same time the real murder approaches the new store owner telling him that he will need protection in exchange for a cut of the store and if he doesn’t accept the same thing will happen to him that happened to Gracie.  Eventually Dale, the kid who now owns the store, kills the real murderer. 

There’s a lot of drama in this series, a ton more than I even mention here, that sometimes plays a bit schmaltzy, but other times it rings true and I believe the series will just get better with age.  The biggest thing I’m looking forward to in the upcoming episodes is the fleshing out of the Hawkins character.  He’s been played fairly vague up to this point.  Is he an FBI agent, a soldier, or a terrorist?  At the end of the Fall finale it seems that his cohorts are forcing themselves on him, even after he tried to divert them.  Also, a new group of refugees show up in town.  I really hope to see the mystery develop a bit faster with these upcoming episodes and I’d love to see a lighter hand on the drama.  There will be a filler episode called “The Day Before” which will show Jericho before the nuclear attacks.