Heroes: Season 2

First off, I’m about to talk about the premiere of the second season of Heroes. If you don’t want to know anything about it and can’t be bothered to watch it on Monday night, then you should stop reading now.

Introduction

Okay, now that that’s out of the way let’s start with what this episode of Heroes had in common with the first season premiere of Heroes…

They both involved train wrecks.

In season one, Claire Bennet walks through fire to save a man from a burning train wreck.

In season two, the premiere is the train wreck.

Seriously, I don’t know how something so good could be ripped apart so quickly. This episode feels like one of the lesser sci-fi channel tv shows that come along every other week.

Let’s go over each plotline and how completely screwed it up it really was, shall we?

The Bennets

First and worst, there are the Bennets — I’m sorry, the Butlers. They’ve relocated to California where they’ve taken to living as a sitcom family with bad jokes.

What happened to big bad mysterious HRG?! Now he works at a Kinkos and has become a cartoon of his former self.

And Claire? Now she’s an outcast and flirting with a really strange looking boy who can fly. Maybe they didn’t get the memo, but Nathan Petrelli can already fly and he’s Claire’s dad. So these two are probably related.

Seriously, though, I realize that there are a finite set of superpowers in the world, but must we duplicate them so soon? And why can he fly better than Nathan? And why hasn’t anyone gotten Flash-style super speed yet?

The Petrellis

The interesting thing about this storyline is that we learn that the heroes can have secondary mutations. This is a staple of the X-Men universe but there has been no indication of such a phenomenon in the Heroes universe until now.

That’s right, I speak of Nathan Petrelli’s secondary mutation of accelerated hair growth. I’m not sure the benefits of such a mutation, but it does allow one to grow a completely outlandish crazy-man beard that the Amish would give their left eye for — in the span of only four months.

Also, the brother that Nathan never cared about is missing for reasons unexplained and now he’s overly distraught about it. At least his mom is still an emotionless demon.

Turns out Peter is still alive too, which is implausible but cool. His hair has been cut and that’s an improvement in my book.

Mohinder “My father’s ri-search” Suresh

Other than his yawneriffic opening monologue, Mohinder’s storyline isn’t all that bad. He’s selling some more genetic Heroes science and the remnants of the company that we thought was Linderman’s is interested in hiring him.

And the dude recruiting him can turn stuff into gold. That’s actually kinda nifty.

It’s also refreshing that Mohinder is acting in a rational manner and has this deep dark plan involving the infiltration of the company.

The Honduras Twins

What I learned from this storyline is that Spanish is yellow and Japanese is white.

In season 1, Nikki ripped a dude in half. In season 2, some whiny Honduras chick makes peoples’ eyes bleed. Not as cool.

Hiro

I was concerned that the time travel would just convolute the plot. Thus far, it’s not doing that so for that I’m grateful.

Unfortunately, the whole story is a rehashed cliche that I’ve seen a dozen times. Man goes back in time, man messes up the timeline, man fixes the timeline. /yawn

At least the dude who plays Kensai is moderately entertaining.

Sulu and Ando

I’m not sure why Ando turned into a puppy dog gopher with the biggest hair in the world, but at least this plotline sets up a whodunit for the rest of the season.

Parkman

Finally, something worth watching. We learn the man took four bullets to the chest, recovered, and made NYC detective in only four months. A little bit unbelievable, but at least we get to see him use his powers in cool ways.

There is some weirdness in the implied living arrangements with Mohinder and Molly, but at least Grunberg has decent chemistry with Molly and is a likable fella. For my money, this was the best plotline of the episode and was woefully under-emphasized.

Conclusion

Kring and company better shape up or ship out. There are a couple of menacing plotlines that could be interesting this season, but if the show doesn’t get some better story-telling and some of the edge back, it’s doomed to be a failure.

At this rate, I’m going to have my Monday nights free soon.