Heroes – Season 3, Episode 4

With Heroes becoming an international phenomenon more or less over night it was always going to be tough for creater Tim Kring and his team to keep the snowball effect rolling and find new ways for Heroes to develop and inspire its audience. Season one’s moto, something most human beings in the Western world are akin to was “Save the Cheerleader, Save the World.” Season two then again had to save the world from a deadly virus, and now Season three – you’ve guessed it – has to save the world from yet another bomb and a deadly genetic formula giving anyone who wants it the possibility to inject powers into themselves. Now it’s easy to criticise as a viewer and I’m sure the creative team for Heroes’ is doing the best they can but the problem is that in their ambition to build a bigger and better brand for themselves they are starting to lose the reason that we all love Heroes.

When it comes to Sci-fi characters and superheroes they often lack a lot of depth that is required to fill out a persona, to make us love them, to see why they do things. Heroes changed all this by giving our heroes stories, struggles, every day life hassles that they’d rather do without. It was with this personal touch that we grew to love the Bennets, the Petrelli’s, and even to a degree Sylar because we could understand where they’d come from and how they’d become what they were today. Desperate Housewives needed a leap forward in time to breath some life into what was becoming a tired format, I have the feeling that Heroes needs to the do opposite. With so much travel hopping back and forth, people dying here, becoming alive again there, villains becoming heroes, heroes becoming villains we are starting to lose our personal interest in the characters. So what if Claire, 4 years into the future, is trying to kill her brother Peter, we don’t know why and those little extra touches, one liners that would make us care are unfortunately absent. With more twists and turns than you can shake a stick at and family connections pouring out of the woodwork in all directions there is certainly enough to keep the intrigue going for the time being. Angela seems have to given birth to a multi powered football team, whilst Nathan has one daughter and perhaps more soon to come with his deepening relationship with Nikki aka Jessica aka Tracy (think flying ice cube baby with the combination of their current powers) but it remains to be seen whether the series will ground itself back with the personal flavour or snowball out of interest into just one big complicated mess.

Nikki's reincarnation's just can't seem to stay away from Nathan Petrelli