It’s Latin For “Meh”: The Racialicious Review of Heroes 3.7

October 29th, 2008 by Guest Contributor

Hiro was the heart of the makeshift team in the first year, the character we could believe in the easiest before he was refocused into cutesy comedy relief, and Mohinder was the audience surrogate, learning about the complex web of possibilities metahumanity presented, who is now, literally, slinging webs. Are we supposed to invest our emotions in characters, in people, who are just there to prop up the series’ squabbling families? Are we to wait for the next few weeks for this volume’s finale to rekindle the series’ spark? Does the steep decline in viewership – a mind-boggling 50 percent in just two seasons – afford Kring and company the luxury of waiting for everyone to “catch up”? Earlier this year we asked, Is the worst over?

What started with the promise of a generation’s learning to take its’ next step genetically and philosophically has degenerated into just another set of family squabbles. Heroes brought us in by showing us the best we could be. Now it wants us to stay by showing us the worst parts of ourselves in the mightiest among us. The signs are not good.

The Racialicious Scorecard:

Suresh: A strong episode for the character, as he sides with Pinehearst and, despite losing Maya, retains some humanity: both his anxiousness in questioning Peter about his future and his fury in beating Sylar down (referencing Chandra’s murder) shone through well. Of course, this is the second year in a row he’s blindly joined a Company, but you can’t ask everything of a guy.

Usutu: Ramblings about choosing fate, “Dark Sun” risings, family potions dating back “thousands of years,” and no name to speak of … man, Jesse Alexander was playing Mystical Minority Bingo when he wrote this one, wasn’t he? And does going from “Africa” to “Somewhere In Africa” on the locator cards count as movin’ on up in this universe?

Hiro & Ando: Usutu’s newest trainees went on the back-burner this week amid bickering over whether Hiro should go back in time and figure out how to beat the Villains (as opposed to, say, using the resources of a corporation which Hiro now controls). But Hiro’s latest foray into temporal tempests should place him in the thick of the action in the next episode.

Knox: His “tracker profile” (seen at right) lists his power control index as 75 percent mental, and it’s been mentioned during our weekly roundtable discussions that he has a college degree. Yet once again, he’s suckered. This time, Parkman fools him via Mind Mojo into thinking he and Daphne are killed by the power of his incredible flaring nostrils. Makes you wonder, if somebody gets really scared around him, is Knox going to yell, KAMEKAMEHA! before taking that person out?