Lower Decks

What a long strange road it was to become a fan of Heroes. The strangest part is that, by all rights, I should have been one of its earliest and most faithful viewers, but after a few episodes, I found it easier and easier to skip out, and eventually even grow resentful of how popular it had become. Then it only got stranger. The more fans complained about the second season, the more curious I got, the more I felt motivated to give the show a second chance. Then, of course, the writers strike happened, cutting short the season and leaving 2008 ripe to end this little game once and for all. But fate had something else in mind for me. Curiosity, maybe, had it in for me. I had to go and watch the first season on DVD.

But let’s go back to the start. Yeah, I watched the first episode when it originally premiered. The one, the first one, where this Indian dude named Mohinder Suresh does a voiceover, this other dude named Peter Petrelli thinks he can fly. Hey, I’m a big fan of the guy playing Peter’s brother Nathan, Adrian Pasdar. But Ali Larter isn’t doing much for me as Nikki. It just seems so pat. But next episode, my pal Greg Grunberg makes his debut as Matt Parkman, the first role Greg has gotten, it seems, that has nothing to do with J.J. Abrams. I’m pretty stoked about that. But hey, Peter’s not much more interesting, and Nikki is even less so. Next week, I’ve got WWE waiting for me on cable. Prison Break on Fox. I’m already more devoted to both of those, and I can only flip so many channels. I don’t record unless I have to. And the Internet hasn’t been set up to lighten the load yet, either. And even when it is, that’s never going to be my thing. I’ve got a show like this already, it’s tons better. You may have heard of it? Lost? It’s easy to see Heroes at this point as a kid brother, a knockoff, another ensemble big idea show, but one that hasn’t assembled a cast that has anywhere near the skills exhibited by any three of Lost’s stars.

Then it gets worse. Buzz starts to build around catchphrases like “save the cheerleader, save the world.” At this point, critics and fans have already soured on Lost, and they’re now salivating over this upstart, remarking how creator Tim Kring vows to keep arcs at minimum to a season. To the outside world, Heroes has perfected what Lost spoiled over the course of its first couple of seasons, first with a confounding second year, then with the antics and boredom of the third. To me, Lost never, I’ll say, lost it. Never. And if I think that about Lost, how is Heroes any kind of remedy? To me, it’s got to be another Babylon Five, another Firefly, another Stargate, just some dopey alternative the fans and critics have felt safe to latch onto. (Uh, yeah, column readers! I skipped boat on a number of popular shows over the past two decades, and those three only name some! Buffy! Battlestar Galactica! Xena!)

But that first season continues. An episode called “Company Man” becomes legendary. Something about a character known as “HRG.” A villain known as Sylar seems to make a splash, too. And hey, I was always a fan of Hiro. I mean, who wasn’t? That dude was the whole reason anyone felt it was safe to consider the show cool from the start. Without him, no one would have cared at all. Then the second season premieres, and as I said, the grumblings begin almost immediately (hey, much as they did with Lost). Fans don’t seem to get a pair of new characters, and they may as well be held as synonymous with additions Lost made in its third season, Nikki and Paolo. I make a mental note about them, because I find those criticisms dubious. I’m curious about the season, too, because Dominic Keating, a castmember from Star Trek: Enterprise, is making guest appearances, as he is in Prison Break at the same time. Then, of course, the writers strike happens around the time Kring has been making concessions to the fans about the quality of the season in interviews, and once it’s resolved, we’re left with a truncated season, one I never get around to even sampling.

I should mention that from the start, I was basically assumed to be watching from a number of family members, none of whom are not in the least comparable to my level of interest in superheroes. I almost feel guilty about it, but I’ve dismissed the show. What can I do but say I’m not watching and laugh it off? TV shows on DVD. TV shows on DVD is what got me. By the time Heroes debuted on disc, it was an old concept. I hadn’t really gotten in the habit of collecting old favorites, because it was just too expensive. I dabbled, but had resisted it until a friend got me to start watching another show that I needed to catch up on, two seasons worth. I’d already started collecting Lost and Prison Break. By this summer, I was primed to get my hands even dirtier, to give Heroes that second chance. Still, I had the set for months before watching it. I was apprehensive. What if this second chance revealed nothing more than I’d gleamed the first time? So I popped in the first disc one day, watched the extended pilot. It had material that I didn’t remember (we’ll get to this later). It was compelling. I actually think this alternate pilot was what did it. Unlike the televised version, it put the arc right at the start of the series, the problem that was going to plague the characters all season long (but again, we’ll get to that later). I watched another episode. I think it took about a week to work my way through the whole season. Peter was more compelling this time, and he only grew more compelling. It’s safe to say he’s the essential character of the first year. Then there was Sylar, played by Zachary Quinto, whom I was well aware by then as the new Spock in next summer’s Star Trek film. I hadn’t known what to make of him, because before this DVD set, I’d never seen the character or the actor in action. But in a word (and an appropriate one), fascinating.

By the ninth episode, “Homecoming,” the one where Peter in fact saves the cheerleader, Claire Bennet, I have easily been transformed into a diehard fan. What the show lacks in compelling actors it makes up for in compelling storytelling, easily, and if the actors aren’t the strong suit, then in turn the characters are, they make the actors better than they are, across the board. And the thing is, the show never forgets this, but I’m getting ahead of myself again. Three episodes later, the relaunched Doctor Who’s original star debuts as the Invisible Man, giving the show a heightened sense of weight to not only the acting but a deepened sense of narrative history, revealing a far greater knowledge of itself than a mere novelty as I had assumed it was could have achieved. Then, of course, hour seventeen, “Company Man,” which expands on this element to an epic degree. In a way, at the very least HRG, Noah Bennet, has been trying to escape this moment ever since (though getting his revenge on a copy store manager in the second season certainly comes close).

The next episode we meet Linderman for the first time, played by Malcolm McDowell, which only solidifies that Heroes has already become an important cultural moment (hey, in my version, anyway), and eventually, hour twenty-three, “How to Stop an Exploding Man,” which culminates in a legitimately powerful dramatic decision on the part of Nathan Petrelli, regardless of whatever I may know of the second season.

For weeks, months after this, I have to sit and stew about the second season again, because it won’t have been released on DVD yet. What if the fans were right? What if this commitment I’ve found myself making truly is betrayed? Well, relatively speaking, I have my answer soon enough. From the first episode, I know that Maya and her brother aren’t what they were made out to be. They’re presented in the same way as any character debuted in the first season, naturally, with their own story. That’s the thing about Heroes. No matter what Tim Kring says, no matter the hype around the third season changing course, repairing rudder, whatever, it is always exactly what it has always been, and that’s a show that’s ultimately sure of what it is, what it’s done and what that means about what happens next. Maya eventually ends up with Sylar. Hiro and his hero Takezo Kensei end up back in the present, Kensei as Adam Monroe, part of the conspiracy surrounding the Shanti virus, an arc begun during the first season, eventually tying in with Peter, eventually tying in with Nathan, eventually tying in with Mohinder, Claire, Noah Bennet.

But the set holds more secrets yet. An alternate ending to that arc, just as there had been an alternate beginning to the series, two things filmed and abandoned. Tell me about some precedence here, please, because I can’t think of any. “Genesis” the extended pilot features an alternate Exploding Man, one who like Maya would have introduced a whole can of worms about how international figures present a vastly different approach to how these people and their abilities find themselves being confronted with the fact that people who can’t relate won’t understand. (I contend, that’s the fun of Mohinder, as we’re learning most keenly this new season, but I’m not here to spoil any of that, in case there happens to be someone still working on the hang-ups I had for so long). Footage from the unaired “Chameleon Girl” (and presumably other lost episodes) puts the boots to the criticisms that were constantly thrown at the second season, including the ultimate worth of Maya (you can hear about the plans they had for her in the introductory material to this portion of the bonus materials). I would have loved to see that version of the season, but I’m just as happy with how things turned out. Becoming a fan through the DVDs maybe allowed me to become a more fluid fan.

This column represents a rough overview of my experiences with Heroes, but it by no means covers everything that I have come to love about it, meaning you can expect to see future weeks dedicated to the series, starting with one centered around Sylar, surely the most sympathetic mass murderer ever put on television. Regardless of whether or not my views on the second season ever become widely shared (I’m not holding my breath), the third season has already proven to me that I have grown comfortable as just another fan of the show, no matter what it took to get me there.

My biggest dilemma now is, they’ve got action figures. I need to decide which one to collect. It’s not as easy as it sounds! But the shape of this scar probably isn’t hard to guess.