‘Heroes’ First-Season Finale Falls Flat
And It Was Boring, To Boot
What an anticlimactic experience. After faithfully following NBC’s breakout hit Heroes all season long—something that is really hard to accomplish in this day and age of increased access to an increased number of TV shows—in order to get the oft-promised payoff of somebody going bang big time in the season ender, all I received was a ho-hum episode that was the most boring and uneventful one of the first season by far.
Here Be Mild Spoilers—Proceed at Your Own Risk
Almost all any of the major characters did was run their mouths, including Big Baddie Sylar (Zachary Quinto), not to mention that I saw neither hide nor hair of any of the new characters referred to by series creator and executive producer Tim Kring in a recent interview … unless, that is, he meant those horseback-riding warrior dudes in 17th-century Japan at the very, very end of the episode. Sorry, but that didn’t cut it.
It was nice, however, to see Richard Roundtree reprise his role as deceased Simone’s (Tawny Cypress) equally deceased father Charles Deveaux. The best thing for me would have been if either he or Petrelli matriarch Angela (Cristine Rose) had suddenly let loose with a sensational power of their own, such as breathing fire or maybe morphing into a bug (the last of which I swear I saw Sylar do on a manhole cover at the end—or was that just his escape route?).
Instead, “How to Stop an Exploding Man” packed not a single surprise, except for Niki’s (Ali Larter) welcome butt-kicking breakthrough that seems to have finally allowed her to “get herself together.” Thus, the episode was mostly fizzle and minimal sizzle in my book, leading me to give the clunker of a finale a big fat unheroic grade of D.
Kring and company, you must do better by fans with the forthcoming Generations volume in Season Two.
Related Posts: Monday’s ‘Heroes’ Finale Will Have New Characters and Cliffhanger | NBC to Debut ‘Heroes’ Spinoff ‘Origins’ | Tim Kring Spoils ‘Heroes’ … Literally
Heroes/Ali Larter photo courtesy of NBC
