No, Actually, Heroes is Good

About a week ago, Doom DeLuise wrote about why he hates Heroes. Most of his arguments were valid. The show is over-hyped. The show is over-marketed. The characters are derivative. The show’s an obvious rip-off of Lost.

But that doesn’t mean the show isn’t fun to watch.

Sometimes the show can get a little stupid, sure. A cop tells the FBI agent questioning him that he can read minds? Like they’re not going to think he’s an insane serial killer. A creepy white-bread guy is the main villain? Yeah, that hasn’t been done a hundred times before. “Save the cheerleader, save the world?” That’s got to be one of the worst taglines in the history of taglines.

And sure, a lot of the characters are unoriginal. You’ve got Destiny painting the future. The Savage She-Hulk is an online soft-core pornographer. Max Lord is running for Congress. Mr. Immortal is a cheerleader.

But there’s one guy that makes everything worth watching: Hiro. Hiro’s like that guy from Scream that realizes they’re all living in a horror movie and knows the rules you need to follow to survive, but in this case it’s comics and Hiro’s not an annoying prick. He’s the nerdy guy you can’t help but like. He knows that with great power comes great responsibility. He knows that using his powers for personal gain will only cause trouble. And we know that eventually he’s going to become a kickass superhero. For all intents and purposes, Hiro is Spider-Man. A fat Japanese Spider-Man who can bend time and space, but Spider-Man nonetheless. How can you not love that?

Heroes is the closest thing to reading a comic book I’ve ever watched. The pacing, the non-linear storytelling, the deliberate withholding of information to enhance the cliffhanger only to reveal that information at the very beginning ofthe next episode…all that screams comic book. By no means is it Watchmen or Dark Knight Returns. It’s not on the level of Astonishing X-Men or The Walking Dead. It’s not even quite on par with Robin or Cable & Deadpool. But it sure beats the hell out of ASSBAR or New Avengers or The Flash or anything with Reggie Hudlin’s name attached.

Heroes isn’t as good as Lost or Battlestar Gallactica are or as good as The X-Files or Firefly were. No, it’s not a great show, but it’s an enjoyable one, and better than most of the stuff on network TV today. With crap like According to Jim, The Biggest Loser and seventeen CSI rip-offs as my alternatives, I’d take Heroes any day of the week.