Welcome to another installment of KSiteTV’s weekly “Binge This Show” column, where we make a recommendation of either an overlooked TV gem or a TV classic that you should be catching up with.
This week’s column is a bit more of the latter.
Eleven years ago this week, NBC premiered the innovative Heroes — a diverse group of characters, many of whom had special abilities. The show really got kicking when the initial goal of the season was revealed: “Save the cheerleader, save the world.” And the world was certainly in danger, if a painting by Isaac Mendez (Santiago Cabrera) was any indication.
Sadly, Heroes is more remembered now for what it became — but when it started it was out of this world. Let’s borrow Hiro Nakamura’s powers and head back.
Again, people seem to only remember the bad times, and what Heroes had become, but in late 2006, there was no bigger phenomenon on television. Watching the series eleven years later, there are still some characters and situations that might still not have aged too well, but the core of the series is still incredibly engrossing, even if you know where the series would end. “Company Man” may be the series’ finest hour, but world-building episodes like “Six Months Ago” and “Five Years Later” really set the tone and show what an amazing series had been put together.
A lot of the talents writing Heroes later ended up on other shows, from Marvel’s Netflix series through to projects like the recent Star Trek: Discovery. Speaking of Discovery, Bryan Fuller (Pushing Daisies) was around for the show’s first season and wrote many of the series’ best installments; the Hannibal showrunner would return briefly for a decent run of episodes at the end of Season 3. But we’re not talking about those right now…
Season 1 of Heroes was and is particularly special because audiences surely had an idea where they were going, but they had no idea on how they’d get there. The show twisted and turned and seemed to get better every week. Binge-watching now, 11 years later, you can feel that growth even faster (though, no, Matt Parkman’s wife Janice never does get less annoying.) The show’s Season 1 “boogey man” Sylar, as played by Zachary Quinto, was at his scariest in Season 1; Masi Oka’s Hiro showed us that being super doesn’t have to be a burden, something that was also reflected in recent series like The Flash when they started, at least.
Here’s the thing, though, with no offense to those who worked on the show later:
Watch Season 1. Love Season 1. As soon as the first season is over, STOP. Do not pass go. Do not press “Next Episode.” You’ll be tempted, and then you’ll be very, very disappointed. There are some gems in those later seasons, but it’s not worth it.
While I’m glad that wasn’t all we ever got of Heroes, nothing can replicate the feeling of that first season, and hopefully this binge will get you all primed for the premiere of The Gifted on Monday. And who knows… maybe someday Heroes will return again, and it will actually be able to revisit that great feeling had when watching the first season of the original show. It’s a real shame people judge Heroes for what it became rather than what it was, because what it was was, at a time, one of the best series on television.
All of Heroes and possibly even its lesser successor Heroes Reborn are available at multiple sites, in many cases for free, including Crackle. You can also find the series on Netflix and there’s a Complete Series Blu-ray set if you want to spend some money and see some cool extras. Season 1 is also available on Amazon Video.
