Heroes are not just for comic book geeks and nerds

Ok. Let’s take away all the fancy spandex and capes and gaudy outfits, that if worn by most people they would die from pneumonia in them. Let’s imagine that heroes wear ordinary clothing. Jeans, shirts, you get the idea. They can come from every walk of life. From a cheerleader who could be indestructible, but just wants to be normal and not thought of as a freak, to the Japanese salary man who is stuck in a dead end job at his father’s corporation, and has learned he can not only teleport but bend space and time to his whims. Brothers who come from opposite ends of the moral strata, one who has compassion and the other thinks of himself and how it a situation can better himself in his political career. An Indian doctor of genetics who has spent his entire life in his father’s shadow seeking approval and never finding validation of his own existence till the death of his father forces himself to not only reevaluate his own life, but what his father even did that made him be set to the side. All these heroes’ destinies could intertwine with each other and see what fate has in store for each one of them.
Let’s face it though just watching or reading about a hero is not enough. You have to give them a villain or three to throw in the mix. Let’s have one who wants more than anything to be special. Let’s say this man could find out what is wrong with anything and fix it. Sounds ok right? Now how about it drives him insane knowing there are more people that are as special as him. They too have powers, but his power works not only by fixing something but figuring out how their power works and using it for himself. He would do this by opening the skulls of people and taking their abilities for himself. Names himself after a watch, Calls himself Sylar. Or, how about an ultra-secretive organization that not only knows about these people but uses them to further their own causes and one of their best agents is the dad of the cheerleader whose family never knows what he actually does, we will call this, The Agency.
Sounds kind of cool huh? Well NBC has put on a show with this exact concept and called it Heroes. I can say this has to be one of the best shows on TV today not only because of people having powers, but because they are shown as people that have learned they have something deeper than their powers. It shows how these heroes and villains learned about having fortitude, lust for something more, but overall it shows the capacity of the human spirit to overcome insurmountable odds with the help of people that never knew they had something special inside them. NBC has taken this formula and has made it a very addictive show for me to watch. I am always on the edge of my seating going, WOW!! That was freaking awesome and saying holy crap look at that plot twist.
The two biggest complaints I have about this show is even though there is a recap at the beginning of each show, if you missed an episode it’s kind of easy to get lost from the storyline. The second complaint would have to be the reliance on time travel to be a hook to some parts of the storylines. Because something happened it can cause a butterfly effect to the future. While it can be cool, I do not want to see every time.

Overall I would highly recommend this show to everyone, even if you are not a fan of comics or superheroes. It has something for everyone and you can find yourself rooting for your favorite person whether it’s the cheerleader the Japanese salary man or even or even the villains. It has something for everyone and it shows the complexity of not only what people can do, either good or bad but how they justify their actions. Heroes has put the human back in superhuman and to me that makes it all worthwhile.