Of Heroes Volume Four

Well Heroes Volume 4 finished two weeks ago (sorry about late review) and I'm here to offer my less than professional opinion on it. I also aim to make this kind of short due to having already offered my opinion on Heroes a bit too much recently (in real life and on this blog).

I'm also not just going to list all the bad points and good points as that was me just being lazy and trying to inject some humour into the blog (and failing). So without further ado what did I think of Volume Four?

Well it made Heroes better. Heroes has officially moved from "sucking" to being "decent". It still has a long way to go until it's "great" again but it's definitely on the right track if it ever wants to get back that far. So once again we're looking at sub season 1 quality. It's definitely better than Volume 4 which does mean it's a HUGE step up in quality. However a step up in quality from that isn't that impressive because almost anything would have been.

So why was it improved? Well for starters we got a more focused story...at the beginning. My impressed look at the first episode of this Volume was quickly squashed in the proceeding episodes until we were back in the suck levels of Volume 3, what could have made a really interesting story quickly became yet another rehash of old plot points. Someone else is now coming to track down our beloved Heroes. Oh and Noah is once again revealed to be working for the villains in a plan which once more doesn't work out. Sadly the characters seem to lack all semblance of evolution in this show. They all suffer from an intense lack of development. Apart from Nathan who seems to suffer from intense and stupid over development.

A quick point I'd like to make is Hiro, someone who was once funny but has now just become grating. Hiro was the glue that kept Heroes together in Season 1 but now he's just terminally annoying. Stuff like how he constantly wants to follow the true path of the hero or how he gets pissed off with Ando who is just trying to help him as a good friend should (in fact he betrays his best friend towards the end of the season). So please producers of Heroes more of Hiro's bleeding orifices next year, K?

Probably my biggest quibble with the show other than just general stale story telling and bad character choices is that the show just isn't evolving. The biggest thing is where are the reports of super powered people doing things in the real world? The Heroes world is far too insular. The main characters don't die and anyone they do meet will be dealt with by the end of the season/episode. The show needs to expand more. They travel all around the world but still no one knows there are superheroes. The government had to be told and without the Company out there anymore how come there aren't any hints that there is stuff going off in the real world? Look at the bank robbery from Volume 3? Did they just brainwash everyone to forget that a bunch of superfolk did that much damage? We really need to expand past the same old group conflicts if the show wants to get better. Hell copy X-Men and do that superpowered people are seen as freaks and deal with real issues. Whilst it might get criticised for copying, it would make a cool story and it's not like they haven't done it before.

So Heroes Volume Four was plagued with points that made Volume Three suck. Then something amazing happened. Bryan Fuller came back and the show made a complete 180. Gone were the weird character choices and stupid story choices. He managed to bring back a sense of humanity and continuity to they story. You stopped hating the characters which was amazing. It was his idea to have Sylar's dad be a flawed super villain rather than all powerful badass like Mr. Petrelli was. He killed off Daphne in a really well done and even brought back old plot points such as the socks thing from Season 1 or the fact that Matt Parkman has a wife and child.

Bryan Fuller sort of brought the Volume to a really satisfactory close. Whilst he couldn't right every problem (such as budget, it's almost a recurring joke now that Heroes just won't show their fight scenes), he still improved the show immensely. Plus they actually killed Nathan off. Something they've half done in every season finale. Whilst he will be back next year it does look like he'll be gone eventually considering Zachary Quinto will definitely be back also (maybe Star Trek 2 will be filming later this year and he can do something in his absence).

Overall whilst the show still isn't awesome, it's a definite step in the right direction. Hopefully Bryan Fuller will be on the show full time next year and keep the story under control. Also I hope you don't bring Sylar back three episodes into next year, build it up gradually so that whole twist bit this year turns out to be a complete waste of time. Oh and they killed off Kristin Bell. 6.5/10