Heroes 2008: Season III Close-up Part I

Heroes continues to be…well, it continues to be, that’s the thing. It’s a show designed to keep you coming back for more, and that’s a good formula for any show. However, this is season 3, and we’re still going around the barn about what’s going to happen. Theories about what’s going to happen abound, as in one theory for every man, woman and child in Los Angeles, New York, London, and Hong Kong. Indeed, it’s a global kind of show with zippy action and multiple story lines. This also keeps it all interesting. You have to keep it interesting if you don’t really come to any concrete conclusion for awhile.

Our little group that meets on Monday nights quickly dwindled to only 5 of us, all of us sitting around and watching the weekly ongoing mystery adventure on the 61” Plasma screen in the ETC, most of us snacking and surfing. Me, I play Mute Man. My super power is the ability to anticipate when the commercials come and go with accuracy and hit the mute button on the remote for the amp so we don’t have to listen to those continuing useless arguments between PC Guy and Mac, and the benefits of Cialis. We hold some of the most profound and sacred kind of conversations about things between us during those muted commercials. They are usually laced with or begin with words like “that was not believable” or, “wow, that was a twist”.

This season does seem to be turning things upside down. Syler is loose and under orders to cooperate with HRG, and failed his first test, so he had to go back in a cell and put his prison garb back on. He voluntarily does so, it seems, like some kind of rehab for habitual murderers, hmmm. Someone seems bent on the idea that he can be reformed, healed, fixed. I’ll come back to that in a moment. Dr. Suresh seems to be completely turned around, so much so that he’s now got super powers that appear to be turning him into a fly or something, who-knows-what. The formula finally comes out of the safe in a comic moment when Sulu, ah hem, George Takai comes back on the screen for his son’s benefit and tells him, “I told you not to open the safe.” That was a good comic moment.

So theories about what’s going to happen are everywhere. But my theory, as you know if you read my other rambling entries on this show, is not about what is going to happen, but what the show is about. Now THAT I CAN respond to. My original theory still holds good water. I’ve always said that the underlying meaning to this story is all about genetics, and the dangers of genetic manipulation. Still true. But a dear colleague brought up a very important distinction. Does the writer believe in a dystopia, or a utopia with regard to the outcome? I went with utopia as a first response. I was believing that Tim Kring and others involved in writing under him, are on a course that must say, inevitably, that messing around with genes can be great as long as it doesn’t fall into the wrong hands. That would preclude any involvement in experiments by those who want to control the formula and the results for selfish gain. The principles involved in this process are willing to accept losses to mankind as well, it seems, in order to get this job done. We just still don’t know which side the “company”, HRG, Mrs. Petrelli, and others, are really on. The main reason for this continual march of decisions between good and evil is helping to make the case for an ethical-based society, the hallmark of most humanist visions and utopias; people making choices to live in harmony. So we must dispense with all those things which hold us back from evolving into the ideal; violence, greed, selfishness, self-centeredness, prejudice, ethnocentrism, etc.; healing Syler, like I said I would come back to. But here is the problem: Mankind is not ready for a mass-distribution of the formula that will fast-evolve us into the ideal mankind. Genetic tricks and hoops and jumps through chemical changes must first be worked out to make it all happen. Suresh’s dream will ultimately crash under the weight of human flaws without a revamp of what amounts to ethnic cleansing. So we’re back to Nazi Germany again. In the end, it seems it can only be dystopic, and we must decide to do away with the super powers and live with us just the way we are.

God is now firmly in the mix. It’s going to be interesting to see what happens with that. Will the show allow the existence of a real God? Will God be relegated to the imaginary subconscious, controlled by guilt? Will he/she be created in our image? With the return of Linderman as a ghost that only Nathan Petrelli can see, and Nathan’s subsequent conversion back to his religious roots, praying now on a regular basis, this should be an interesting twist.

But as I said at the beginning of this review, we’ll just have to keep watching to see if these things come true. And if I’m right about the show, we still will not know for some time. Keeping in that spirit, I will write more details about my personal theory on the genetics theme and provide some evidence from the show itself…next week that is, when I write part II of this review. Thanks for tuning in.