My journey through season one of Heroes reaches the end as I tackle the final two episodes. I'm reviewing these episodes as a pair as they fit together so well they could be a two parter. Most if not all of the main supporting characters make an appearance - off the top of my head the extended Bennet family and the Haitian are the most notable of those who don't. Of those that do some are from so early in the season that I forgot they existed. Everyone gets something to do (even if they are meaningless) and a moment to shine. Villains are killed off in the first episode leaving something of a vacuum for the finale which is more than made evident as Syler turns out to be a red herring.
Bennet and Parkman storming of the building is fun as is Niki and DLs rescue of Micah. Nathans redemption is a good moment which if anything is Heroes "free will is not an illusion" moment. However the writing is abysmal, Hiro's season long mission is to stab someone who survives and crawls off into a sewer and the overall conclusion of the explosion storyline doesn't deliver. However there is still enough fluff that it feels like a good ending to the series. Everyone is in the same place for the same time, we have a "will they survive" element for a number of characters and we're left with a number of questions including the future status quo of a number of characters. I rate the episodes 10 and 6 out of ten respectively.
The season as a whole has a number of issues the main one being that its too long and blatantly padded - you could cut ten episodes and lose nothing easily. The writing is poor in particular Niki's storyline after the first few episodes. The show is largely white washed on screen, you can't move for white cis guys and most of the characters who aren't white are killed off or underdeveloped.
These issues drag the show down to a 7/10 as a whole against it however there are a lot of things to like, the writing does peak on occasions and we get stuff like the future episode and "save the cheerleader save the world". The cast is largely brilliant with notable mentions for Adrian Pasdar, Ali Larter and Santiago Cabrera. Hiro is a fantastic character and fun, he has a lot of the moments that stuck in my memory.
In short this is a good but not great show with the frustrating caveat that it was so close to being great.
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