Heroes, from a general storyline standpoint is extremely well-written, even if only to the point where, like Lost, no matter what’s going on, or how irritated you are with the story, you want to know just exactly what happens next. Every time an episode ends, the drama has been built up so greatly, and the R.L. Stine-esque plot twist hits, I always find myself hollering at the TV or making some sort of comment about it aloud. It’s that engaging of a show.

However, the writing isn’t perfect. Sometimes, it gets way too emo for my taste, and there are far too many expendable characters. Now, from my personal point of view, I never noticed the extent of minority write-offs, but I did notice that a number of characters with promise kept getting ruined. Simone wasn’t one of my preferred characters, but her father was of interest. Isaac was an excellent character, and I personally found his dependancy on heroine to use his power an interesting take on the idea – because how many other artists, both of print and music, have done much the same? Marley, Hendrix, Guns ‘n Roses… many, many revered and honoured artists are very similar. I approved of it. If I saw a stereotype in it, it’d be the druggy artist, not the druggy minority. Honestly, I hate the Petrellis. I like it when Peter stops getting all whiney, and when Nathan stops being controlled. The mother can go fly a kite for all I care – but also understand that by today’s standards, they are white… but twenty, thirty years ago, they were not white. They were Italians. Much like many years ago, my own ancestors where not ‘white,’ we were the dirty, starving Irish. Yes, they portray a cliche rich and powerful white family, and that alone annoyed the snot out of me. The vast majority of the white majority is middle-class or below. Even with the majority of the rich being white, so are a great deal of the common man, including my whole family. Rich and powerful is a copout straight from the comic books.

Maya and Allejandro crossing the border illegally made sense to me. America is commonly thought of, at least by the western world’s less developed countries, as the land of opportunity and progress. Given the circumstances of that pair, running to the US, with the Police after them, it made complete sense. It portrayed the Mexican people smugglers well, and the moronic border patrolling rednecks well also.

On the topic of gang-banging minorities in the show. From my standpoint, it is more reasonable to have black males act the part, especially in an inner-city setting, such as when Mojinder was almost mugged on the dock in 302 than to have white males do so, because of the social situation in which we live today. From what I understand, most semi-organized gang-type criminal activity in the underdeveloped inner city is perpetrated by black males in the 18-25 age range. Similar to that is the thugs who stole the comics, in which the black girl (I forget her name – which sucks, she has HUGE potential in the series) had to retrieve them. That was a terrible setup and a complete waste. That whole story arc was a halfassed attempt at pointing out the fallacies of the government surrounding the Katrina incident, and a complete representation of the negative black stereotype. Case in point being the young black kid who took the comics to begin with. His arrogant, rude, and ignorant ways exemplify the negativity that is thought about the black people of America. I have experienced many people who emulate that, BUT I have also met MANY black people who very much DO NOT. He was a setup character who ultimately made the show worse in my eyes. Not to mention the black girl really had no Louisiana accent to save her life… I really wish she’d be used more often in a better role. She’s got such great potential as a character. Better, in fact, that Peter, because she has the human flaws – much like Sylar’s need to kill to gain his power, it’s his weakness.

Claire is a waste of space. i hate that character with every fibre of my being. She is so shallow and stereotypical and one-sided, it isn’t even funny. When she met West, it was just your typical tv/movie teen melodrama. Waste of airtime.

The girl Hiro met in the eatery in Texas was awesome. Her death sucked, but it made an important point in Hiro’s storyline, that changign the past won’t always make the future better.

Nikki and all her other personalities annoy me. Her whole storyline was crap, but the reformed DL storyline was cool. Going from crime to productive citizenry is a very important message I think. Him becoming a true hero as a firefighter was neccessary, I think.

I have a lot more views and what have you, but I’m sure I’ve offended someone, which was totally not my intent, so i am gonna just stop here. Heroes uses stereotypes, both social and comic book, to tell a mostly engaging story. for what it is, and what it tries to do, I think it is mostly succeeding, and I laud them for their efforts.

Have a nice day. :]

-Jimmy

She will be the third African-American character and the second female African-American to be written off “HEROES”.

Is it just me or does Tim Kring have a problem in creating black characters?

The reason I’m posting though is the Human Genome Project worked outside of the USA. As copied from their FAQ:
What other countries participated in the HGP?
At least 18 countries have established human genome research programs. Some of the larger programs are in Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Denmark, European Union, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Netherlands, Russia, Sweden, United Kingdom, and the United States. Some developing countries are participated through studies of molecular biology techniques for genome research and studies of organisms that are particularly interesting to their geographical regions. The Human Genome Organisation (HUGO) helped to coordinate international collaboration in the genome project.

To follow up on this. You say that the steretyped characters “flesh out and become fully realized people”. But not all of them:

The Haitian (did that HAVE to be his ‘name’!?) stays silent and subservient to white people throughout. Does the guy have no motivations of his own?

Something that no one seems to be talking about: WHY IS HIRO INFANTILIZED? Do you know how many women I’ve heard talking about how ‘cute’ he is? Why the Sam/’Master’ Frodo dynamic with him and Ando? Only “future Hiro” seems to be non-emascualted.

D.L. is a cardboard Hollywood gangster and stays one, even if his “I’mma take care of my son” is on the ‘honorable side’ of cardboard Hollywood ganster.

**SPOILERS AHEAD!!**
******************
Why does simone have to get shot? Why does Issac have to die? D.L. (if he’s indeed dead)? The dispropotiante death rate of the nonwhite characters is annoying to me.
*****************
**END SPOILER**

But here’s what I really find annoying: if this eclipse was a worldwide event WHY ARE ALL THE SUPER-PEOPLE IN AMERICA? I guess having an Indian (with no powers) and a Japanese guy were attempts at ‘globalism’ but it feels weak. Did Africa cease to exist? China? The Middle East? South America? And Hiro and Mojinder can’t be Heroes until they come to America. “Save New York, save the world” ought to have been the slogan — a subtle US-centric polticial message that has uncomfortable echoes in the real world. I know, I know, “it’s an American show, of course it’s about America” But even some hints about stuff going on other places would have been cool.

All this griping aside, I’m looking forward to season 2. For those of us who remember Bill Bixby and The Greatest American Hero as the only superhero TV available, this show is a godsend.

People love their entertainment, and are likely to write about it in great and accurate detail, and since there are lots of other people who share the love, mistakes will tend to be quickly caught and corrected.

Whereas if someone writes a detailed article about particle physics, there really aren’t that many other people among the reading audience who both care about it and understand it well enough to catch and correct errors, so it’s riskier to rely on it for a research paper.

So yeah, speaking as a future librarian, I’d second the suggestion to go to Wikipedia for pop culture stuff, because as you said, it’s often really thorough and it has accurate entries on tons of stuff that your standard encyclopedia doesn’t touch.

OK, sorry, I’ll get out of off-topic librarian lecture mode.

On-topic, I completely agree with this post. I enjoyed the show and liked a lot of things about it, but some of the race/gender depictions did seem lazy. I’m interested to see what they do with the second season.