HEROES: SEASON FOUR
(not rated)
MOVIE: *1/2 (out of 5)
BLU-RAY EXPERIENCE: **** (out of 5)
BY KEVIN CARR
WHAT IT’S ABOUT
The superhero-themed NBC series “Heroes” finishes off its final season with Sylar unwittingly posing as the dead Nathan Petrelli, Peter channeling his hero qualities into an EMT, Claire trying to live a regular life in college and Hiro starting a “Hero for Hire” business with Ando. This scattering of heroes is brought back together once again by a mysterious man from a carnival who discovers new powers when he connects with other Specials.
WHAT I LIKED
I wasn’t wild about “Heroes” when it first started its run on NBC, but I got into it in the second season. This was, sadly, the season that was crippled by the WGA strike. But on the whole, I like the general concept of the show and some of the choices they have made.
The best part of this fourth and final season was Robert Knepper as the latest villain in the “Heroes” universe. He could have been a fantastic replacement for Sylar if the show would have just given that character a break. He made things bearable this season.
WHAT I DIDN’T LIKE
As anyone who watched this series would tell you, the show completely fell apart in the fourth season. We were retreading old storylines – Claire wanting to be normal, Specials losing their power, Sylar struggling between being good or evil, Tracy Strauss coming back from the dead, HRG hunting Specials down – to the point of irritation.
This show had such a great set-up, but the character languished in their own angst. A culling of the herd should have happened long ago because I was so tired of Claire and Peter as the good guy focus points. Hiro was okay at times, but the trendy television device of writing stories almost completely in another language has gotten on my nerves.
Also, Sylar continued to be overused to the point that it was more confusing to figure out if you liked him or not. With as cavalierly as showrunner Tim Kring killed off other specials in previous seasons, you’d think he’d get rid of some of the leads that overstayed their welcome years ago.
Season 4 also made me wonder if the half-season we got in the second year should have been the norm. There was just so much down time in this year that it was a struggle at times to get through it all.
BLU-RAY FEATURES
I was impressed by how much decent special features were still included on the fourth year Blu-ray. Lesser shows fall into the habit of just throwing a couple deleted scenes on the final disc, but at least NBC/Universal was giving the old college try with the bonus material here.
In addition to deleted scenes, extended scenes and the Hero Connection grid on all discs, there’s picture-in-picture and embedded bios in the U-Control play mode. There’s also the following featurettes: “Deconstructing Sylar,” “Heroes Revolution,” “Milo Speaks,” “Sullivan Brothers Design Gallery” and “Genetics of a Scene,” which includes lengthy break-downs of several key scene in the season.
WHO’S GOING TO LIKE THIS MOVIE
Any of the fans that are left.