ArJewTino

Allowing a new television show into your life isn't easy. It's much like adding new friends: at this point in your life, you're just not taking any applications and you'd rather stick with the ones you know and trust. Unless, that is, one comes along that's pretty damn cool.

For me, between Prison Break, 24, and, yes, Grey's Anatomy, it's hard for a drama to get entrenched as "appointment TV" into my viewing habits. That said, Heroes may turn out to be my new favorite show of the season.

The show, which premiered last night, follows the lives of several photogenic characters who, on the day of a solar eclipse, are realizing they have some awesome powers. Though they all have different backgrounds and seemingly separate lives, they are somehow connected in obvious as well as undetermined ways. The "feel" of Heroes is, unsurprisingly, like that of a comic book: serialized, interwoven stories with conflicted characters who will share, it was hinted at, a common goal.

I also really liked the actors and their characters. There's that girl from Remember the Titans playing an adopted Texas high school cheerleader who can shove her hand into a running garbage disposal and jump off small town water towers and STILL heal faster than Wolverine.

There's a Japanese kid named Hiro (come on, writers, be a little more obvious with the naming) who, along with having the early lead as my favorite character, can bend the space-time continuum and take unannounced vacations to NYC. There's also the chick who played the defendant in Legally Blonde playing a hot yet tragically indebted-to-the-Mob Web-cam stripper who, aside from not having aged in real life, has an (evil?) alter ego playing hide and seek in the mirror.

There's the Precog Tortured Artist stereotype who paints images of scenes before they happen and ODs, yet survives, on vague drugs; the kid who thinks he can fly and (SPOILER ALERT) might need to take a few lessons from his brother running for Congress before jumping off a 20-story building; and a scientist/mathematician from India who comes to NYC to find out more about his scientist/cabdriver dad's death (I missed most of the setup for this one).

The show also features some minor characters who may not be so minor, like Web Stripper's probably genius son and Unbreakable Cheerleader's evil dad, who made a nice Matrix allusion when he confronted the cabbie/scientist ("It must be a common name. Like Smith. Or Anderson.")

As you can see, there are a lot of characters to track and, based on the preview for next week, more to come. I think it's going to be the "next big show", complete with viewing parties and cult status before it degenerates into a sinking-ratings, Desperate Housewives-like crapfest. For now, I'm going to keep watching the show and pretend I'm not a geek.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 26, 2006 at 1:12 PM.