How Heroes could be even better

I'm truly enjoying Heroes, four episodes in, so this isn't a complaint about the show. After all, it's one of the most interesting programs on right now. But there are definitely a few areas where I wish it was just that little bit better, in order to get up into the elite league of TV shows that I can just sit back and experience.

First, while I like the fact that big things happen, I'm finding that there's often little or no follow-through afterwards. As an example, I was as shocked as anyone when the thugs who were sent to intimidate Niki "Mirror Girl" Sanders ended up in bits and pieces in her garage. And it even looked like there was going to be solid consequences to this, as Niki temporarily went on the road. But an episode or two later, she's inexplicably being contracted by the thugs' boss to do a job for him to square her debt?! Has he not noticed that his henchman went missing, right after being sent on a job involving Niki? Did I miss an episode or a key piece of dialogue that explained this? A similar bit of sloppiness showed up with the subplot about Mohinder and his waiflike gal pal (who seems so likely to be up to no good) finding the neighbouring apartment with all of the nasty stuff in it. I was sure he went through it with the girl, taking pictures of what he saw. And then of course (in a bit of too-cliched plotting) it was all gone by the time the cops were brought in.. But there was no mention of the pictures he took?! Did I only dream that he was taking pictures? Even if I did (stranger things have happened), shouldn't the cops and the FBI have been interested since there's apparently a high-profile serial killer case going on that should've set off some alarm bells? Was there an investigation into who rented that apartment? That plotline just seemed to drop off the face of the Earth, in sitcom fashion rather than what you'd expect in a serious drama. And there are a handful of other similar danglers, that may end up eventually being dealt with but so far it just feels like the scripts need one more pass each week to polish them up that last little bit.

Second, it's kind of disappointing to me that the effects are so uneven. The stop-time effects, for example, have been phenomenal! I don't even know how they're doing them, and I don't care, but it's so completely believable that I think I'm actually watching time being halted in its track. So clearly they have some budget, to be able to do that. So then why do we get effects like the Claire-with-her-torso-cut-open, which looked like foam rubber and didn't resemble a human chest in any recognizable way. If the problem was that they couldn't show a female chest (breasts and all) then don't do that scene! And there've been other examples of cheesy effects that jarred me out of the story. Now, I don't really mind this as much as some people, because I don't think special effects are the be-all and end-all in movies or TV shows, but again if you set the bar high in some scenes, you have to keep it high.

And finally, while I think the overall writing is very good, there have been some very strange examples of plotting. Consider the revelation this week that Peter P's power is actually the duplication of others' powers, rather than the flying power that we'd all believed or assumed (and clearly were supposed to fall for). In the context of the first four episodes, that's a pretty major reveal or twist! To compare it to Lost, it's up there with finding out that Locke was on the plane in a wheelchair, after always seeing him walking around effortlessly on the island up to that point. I remember seeing that scene in Lost, and almost losing my breath as it sank in just how masterfully, and how thoroughly, I'd been played. And then think about how it was done here: a piece of dialogue, which undoubtedly had many viewers going, "Huh?" To say it seemed like it came out of left field is an understatement. When you rewatch those early episodes of Lost, you wonder how you ever missed it! I'm not thinking that's going to be the case here, and the only real difference is in terms of the quality of the writing. Pace, and use of foreshadowing, and misdirection, and convergence, and visual irony, are all tools that, when used expertly, should take your breath away! And I'm not sure we're getting much of that (yet) in Heroes, although I'm hopeful we will. And really Lost is one of the few TV shows to ever exhibit those traits on a regular basis, so it'd be exceptional if Heroes rises to that level as well. It probably would make this a Golden Age of TV for those of us who love that style of storytelling!