HEROES 4.19 - "Brave New World"

WRITER: Tim Kring
DIRECTOR: Adam Kane
GUEST CAST: Todd Stashwick, Elisabeth Rohm, Ray Park, David H. Lawrence XVII, Adam Lazzare-White & K. Callan

[SPOILERS] My expectations have deflated to such an extent since Heroes came back from hiatus that I was just relieved this finale, "Brave New World", slipped by innocuously without causing me to roll my eyes more than five times over the hour. There were even a few genuinely good moments that worked because they were logical and surprising, but unfortunately the majority of this finale was a rote conclusion that just left you feeling deflated that this -- this -- was the pay-off to nineteen hours of invested time.

Samuel (Robert Knepper, who could have been marvelous with better writing) has transported the carnival to New York's Central Park, where he intends to lure a huge crowd using Emma's (Deanna Bray) ability to attract people with her cello-playing (what, flyers no good?), and then announce his kind's presence in the world by killing all his customers in a giant earthquake of his creation. Emma's unwilling to help in this crackpot scheme, so Doyle (David H. Lawrence XVII) is ordered to puppeteer her body, having apparently forgotten he'd joined the carnival to rehabilitate himself.

Peter (Milo Ventimiglia) and Sylar (Zachary Quinto) are on their way to save Emma, but spend the majority of the episode trying to convince Matt (Greg Grunberg) that Sylar's actually a reformed character after five "years" stuck in a mindscape to ruminate on his past behaviour. Meanwhile, Claire (Hayden Panettiere) and Bennet (Jack Coleman) are trapped underground in a carnival trailer with diminishing air supply and no hope of escape, until they're rescued by the surprise return of Tracy (Ali Larter), whose escape plan involves using her command of water to drag Bennet through mud to the surface. She then mysteriously vanished, assumedly because Larter has more important things to do (if you can call a third Resident Evil sequel important.)

The more satisfying subplot, or at least the most interesting, actually belonged to Hiro (Masi Oka), who has survived his brain operation and takes receipt of a mysterious origami swan (when did this become Prison Break?) Turns out that his lost-in-time girlfriend Charlie is coincidentally in the same hospital as Hiro, but has now aged into an old woman (K. Callan), having been zapped back to 1944 by Samuel. This all owes a debt to a similar scene in Doctor Who's "Blink", although I doubt Tim Kring's seen that to steal from it, and it was actually a more creative resolution to the disappearance of Charlie than I was expecting. Even better, there was a genuine sense of bittersweet sorrow when Hiro realized that changing time would deny Charlie the wonderful life, marriage and children she enjoyed without him. It also helped that K. Callan (best known as Superman's mother in Lois & Clark) was a plausible elderly version of Jayma Mays, in both wide-eyed looks and quirky temperament.

The resolution to the season's threat played out as expected, which was disappointing. The carnival had attracted a throng of eager patrons, Sylar had to grapple with Doyle to rescue Emma, Claire gave an impassioned speech to the carnies to make them realize Samuel's been lying to them, and eventually the heroes had to evacuate the carnival as an angered Samuel started to cause earth tremours, before Peter arrived to leech his power and the two men engaged in a literal earthshaking face-off. There was actually a decent use of Hiro in the climactic moments, too, as he managed to teleport everyone away thanks to Ando (James Kyson Lee) "super-charging" his ability, leaving Samuel powerless with no more "specials" around to fuel him.

I suppose "Brave New World" was serviceable work that got the job done, but there wasn't really much sense of this being the accumulation of an entire season's setup. I don't have the inclination to pick apart all its failings, but in general you just find yourself thinking back to old episodes from early season 4 and realizing how much of that had little bearing on this finale, how many storylines were pointless, or how many characters were forgotten about. Where was Mohinder? Why didn't the writers grab the obvious opportunity to link Samuel's threat to the "cracked planet" motif that went unanswered throughout season 3? Why didn't Matt want to help Peter stop Samuel, too? Why did Gretchen play no part in this finale?

I think we've debated the pervasive reasons for Heroes' failures too often, so I'm not going to regurgitate all those points again. Suffice to say, it seems to me that the writers' room just have a bad system of collectively writing episodes in four-episode batches, with little sense of broader planning. The show has always struck me as a fantastic mini-series idea that nobody quite knew how to evolve into a continuing drama. Half-length seasons and an edict to regularly rotate characters (even popular ones) would have helped matters, but it's too late for that now.

Volume V "Redemption" ended on a pretty flat note, but there's certainly more obvious potential in the direction of Volume VI "Brave New World", which begins with Claire echoing her introduction in season 1 by leaping off a Ferris Wheel in full view of TV cameras and surviving her fall. A season where the world is now aware people with super powers exist is actually a great idea (one I've been hankering for, too), and it should work brilliantly as a final storyline if Heroes is fortunate enough to get picked up for a fifth season. A lot of people appear convinced Heroes won't be back next year to explore its sixth volume idea, because the ratings are in the sub-5m gutter, but I'm not so sure -- it still has very strong DVD and overseas TV sales, plus it nearly has enough produced episodes for syndication.

Heroes doesn't really deserve to come back, but if it does manage to get another reprieve, I hope an agreement is reached to ensure season 5 will be the end of the road.

8 FEBRUARY 2010: NBC, 9/8c