10 Reasons You Should Watch "Heroes"

1. It’s a freakin’ Superheroes! What more do you want?!?!?!?

2. It has got one of my favorite comic book writers working on the show. Jeph Loeb’s work is probably best known to the lodge from his work on “Lost” (He also wrote “Commando” and “Teen Wolf” in the 80’s). In the comic book realm, he’s written a lot of books that I use to expose non comic book readers to, including “Superman: For All Seasons” (Which ended up being the book that inspired the TV show Smallville), “Batman: The Long Halloween” and “Daredevil: Yellow”.

3. The series started with half a dozen characters, all with their separate stories. None of them know each other, or have even met. Yet, as the series progresses their stories slowly begin to overlap, which is a nice change of pace to the typical “characters suddenly thrown together in a situation” type formula.

4. There’s ambiguousness to the characters in the show. Everyone (for the most part) is just starting to get powers, and nobody is really a good guy or a bad guy. They’re just people. Yet as things progress you start to see the characters are starting to branch off into those two camps. Some characters you were sure were going to be good guys are starting to show shades of darkness, and some guys you were positive were evil, you find yourself suddenly second guessing.

5. Not to lock “Lost”, but that show can sometimes be frustrating when it comes to either getting answers or waiting for something to happen. Not so with this show. The show is written in arcs (much like comics, really). The first season of “Heroes” basically has 3 arcs to it. Each arc tells a large story, but also builds towards the next arc. You probably saw ads for the first arc, “Save the Cheerleader, Save the World” and the repercussions of that led to the next arc “Are you the list”, now that that arc is wrapping up it’s about to lead into the final arc. What’s nice about this is that the show is constantly giving you the answers you want, while creating new questions.

6. It has one of the most interesting “Bad Guys” I’ve seen on TV. I don’t want to give away too much about him, as that would just spoil things, but he has quickly become my favorite characters on the show. He’s referred to by fans as H.R.G (Horn Rimmed Glasses) and refers to himself as Mr. Bennett. What surprised me about him is that when the show started I actually thought he was kind of two dimensional, but as the series progressed he’s turned out to be the most layered character in the show.

7. A lot of people criticize the show with the “X-Men” argument. That being that everyone’s powers seems straight out of the pages of that particular comic book. And too a degree they’re correct. Wolverine’s healing factor, Rogue’s absorption, Nightcrawlers teleportation, Shadowcats phasing, Professor X’s telepathy, etc, etc. But the powers themselves are the only link really between the two franchises. I guess the reason it doesn’t bother me, is because you see this kind of thing all the time in comics. Marvel comics has Mister Fantastic and DC has Plastic Man. There’s the Flash and Quicksilver. You see characters with similar powers all the time, but it’s really what you do with the character itself that makes it interesting.

8. It’s got Christopher Eccleston. He’s one of my favorite actors, and he’s always worth watching. He’s appeared in “Doctor Who”, “28 Days Later”, “Shallow Grave”, etc. etc. And his character on the show freakin’ rules!

9. They actually made George Takei cool. I honestly didn’t think that was possible.

10. And the 10th reason you should watch Heroes is so Train and I can talk about the show on the lodge. We usually spend Tuesday mornings chatting about what happened the night before, and we often mention how cool it would be if we could get the lodge involved.