Heroes: Reborn
A Pilot Review
I actually really liked the first season of Heroes. It was a neat concept, the casting was well done, and the story was intriguing where you focused on something simple with “Save the Cheerleader, Save the World.” I think the thing that made it work was very quickly you realized that the people with powers/The Evos aren’t new and that their parents (in Hiro’s case as well as Peter’s) had been part of the old guard before. I think the fact that it was multi-generational and that there was intrigue both from the government hunting them and within their own families drove it at least through season one. Then their first season finale was terrible, the ratings slid from there, and it limped on for three more very confusing seasons.
Frankly, considering how famously the original Heroes tanked, I was surprised that they rebooted it at all. But with 24 and now The X-Files having successful and well-hyped revivals, I feel that NBC had little to lose by jumping on the bandwagon. However, this reboot lacks the ingenuity of the original’s pilot and, frankly, is not accessible for new viewers.
Granted, back in 2006, I wasn’t watching Heroes through a more feminist lens, but I thought that Claire was the accessible heroine for the story and pilot because a lot of the series focused on her dealing with her powers and the truth of her father, Noah (also known as Horn-Rimmed Glasses), who is secretly working for the company investigating and hiding the Evos.
It kept me interested at least through season one because I cared a lot for Claire and her pain, especially deal with her power of regeneration. (Trust me, season one Heroes makes you wince at garbage disposals.)
Conversely, this reboot doesn’t work at all. First, it doesn’t work for people unacquainted with the mythos. I had only seen season one and found myself Googling to find out how the show ended to learn more about the Odessa Incident and also to remember who Molly Walker was, which the show glosses over. Second, it’s boring. The characters are flat and stereotypical — the teen boy with powers who wants a normal life, the military vet with a secret drinking problem, and the conspiracy nut from mom’s basement (a joke the show, itself, makes). Third, from a feminist perspective it sucks.
It sucks hard.
I took twelve pages of notes on this and thought since the pilot was a two-part premiere, I might recount the plot. Then I realized half way through that not much was happening (a problem of Heroes 1.0 as well) and that the fleshed out women characters I was waiting for weren’t going to show up at all.
Here’s the basic plot — -a year ago on June 13, 2014 there was a conference to celebrate evos and Humans trying to live together, like a big peace summit. However, it was blown up and a lot of people were killed. It has put evos on the run as they’re being registered by the government and a ton are disappearing. Now, the surviving free evos are trying to find a way to fight back in their daily lives (but currently are scattered from each other and their stories aren’t overlapping yet), and a conspiracy theorist has sought out a retired Noah Bennett (living under an alias). Together Noah and the conspiracy theorist are trying to find the true intentions of the Renatus company as it probably staged the whole Evo Terrorist Explosion and pinned it on Mohinder Surresh, a known evo. That’s about it.
The bulk of the plot follows Noah/HRG getting on board with the conspiracy nut and realizing they need to find Molly Walker (an evo from the original series who can find other evos, like Cerebro from The X-Men) before the evil corporation, Renatus, does.
However, there are so many character introductions and subplots that don’t seem to coalesce much and don’t make much of an impression as well. So in the pilot, while there is more going on, you don’t care much. I think that it’s very telling that in the second hour every time it changed scenes, the show had to display character names and locations so you knew where you were and whom you were following. If you need to caption things, you’ve either not done a good job introducing characters or you have too many.
Hint: Heroes: Reborn has too many.
The few women characters we are shown are paper thin, patsies, or villains. First, we have Miko, who nominally is the most important girl we have. She’s on the prominent promotional materials. She has a power and she’s on some quest to find her father because he has pertinent information to help evos. She’s literally Katana Girl, a character from a popular samurai-themed video game. When she grabs the correct sword she actively becomes an animated character within the game itself. Now, it might be kind of neat if she discovered this on her own, but Miko is denied even that much agency. She only realizes it because her secret is basically uncovered by Ren, a dedicated guy gamer who seeks her out. He also helps step in in her first quest in the game world and saves her, then cares for her wounds when she wipes out. She’s got a power but Ren is a more active part of her story than she is.
At least she’s onscreen and has an ability and lines.
We see another girl briefly in the end of Part 1 who can control the Northern Lights. Her name is Malina, but I only know that because of the IMDB page. It’s not made clear in the episode, and we don’t see her in Part 2 at all.
Then there’s Tommy. He’s a guy who can teleport objects to whatever place he’s thinking of at the moment. He has a mom and she has about three lines, while driving with him to Denver, and he has a friend/crush in Elly, the girl at the ice cream store who learns his secret. Elly is helping him figure out his power, but that’s about all we know about his mom and Elly — how they fit in and serve his story.
There is also Molly Walker. We meet her at first as living under an alias as “Zoe” and trying to avoid the government and Renatus. However, she tries to rip off the wrong person and finds herself double-crossed, exposed, and in huge trouble as the episode ends. She is basically an object. She’s the tool that Renatus needs to find all the other evos for its plans and experiments. She’s also the one that our heroes, Noah/HRG and Quentin Frady (the conspiracy nut) are searching for as well in order to save her. So far, things are done to her because of what she can offer others via her powers. Her agency is even more limited than Miko’s.
There’s also this almost feel of “Women in Refrigerators” motivating our heroes, Noah and Quentin, who are trying to stop Renatus before something horrible (about as specific as we get so far) is unleashed. Noah is motivated because his daughter Claire was killed, while Quentin is fighting for the truth because his evo sister disappeared. Again, the women are the motivation for the men to quest and fight the good fight by either dying or being abducted.
The last two women we’re introduced to are a brunette who calls herself Taylor and seems to be a hench-woman working for Renatus to capture Molly and Joanne. The only technical Bechdel-Wallace passing scene in the full two hour premiere is about ten minutes before the end where Taylor commiserates with Molly at a bar, but it’s all a lure for getting Molly alone and vulnerable. Joanne has a more prominent role in contrast to Taylor — she’s a human and grieving over her son’s death at Odessa. She’s inspired her husband, Luke, to come with her on a vengeance mission to murder every last evo they can find. She’s the ruthless one. Whereas Luke seems to occasionally have moments of hesitation and regret, she is the zealot in the mission. He’s also the brains, the thoughtful one, while she’s the brawn and the one who seems to love murdering with an enthusiastic zeal. I should also mention that, so far, she’s our only woman of color character and she’s shown as angry, temperamental and quick to violence.
The Verdict — D- Heroes: Reborn is boring, tedious, confusing if you haven’t seen much of the original series, and has too many characters and subplots already. Everyone, except for Noah Bennett, is a paper thin stereotype and about as interesting. The worst are the women characters who are objects sought and not even allowed to be agents in their own stories. Those are the more well-rounded women in Miko and Molly. Overall, the reboot is a disaster and some things are better buried. Watch Quantico instead!
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