heroes – NBC

Cute eh? 🙂 Moving on to ‘lesser’ things…

Heroes is the NBC’s new primetime.

Loved it. Absolutely. After my last few days spending on the unexplainable situations and phenomena that happens to us mortals, this series was rubbing it in. Taunting me that nope, it’s just science fiction stuff, nothing really concrete to what your imagination can come up with!

Spent an hour glued to the TV at 9 pm watching the episode take me from bizarre to incredulous to fascinating. Of course am hooked, and already am debating on investing in the DVR option as this will clash with my other Monday favorite show – 24. when it starts in January.

As NBC advertises, Heroes is about ordinary folks discovering who they really are – people with extraordinary talents making them special. The camera bounces from one location to another, Texas, NY, Japan, Madras [yay, they called it madras and not chennai!] to Vegas, to LA, showing average individuals going about their average day, feeling and sensing that something’s wrong, something’s amiss with them, and how some discover “it” already and some are on the verge of it.

A highschool cheerleader is battling and recording the knowledge that nothing she does can hurt her. She casually pushes a couple of ribs poking out of her body in place, drops 70 feet below and prods a dislocated shoulder in, runs into a blazing fire and comes out unscathed.

A japanese guy – Hiro – discovers that just due to sheer willpower he can stop time, make it go back a second, and eventually larger effects of his concentration, teleports himself into a ladies room, and also lands in front of the Empire State Building. [Hiro and his friend speak in Jap throughout with English sub-titles, and that brings an exceptional quality to the scenes – they are hilarious]

A drug addict painter paints the future to the minutest detail, and on realizing that it is a bizarre thing to do, he OD’s.

A congress candidate discovers he can fly when his free-spirited brother follows a recurrent dream that he can fly and goes on to jump off a high-rise building to see if it is in fact the truth.

A Vegas stripper sees her reflection in the mirror that actually communicates to her.

Mohinder Suresh is the dude pictured above. He lands in NY following his dad [a geneticist]’s death, and realizes that folks are actually digging into his dad’s work and papers. He talks in clipped tones, a hard to place accent – not Brit, not American, not even desi. Maybe he was trying desi, and it wasn’t really coming through.

Coming from David Semel – who incidentally directs episodes on House – my other favorite show – he directed this pilot, Heroes is a fine sci-fi thriller with good potential.

You can catch it online here. Just click on the slection on the right, and the full episode plays. Enjoy!