"Heroes": Flying High For Now

Friday, I was talking to a friend of mine about TV and I asked him if he watched “Heroes.” He said that he did and we started talking about how much we liked the show. But the more we talked, the more confused we got. It wasn’t long before we realized that neither one of us had any idea what was happening on the show.

And that is the biggest problem with “Heroes.” However, it’s also one of its best qualities as you try to figure out exactly what is going on with each character and how it fits into the big picture.

If you haven’t been watching, let me do my best to quickly catch you up…

In India, we meet Mohinder Suresh, who has just discovered his geneticist father was killed in New York City. Dr. Suresh was researching normal people with extraordinary abilities and was working on a way of locating them. But apparently, other people are interested in this research as well as Dr. Suresh had suspected he was being followed and Mohinder finds in his father’s apartment a creepy man with glasses—who he later encounters in his cab in New York City. In New York, Mohinder meets a woman who befriended his father who helps him find an important part of his research and an answering machine message from a man named Syler. From the message, it appears that Syler had the extraordinary abilities and Dr. Suresh was working with him, until he started to get out of control. Mohinder decides that he needs to finish what his father began…

Then there are the heroes…

Claire is a popular high school cheerleader who discovers she’s indestructible. She uses her ability to save a man from a fire; but not wanting to admit her ability, allows another cheerleader to step forward and be called a hero. Looking for answers, Claire tells her mother she wants to meet her birthparents. When she tells her father, he is revealed to be the creepy man with glasses. Later, a videotape of Claire using her abilities turns up missing. We later see it being watched by her father…

Matt, a cop who continually gets passed over for promotions, suddenly discovers he has the ability to hear people’s thoughts. He uses his ability to locate a missing girl at a grisly murder scene where the girl’s parents were decapitated with their brains missing. Matt suspects the crime is the work of someone named Syler; but when Matt can’t explain where he heard that name or how he found the girl, he is arrested in connection with the crime himself…

Niki is an Internet stripper who starts seeing strange images of herself in her mirror. She takes out a loan from the mob to put her genius son, Micah, through private school. When the two goons come to collect, they attack Niki. But when Niki comes to, the goons are dead and the image of herself in the mirror warns her to be quiet. Niki takes her camera (that recorded the incident) and bolts to pick up her son. At a red light, Niki watches the video, but when it gets to the part she doesn’t remember, it goes to static and she only hears men screaming. The videotape ends and she is in a different place wearing different clothes. Her phone rings and it’s Micah asking her where she’s been for the last four hours. Niki decides that they need to go on the run, so she takes Micah back to the house to get some stuff and so she can clean up the mess in her garage. But when she goes in, the dead men are gone and everything is spotless. A set of keys hangs from the ceiling that belong to a car outside. In the trunk are the two dead men and a map with a point circled on it. Niki drives to the place on the map (with Micah asleep in the car), finds a shovel and starts to dig. In the ground she discovers a rotting dead body…

Peter is a nurse who has been having dreams that he can fly. He decides to jump off a building and test his flying skills and he invites his brother, Nathan, to witness it from the ground. But as Peter freefalls, he is stopped by Nathan, who is flying. Peter, however, wants to prove his own skills and works his way free from Nathan’s grip and ends up in the hospital. Since Nathan is in the middle of a Congressional campaign, he doesn’t want anything to do with this and he tries to convince Peter that it never happened. Finally, when Peter threatens to do the jump again, Nathan admits that he was flying. Peter is angry because he feels like Nathan has one-upped him again, until he looks down and sees he is walking on air.

Isaac is an artist who is disturbed to discover that while high on heroin, he can paint the future. His girlfriend, Simone, convinces him that they’re just drug-induced hallucinations and he decides to quit using cold turkey to make them stop. Simone asks Peter (who is her father’s nurse) to help detox Isaac, but when they get to Isaac’s apartment, he’s apparently overdosed and is mumbling, “We have to stop it.” On the floor is his newest painting of an apocalyptic explosion in downtown New York.

Hiro is a bored Japanese office worker who discovers he can reverse time and teleport himself to other destinations. When he teleports himself to New York, he finds a comic book that details everything that has happened to him in the last few days. The comic was created by Isaac and Hiro decides to go visit him. But when he gets there, Isaac is dead and has been decapitated with his brain removed. The police come and question Hiro, who tries to explain to them his ability. But when the police call his friend in Japan, they discover that Hiro has been missing for quite some time. When Hiro shows disbelief, the cops show him that day’s newspaper which shows that Nathan has won the election in a landslide. Hiro looks out the window just in time to see the beginning of the apocalyptic explosion that Isaac painted. Quickly, he closes his eyes to teleport himself away and ends up on the subway in Japan—right where he started.

See what I mean about confusing? But for me, it’s a good kind of confusing as we try to sort things out:

Will Hiro realize he has seen the future? And if he does, what will he do about it? Is Syler responsible for the coming apocalypse, and did he kill Mohinder’s father (He apparently kills Isaac in the future.)? Does Peter actually have a power, or did Nathan use his to make it look like Peter could hover? And who is Syler? Could he be the creepy guy with glasses? Or is he Claire’s biological father (I can’t take credit for those last two questions. They came from the Internet.)?

And just what is up with Niki? She is the most complex of the characters as she appears to have some sort of Hulk-like dual personality—which doesn’t come off as all that heroic. But you presume she’ll use her powers for good in the end—or will she?

The big risk with a show like this is that it could start to come unraveled before we get any real answers and since it is from the creator of “Crossing Jordan” (which has come unraveled more than once), I do have that fear. But I’m willing to give it the benefit of the doubt for now as the writers continue to find ingenious ways to tie these people together and eventually unite them to save the world.

Or at least I think that’s what they’re going to do…

“Heroes” airs Mondays at 9 p.m. on NBC.