Home'Heroes': America just can't get enough...
Dec 4, 2006, 03:24 PM | by Gilbert Cruz
Categories: 'Heroes'
...and neither can we. I was lucky enough to see an early screener of tonight's fall finale episode (the show returns on Jan. 22) and I can easily say that it will rock you like a hurricane. Indeed, as the ads have promised, a Hero will fall. But, even better, to hold your mind and your nervous system hostage until it comes back, tonight's episode features not one, but FOUR cliffhangers. Catch my last TV Watch of the year tomorrow morning.
Not as exciting, however, is the news that, in another sign of Studio 60 sinking deeper and deeper into its increasingly meta-tastic rabbit hole, the show has recruited Heroes' Masi Oka (pictured) -- who plays the hit show's lovable time/space traveler Hiro -- to appear as himself as host of the terminally unfunny show within the show. Seems to me to be a cynical attempt to keep even a small fragment of the approximately five million viewers that change their channels come 10 p.m. every Monday night.
Still, after listening to Oka talk in subtitled Japanese and jabber in pidgin American for 11 episodes, I would like to see him speak in the stone-cold, Brown University-educated English that is his everyday voice. I sorta hope he plays himself as a jerk, which would be funny and completely antithetical to what we've come to expect from his geeky persona. What this news really instilled in me, however, is a nostalgia for the days of character crossovers, like those couple of ones they did way back when with Law & Order and Homicide, or when Hanna-Barbera made that Flintstones/Jetsons movie. Studio 60 and Heroes, however, might not be the best pair of NBC shows to experiment with (I would rather see The Office take a field trip up to the city and run into some 30 Rock people on a tour). Are any of you Heroes fans actually going to watch this particular episode of Studio 60?
In other Heroes news (collected by TVTattle): Seems like NBC is finally, FINALLY, retiring the whole, "Save the Cheerleader, Save the World" ad campaign. Obviously, since Claire was saved in a hyped, but ultimately disappointing episode, there's no more need for it. Still, we would also like to point to this. Now, I love Family Guy more than most here at EW do, but once you've been spoofed on Family Guy, you're pretty much five minutes ago.
And apparently, the more successful the show gets, the more it might have to pull its punches. Remember those first few episodes, where Claire mangled her hand in a garbage disposal (resulting in a lawsuit) or found herself sliced open from chin to bellybutton on an autopsy table? We might be seeing less of those moments, as show creator Tim Kring remarks, "I feel like we have to back off some of the very graphic stuff." Sad. Can we be adults here, people?
Most heart-warming, however, is Zachary Quinto (Sylar) finding time for an interview with his hometown newspaper, in which he admits that even he's not sure whether his character eats his victims' brains or not. Whatever the answer, it can't be as bad as having to be attacked by a group of cats on Charmed or playing Tori Spelling's best friend on So NoTORIous. I think I'd rather eat my own brain instead.
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