Heroes will always have a special place in my heart. The series premiered on Sept. 25, 2006, right at the beginning of my sophomore year of high school, and as such, it was the first real "grown-up" TV drama I ever watched, immersed myself in and theorized about even when I wasn't watching it.
In short, I was obsessed.
This show hooked me right from the beginning, too. As the pilot episode, appropriately titled "Genesis," introduced each of the main characters and the extraordinary abilities they grappled with and tried to understand in their everyday lives, I too couldn't help but be enthralled by it all, wondering how they got these powers, who's behind them, and isn't someone going to notice that guy just flew in the air? From Zachary Quinto's masterful portrayal of the quietly evil and tortured villain Sylar to Hiro Nakamura's (Masi Oka) comical naivete to featuring a Gilmore Girls alumnus with Milo Ventimiglia taking on the role of Peter Petrelli, Heroes seemed to have it all for me.
However, Heroes was great until it wasn't. Though the series could never quite live up to its stellar first season, it actually started to fall a part for me at the end of Season 1. Heroes had not one, not two, but a three-part Season 1 finale that attempted to go out with the bang the series had been building up to all season. Unfortunately, it instead went out with more of a whimper.
What's more, Heroes was a victim of the Writers Guild of America strike that began in 2007 with a truncated second season as a result. Eleven-episode seasons may be standard for cable dramas these days, but with a network show like Heroes at that time, this setback really threw off the flow and momentum the series had going into its sophomore effort. With convoluted and often over-the-top storylines at a time when viewers weren't quite ready to embrace the sort of camp you get with TV shows featuring superheroes these days, Heroes never really lived up the potential it seemed to have shown in Season 1 of the show.
So, imagine my surprise when it was announced back in February 2014 that Heroes would be returning in the form of a 13-episode reboot called Heroes Reborn. I seem to agree with the consensus that the first season of the show was pretty spectacular, but it was followed by a rapid decline in quality in subsequent seasons. Now that we're just a few weeks away from the Sept. 24 premiere of Heroes Reborn on NBC, it makes me wonder, did Heroes really get that bad after all?
14. "1961" (Season 3, Episode 23)
The Season 3 episode titled "1961" takes us back to that year when Peter and Nathan's mother Angela was just a teen. Not only did this episode dive into the nuances of Angela, one of the most enigmatic characters of the series, but it also helped us better understand how this whole mess of people having unusual abilities got started in the first place.
15. "The Wall" (Season 4, Episode 17)
There's a plan at the center of this Season 4 episode that foreshadows the ongoing war regular people will have with the heroes during Heroes Reborn. Once you find out what it is, you'll understand how people could think heroes could be so bad.
16. "Brave New World" (Season 4, Episode 18)
This is the series finale of Heroes, so you've got to watch it whether it's good or not, right? Well, I can't say this is a great episode of Heroes, but it is part of the jumping off point for Heroes Reborn, and it will help create a world of fear that the people with extraordinary abilities, or EVOs as they're called in the reboot, will encounter. Hopefully, Heroes Reborn can provide some closure for this cliffhanger of a series finale.
Be sure to follow T-Lounge on Twitter and visit our Facebook page.
