OJ's TV Review - Heroes seasons 1 - 4

With Heroes Reborn airing this month I decided to take a look at the much-discussed Heroes, something I'd heard a lot about but never seen.

Being a big science-fiction fan and common Internet-user I'd heard about Heroes from various places
and I knew the general gist but never really had the opportunity to watch it. Thankfully, Netflix helped out with that.
 So season 1 to start obviously and the general opinion is that this the best season. They're not wrong. Season 1 of Heroes is absolutely brilliant, I love it. It introduces a bunch of characters straight out the gate all with completely different backgrounds and lives and most importantly, powers. As the season progresses they slowly start to connect and it all builds up to really nice, satisfying conclusion. All the actors in it are really well cast, everyone is playing the everyman, the normal person, who wake up one day with an extraordinary ability, which is really fun to watch. Zachary Quinto plays the main villain Sylar who is a really good bad guy, his presence and scenes are really thrilling and threatening. A truly unique piece of television.
  Season 2 comes along with only half the amount of episodes. Although the mystery was intriguing and some of the new characters were fun to watch; overall I felt it was a little underwhelming. Because season 1 was so good, season 2, although wasn't a terrible season, just didn't quite stand up to the first, possibly due to the limited number of episodes and a very similar story-arc due to a writer's strike.
 Season 3. Oh my, what can I say. The third season of Heroes is an absolute mess. The plots were all over the place, it was if the season didn't know where it was going. They'd start one story arc in an episode and then two or three down the line they'd end it quite abruptly with hardly any satisfying resolutions. Some of the people we'd come to know and love suddenly either lost their powers or did things completely out of character which made for a lot of episodes where I just sighed. I struggle to think of positives for this season; I mean there was the odd good episode and a few guest appearances I enjoyed but for the most part, it was like a bad fan-fic.
  Season 4 thankfully started to pick up, they focused on a new character Samuel and his mysterious carnival which drove the series arc and that was actually a really entertaining thing to watch. A bunch of new characters were introduced who were good and some of the ruined ones of season 3 fell into the odd appearance which was a good move. Still not quite as good as the first season but in terms of quality I think it was better than the other two.

So in conclusion, I'm glad I watched Heroes, even if the quality was a bit up and down, the characters were so interesting to me and I adored the various pop culture references the show gave (mostly from the character Hiro). It was truly a roller coaster ride in many ways and a show any sci-fi fan should watch.

OJ's TV Review - Falling Skies season 5

The end of the war has come; and what a ride it's been.

So the fifth and final season of Falling Skies has aired. For four years we've watched the Mason family battle against the Skitters, Espheni, and even themselves. I really enjoyed the first two seasons, they are definitely my favourite, the third season I feel is the weakest and season four was good but the main story arc was uninteresting. 

  The plot this time follows on from the last season where the Espheni are very scarce due to now having no big communicator thing on the moon; this means that the Skitters are like wild animals eating anything they can find and attacking randomly, this provided a few cool scenes and action-packed moments but it took away their threat almost, in past seasons some were quite individual and even intelligent whereas now they are mere cannon fodder for the humans. The episodes this season focused the human characters problems; there wasn't really a story arc that wove all the episodes together, just a few two-parters and they has self-contained plots; these were OK as you got to see a bit of a civil war and then one of the main characters broke away and started a tense story which was all entertaining but for a final season I think we wanted to see more alien stuff. 

   In the end the finale I think has disappointed a lot of people but for me I really enjoyed it, I mean there were some flaws which I wish they hadn't done but overall I was satisfied with the way it ended. Falling Skies has been a great series and I've enjoyed watching it as a whole.

7.5/10