Flygal: Heroes: a mid-season entertainment and scientific analysis

The first half of the first season of Heroes has just completed. And I just have to say Wow! and Whew! Never have I been so riveted to a show waiting with baited breath as the talented actors, writers and director delivered high-quality, entertaining, thought-provoking shows from one week to the next.

Well never since I started watching Lost. But this post is about Heroes and will not dissolve into a whiny rant about how much better the first season of Lost was and how the writers have no idea where they're going... you can go to any of the TWOP Lost Forums for that...

I won't attempt to recap last night's episode, Erin over at TWOP has been doing a fine job with that, but just want to offer some commentary on what's known, unknown and the minor annoyances this show has brought me, as a geneticist.

Where we've been
Up to this point most of the episodes have focused the phrase, that I feel compelled to whisper every time I even think about watching an episode of Heroes, "Save the Cheerleader, Save the World!" It was totally creepy when Future-Hiro first announced it to a stunned Peter Petrelli in the frozen NYC subway. (For the record, Peter totally got the evil subway eye from Mohinder for spouting that "but didn't you see him? I mean time just STOPPED, and there way this guy with a sword" crap) And now? Peter has saved the cheerleader, but based on the last 5 minutes of last night's show, he's the bomb (or da bomb!). Which is odd since we've already met Radioactive man, Sprague, who melted his house and gave his wife cancer. Tim Kring has also stated in a TV Guide Interview that "we'll posit another theory that [the nuclear bomb] is Peter [Milo Ventimiglia]." so it's not entirely clear to me whether it's really Peter or Sprague who's da bomb... though Peter's definitely hotter

One refreshing attribute of Heroes remains the transparency with which the shows actors and creators relate to fans and the media. From Greg Grunberg's spoilery interview with Michael Ausiello (follow the link and see video links on the right) to Tim Kring sitting down to talk to various news sources, it's clear that the Heroes writers and cast don't mind revealing plot points ahead of the episode's air date. That keeps the fans (the same ones who are snarkily posting that Lost writers have no direction) happy. Hopefully Kring and cast will continue this practice, since, even though I'm not a snarky fan, it makes me happy too!

What we still don't know
The great thing about Heroes so far is that they're wrapping up some mysteries (Six Months Earlier is a good example) while they introduce others (like who was HRG taking his "marching orders" to keep Sylar alive from?). Also falling into the column of "what we don't know" would be why Sylar didn't immediately break out of his holding cell at the Make-Believe Paper Company. Why did he wait until Eden came to kill him? Did self-preservation motivate him to be super-duper powerful or was he just toying with them all along? Also, why does the Haitian want to keep Claire's memories intact? Does he know that the s**t is going to hit the fan in the form of da bomb or is he just tired of being HMG's mind wipe bitch? Needless to say, there are still plenty of mysteries to be unraveled when the show returns on January 22nd.

Minor annoyances
The geneticist in me (yes, the one that loves fruit flies laying eggs on pennies) has trouble buying the premise that based on mutation(s) in the Heroes' DNA Dr. Chandra Suresh is able to track the heroes down geographically. First of all, this sort of tracking would require access to a massive database containing the sequence of every individual in the world's DNA (or at least a sample of it). No such database currently exists, and even if it did, Suresh would have to obtain prior informed consent from the individuals whose DNA he tests in order to test for the presence of the mutation(s). I might add that such prior informed consent would probably be easy to obtain from Sylar who was determined to be different and special but would likely be difficult to obtain from such reluctant heroes as Nathan Petrelli, Claire Bennett and Sylar's first victim (the telekinetic guy who wanted to get rid of his power to avoid hurting anyone - yea, that didn't turn out so well). The whole question of privacy and mining of DNA databases is a huge ethical issue that policy makers both in the U.S. at NIH and through international organizations such as OECD and WHO are wresting with. It might be interesting for Heroes to give Mohinder a plot line where he has to convince some international organization that free and open access to genetic databases is necessary to preserve the world. At any rate, it would give him something to do besides the annoying voiceovers.

Finally, just a quick eulogy for Eden. Nora Zehetner brought Eden (aka Stinkerbell) from a girl who had defined her own morality through mind control, convincing cops to eat doughnuts rather than arrest her to the hero who helped Issac recover from his heroine addiction and who made the ultimate sacrifice by taking her own life so that Sylar could not obtain her power of persuasion. We'll see you in flashbacks, Eden.