"Heroes" - A Sci-Fi Soap Opera
Heroes is a weird sort of television series. On the one hand, it's a serial with an almost soap opera quality. From another perspective, it's a comic book, with ordinary people with super powers who try to save the world, or their families, or simply try to survive.
The plot of Heroes is similar to a comic serries, with small stories built into the series' overall plot. Each season of Heroes involves ordinary people who discover they posess super powers, and how these powers effect the character's lives.
One of the most engaging characters in the series is Hiro Nakamura, a Japanese office worker who discovers he can stop time and travel through space. His quest to understand his powers and use them for good takes place across a broad stretch of history, and concludes when Hiro discovers that heroic acts rarely change the eventual patterns of life. Hiro's great quest is to find a way to save his true love Charlie, who dies unexpectedly.At the time of this writing (mid-season five) Hiro is still trying to save Charlie.
Another character is the teenage cheerleader Claire. Her power, the ability to instantly heal from any wound, shows itself when she is accidentally killed during an attempted date rape. The consequences of this encounter are magnified far beyond the initial incident when Claire discovers in rapid succession that (1) she is adopted, (2) her father is a secret agent who is attempting to rid the world of people like her who have super powers, and (3) a psychopathic super-powered killer is attempting to kill her. Eventually, we discover that only Claire can save the world from the possibility of a massive, world-ending detonation.
Hiro and Claire are brought together in the climax of the first season, whose motto is "save the cheerleader, save the world."
So what does this have to do with us, as Christians and as members of a religious order? Quite a lot, actually.
Many of us, having discovered the newly enabling gifts of the Holy Spirit, suddenly find ourselves in quests to "save the world" or to use our charismata (powers) for good. Despite our theological musings on "saved by grace," many of us have an overwhelming urge to do more than just "the right thing." We want to be co-saviors with Christ, rescuing the perishing, comforting the dieing, feeding the hungry, and clothing the naked. Many of us stand in pulpits and encourage our flocks to do the same. In doing this, we are stretched between two stark realities. As Christians, we believe we have a duty to be the "sheep" of Matthew 25, serving the least and offering hope to everyone. On the other hand, we are well aware that there will be ". . . wars and rumors of wars. . .", and still the end has not come. The poor, according to Jesus, will be with us always. We cannot simply fight the poverty of body and the hunger of the stomache. We cannot stop war with further acts of violence. This is not enough. Human abilities to change the world are limited to a narrow scope. This is the discovery made by each of the super-powered protagnonists of Heroes.
Disappointed in their helplessness, the characters in Heroes are constantly searching for hope. They do not find hope except in those moments when they let go of their super abilities and instead become vulnerable and human. In these moments, emboldened by the fact of their weakness, they can take steps of faith and trust. They discover new possibilities. They are able to love.
Heroes is perhaps described as a fugue: a set of recurring themes played over and over again, and the viewer has to try to discern the themes of the patterns shown on the screen. The themes addressed by the series to my mind are love, abandonment, theodicy, violence, and the problem of evil. These are many of the same themes I find in the narratives of the Bible of Moses, Joseph, David, and Paul. The questions in the series are posed in ways that are difficult to ignore. Heroes makes no claim to spiritual truth. But it is clear that the writers of Heroes are asking tough questions, and in some small way are trying to answer them.
Heroes is not for those easily offended by graphic violence, frank depictions of human sexuality of all varieties, and profane language. It is, however, an amusing and engaging set of stories, constantly changing, and always ready to pull-out the soap opera devices of evil twins (and triplets!), resurrecting dead characters, and changing major plotlines into flashbacks. If you enjoy serialized comic fiction written larger than life, Heroes might be the sort of guilty treat you enjoy.
You can find Heroes on DVD (first four seasons), on-demand through NetFlix, on broadcast television each Monday night on NBC affiliates, and on the Internet at hulu.com (last five episodes.) For best viewing, I recommend finding the first season on DVD or Netflix, popping a bowl of popcorn, chasing the children away, and watching the first few episodes as if it were a movie. You'll be hooked!