Heroes
Season 1 (blu-ray)
Starring Milo Ventimiglia, Jack Coleman, Sendhil Ramamurthy, Masi Oka, James Kyson Lee
Universal Home Entertainment
August 26, 2008

If you’re like me, you were really looking forward to yesterday’s premiere of the third season of Heroes. Like a lot of people, I wasn’t so impressed with the second season, so it was nice to go back and re-watch the first season, which still holds up as one of the best set of episodes of the last few years. Watching these episodes again has reminded me why I enjoyed this show so much when it first started.

Of course, if you’ve seen the show before, you know all about the story. Various people around the world discover that they have extraordinary powers. They quickly learn that not only are they not alone, but that there are evil people who want to use their powers for nefarious deeds. Predictably, they save the cheerleader, they stop the exploding man, and they set up the beginning of the second season. What struck me most about these episodes is how well they hold up. Sure, I didn’t get the big surprises anymore, but I found myself really enjoying the performances and how all the story bits fit together. Little touches like Linderman’s name being mentioned in the first episode, the evolution of Mr. Bennet from villain to hero, and the build up and eventual reveal of series villain Syler. You can tell in the first season that the creators of the show had a plan of how the story would go and it made for really compelling TV.

The big extra on this set is the 73-minute pilot that was only shown at San Diego Comic-Con in 2006. This pilot is kind of interesting, as it’s mostly just a combination of the first two episodes. It’s an interesting artifact, but doesn’t really add a bunch. It’s kind of cool to see, though, and fans of the show that haven’t seen it before will definitely want to check this out.

The sad thing about this set is the lack of extras. Aside from the extra-length pilot, you get some deleted scenes, and a couple of featurettes on the stunts, music, special effects, and art, but these are all pretty boring, and nothing that you probably haven’t seen before if you a special feature nut like me, but that’s about all you get. There are no commentaries on the set, which is a big mistake to me. I’d love to hear some of the actors and creators talking about what it was like to find out the plot of the series as the season went on.

Even the bonus, bonus features of the Blu-ray edition are pretty boring. They have a pop-up feature where you can get a better look at the art in the show, and also a similar feature that shows background info on the characters. These features are okay; just make sure you have a big enough screen in order to read the typing that comes up in the character bios. Overall, I really wish there was a bit more on the creation of the show and some interviews with the actors.

Is the Blu-ray version worth getting over the standard edition? Well, if you have the player, and the HD set-up, of course you should go for the Blu-ray edition. The picture and sound quality are great, especially on the big screen. However, if you’re running short on money, or don’t have the set-up, this isn’t really a set that will force you to make the jump to Blu-ray. There are other reasons to possibly make the jump to Blu-ray, but this isn’t one of them. Still, what you get on this set is a really good batch of episodes, and watching this again reminds me of how good the show can be, and makes me hopeful that the new season is as good as this one. Tim Kring and the rest of the staff are capable of making a really great show, let’s just hope they get back to the standard set by the first season, and not the problems they ran into during the second season.