How Many Of The New Additions To Heroes Reborn Are Already Totally Expendable?

Why kill Claire offscreen rather than let her have died between the original series and the reboot?

Since "the cheerleader" of the tagline "Save The Cheerleader, Save The World" is probably one of a tiny handful of characters from Season 1 that you remember at all (see also: Peter and Nathan Petrelli; Sylar), Claire is legitimately a character whose existence the premiere of the reboot kind of had to acknowledge, particularly since her dad is apparently a central character again. But since it was announced months ago that Hayden Panettiere, who played Claire in the original, was not going to return -- which, presumably, anyone who cares about this project has had a chance to learn -- the workarounds for her absence were pretty lame. Her outgoing voicemail message, and then a death we're made to accept despite (obviously) not seeing it happen? Half the time when a TV show has a character die offscreen, you're pretty much being nudged toward the assumption that said character isn't actually dead; in fact, that's true probably half the time when you see a character die onscreen. So the fact that Heroes Reborn didn't just kill Claire off before the series even started makes it seem like, despite reports, Hayden Panettiere is going to surprise us all by showing up alive before this thing is over.

Who okayed the participants in that out of context world leaders audio montage after the explosion?

The list of tragedies that have occurred during Barack Obama's time in office as President is so depressingly long that his vague and generic remarks -- "We will get to the bottom of this," etc. -- could have been about anything from the murder of Michael Brown in Ferguson to the attack on the embassy in Benghazi. But if his voice is meant to signal us that what we're watching is taking place in our present day, or at least sometime between now and January 2017, then why do we also hear the voice of George W. Bush saying the U.S. will "hunt down and punish those responsible" -- one of the most memorable lines from his very first address to the nation hours after the terror attacks of September 11, 2001? When is this and who's actually in charge?

Why give us a montage of Evos trying to escape the authorities only to immediately kill them all?

I gather the idea was to lull us into a false sense of security on their behalves so that when the reveal comes that Zachary Levi's a bad guy it's a big, shocking surprise, but the actual effect is annoyance that my time is already being wasted learning the powers of characters who don't even make it past the show's first commercial break.

Why does the Evernow footage look SO BAD?

This reboot was announced more than a year and a half ago. I don't claim to be an expert, but I feel like that's enough time for computer animators to create "game" footage that doesn't look like it could have come from Tekken 2. (Ask your parents.)

And, if no one could produce Evernow footage good enough not to have gotten cut from a TV ad for the Art Institutes' computer graphics program and/or for NBC to cough up more money to get decent work done, why didn't anyone on the production argue for a rewrite on this storyline that could take the CGI out of the equation? I know no one liked it in Season 2 when Hiro travelled back in time (that's certainly around the time I stopped watching), but...there are infinite other reasons Miko's father might be trapped someplace and need her help. Maybe he's stuck in a loop trying to sell an insane yuppie a dog toy. Again.

Who's going to bring me a plate of funeral food?

And a Mexican Coke, please.

Twice in two hours someone dies in Noah's arms before giving him key information he needs?

Maybe no one writing this show could come up with another storyline for Miko if they're repeating themselves already.

Do Luke and Joanne have to be on the rocks?

Can't a married couple go on a cross-country anti-Evo rampage and stay on the same page the whole time? They're both doing this for Dennis, after all! (Also, has neither of them considered that their child might be better off snuffed in his youth than have to go through a whole life being named Dennis?)

How many of the new additions to the cast are already Pierces?

I'm into the priest in East L.A. who can turn into smoke (or incense, perhaps), and Carlos, the vigilante who's exactly reluctant enough but not so reluctant that his reluctance to start doing the thing we know he's definitely going to do starts getting tiresome. That the "penny for your thoughts" guy is being played by Pruitt Taylor Vince is possibly promising; at least he's recognizable. I'm slightly hopeful that their shared mission of genocide, basically, makes Luke and Joanne more interesting than either of them would be as a lone assassin. But I wish the power that had the most dramatic potential hadn't been given to Tommy, requiring us to spend time with him and the other members of his rote teen love triangle. I wish even more that poor Noah -- always the best character on the show -- hadn't been saddled with a "truther" (ugh) albatross to lug around and explain shit to. Is anyone else even worth paying attention to? (I'm really hoping whatever cloud storage service Evernow lives on ends up getting zapped by that Northern Lights Evo we saw at the midpoint.)

Will I ever be able to evaluate a sci-fi show with any accuracy again in my post-Under The Dome life?

Despite these critiques, I got to the end of the series premiere, turned to my esteemed colleague/spouse Dave, and shrugged, "That wasn't so bad!" Aghast, he replied, "It wasn't good!" He's right: it wasn't especially good. Heroes Reborn is pretty boring, but I get the sense that there is an idea behind it that can actually be dealt with in the time allotted -- who bombed the June 13 summit and why? I KIND OF can't believe Tim Kring, who famously knew nothing about the X-Men when he conceived this show close to a decade ago, is still the one at the helm, and yes, it is troubling that NBC is still allowing this to happen. And yet, even though his idea is pretty derivative, at least he has an idea. The longer Under The Dome went on, the more certain I was that no one there did (or possibly ever had) -- and that's what I mean by my question: will the day ever come when I can watch a sci-fi TV show without comparing it, inevitably favourably, to Under The Dome? Has Under The Dome permanently warped my capacity for objectivity when it comes to other shows in the same genre? Heroes Reborn isn't good: I know this to be true. But because I watched Under The Dome, I will always be able to say "I've seen worse" and mean it.