TV Show Heroes: One Giant Metaphor for Adults Screwing Their Kids

The heroes in this science-fiction drama are a group of young people with special supernatural abilities who seek to save the world from a dark, high-level conspiracy, spawned by the Me Generation that is hellbent on annihilating humanity.

“Heroes” is of course a comic book, a sleek cartoonish battle between good and evil. But the saga also serves as an allegory of generational malaise, a venting of the indignation and self-pity of 20- and 30-somethings reduced by the sins of their fathers to ever-diminishing expectations.

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Young people today can’t repay their college loans; they can’t afford apartment rents, let alone mortgages; their Social Security is being sucked up by their elders; and H.I.V. left them out of the sexual revolution: what was once free love is now a viral minefield.

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“Heroes” gives its fans cathartic validation: You inherited a screwed-up world, and it’s not your fault.

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“Save the cheerleader, save the world.” On second thought, maybe just save Social Security.

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Some of the most likeable characters are stuck mopping up their parents’ mistakes. In Season 2, after Peter manages to wrest back the vial containing the world-threatening virus and destroy it, his fellow hero Matt (Greg Grunberg), whose father was also one of the founders of the Company, is less relieved than disgusted. “Your mother, my father, God knows what else they’ve done,” Matt says bitterly. “How much longer are we going to have to clean up their mess?”

It could be a while.

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