The Cape – A Look at TV’s Best (and Worst) Superheroes

2.  Claire Bennet (Heroes) – Let me just get something that’s been eating at me since I began my tenure as a Heroes recapper.  She spells her damn last name wrong!  It should be “Bennett”, but thanks to the onscreen title cards in every episode, it’s canonical that the spelling is “Bennet”.  Where does that even come from?  What’s the derivation of that spelling?  There’s no way that happened naturally.  It pissed me off for four years, and now I’m done with it.

Anyway, Heroes had its moments.  Remember when it was so popular that there was a spinoff in the works?  Yeah, that all fell apart.  But even in the good seasons (or season, if you’re feeling uncharitable), the indestructible cheerleader worked better as a plot device than as an actual character.  “Save the Cheerleader, Save the World” – that was a great slogan.  It was having to put up with the cheerleader that made her so unbearable.  Claire came from the worst X-Men-style traditions of whining about her powers constantly.  (Even though invulnerability is a pretty great power that was presented with minimal negative effects.)  Worse, Seasons Two through Four had her getting mad at her father and cutting him out of her life at least once every three episodes.  Particularly galling were her Season Four assertions that her father never did anything for her, even though the entire freaking series is built upon Noah Bennet trying to protect his daughter.  The character was shrill and annoying, and since so much of the early marketing focused on her, she stayed in the spotlight right up until the bitter end.  (No kidding, the last scene of the series is Claire making a selfish choice with no thought as to its ramifications.)  While more interesting and better-acted characters came and went, we were stuck with Claire.  Sigh.