Can someone give me a quick set up on this show?
It looks interesting. DO these people have powers or are they just normal people doing heroic things?
Like this week, "save the cheerleader, Save the world?"
Is this different stories of heros(real life) or is it about fictional charactures and telling of their encounters?
The story behind the show suggests that various people, by way of evolution, will develop certain abilities.
There was a professor who was doing research on this stuff. Previously, it was only believed to be a wild theory, much to the embarassment of his son, Mohinder.
Turns out that there are actual cases and the father somehow developed an algorithm that helped him to locate these people and the rate at which these occurances took place.
As for the people with the abilities, they're now learning about them for the first time in a sort of accidental way.
The Cheerleader (Claire) - Realizes that she's can heal easily... she's pretty much invincible.
The Cop (Matt) - Suddenly realizes that he can hear peoples' thoughts.
The Artist (Isaac) - Finds out that when he injects himself with heroin, he can paint pictures that show events that will happen in the future.
The Politician (Nathan) - Tries to save his brother, Peter, from a suicide attempt and realizes that he can fly.
The Depressed Support Worker (Peter) - Nathans brother. We suspect that he's sorta like Rogue from X-Men in that he can mimic the abilities of other "heroes" that he comes into contact with. For example, when he's with his brother, he can fly as well.
The Single Mom (Nikki) - She has a split personality, sorta like TwoFace from the Batman series. Her darker side, named Jessica, has super strength and can whoop some serious butt.
The Convict (DL) - This is Nikki's baby daddy. He was framed (by Jessica, no less) for murder and sent to jail. He escaped once he found out that he could, wait for it..................................... WALK THROUGH MATTER!!!
The Boy Genius (Micah) - This is Nikki and DL's son. We recently learned that he can fix machinery/electronics just by touching them.
Radioactive Man - A guy who suddenly learns that he emits radiation at an accelerated rate. He can burn things to a crisp, but things also die when they're around him. His wife died from radiation poisoning (his fault). It is believed that he will cause an explosion of some kind in the near future.
The Time Stopper (Hiro) - Everyone's favorite character. A Japanese guy who can both stop time, and travel into the future and the past. He travels to the future and sees NY explode because of some kind of bomb or other detonation. While in a future, he sees that The Artist (Isaac) is dead... his head cut open. He also finds a comic book with him as the main character as well as the events of his life (yet to be done). This is the guy that you saw saying, "Save the cheerleader.. save the world".
The Bad Guy (Sylar) - We know little about him except for the fact that he's going out and trying to kill all of the heroes. He does this by cutting their heads open and removing their brains. We learned recently that he has telekinetic powers, but he remains faceless.
Hope this helps!!