10 Unsung TV Characters Who Completely Save Their Show

6. Hiro Nakamura - Heroes

The Characters Everyone Talks About: Peter, Sylar, Claire Heroes was a show that took the school conversation, "What superpower would you have?" to the extreme, and pushing it through a mangle. This was a show that taught us the horror of superpowers, through Claire, whose body repaired any injury - she once woke up on an autopsy table - to Isaac, who'd shoot heroin and paint the future. These were characters who didn't want to be special: they just wanted a normal life. That is, they all did apart from Japanese office worker Hiro Nakamura, who could bend the space/time continuum. His childlike glee was a breath of much-needed fresh air, and his self-imposed quest to be a hero was literally the only resonance any character had with the show's title So many protagonists, such as Petrelli brothers Nathan and Peter, invisible man Claude and mind-reader cop Matt would revel in the negativity of their superpowers, but Hiro felt blessed to have been given this gift. He may have been seen as a token comedy creation to begin with, but he soon played more and more of a part in the series, and without him, it would have been a depressing ride. That was of course until most characters lost their powers, or chose not to use them. Hiro discovered his power had given him a brain tumour, and the show did take that turn for the depressing. Hiro was found mostly brooding, rather than eating overwhelming quantities of waffles, and the slow march to cancellation was neither surprising nor unwanted in the end.