You won't be seeing Sylar or any of the other Heroes regulars in the webisodes.

You don’t want to watch the 3-part Heroes webisodes. Seriously. The title “Going Postal” should hopefully have been deterrent enough. Imagine giving an ADD-addled child high-end cameras and lighting equipment, a few actors, access to the Heroes soundtrack, and no money or apparently script and this is what you get, I guess.

CHAPTER 1: A NIFTY TRICK

A black mailman is running down a California street. He looks behind himself, and is scared and keeps running. He ducks between some houses. At about the 30 second mark of this 3 minute, 26 second show, he drops his bag, turns around, and we hear and see a barking dog. It’s a (not particularly large) angry Doberman.

Instead of leaping on top of him, the dog stands there barking, while the postman tries to reason with it. He tells the dog that “it doesn’t have to be like this” and “look, you had your chance – now back off.” Apparently the dog doesn’t speak English, though and keeps snarling. So the postman says to “Back OOFFFFFF!!!” and an annoying loud noise and squiggly effect come out of his mouth.

He seems to have yelling powers not unlike those of Marvel Comics’ Black Bolt. The dog runs away. Feeling confident, the mailman says, “Next time, don’t mess with the mailman. That’s right.” He delivers this with the arrogance and confidence of a Will Smith who has just punched out an alien. Seriously, dude? You yelled at a dog and it ran away. I can do that, too.

When the mailman picks up his bag, a (pudgy) man in a suit and a powdery, albino looking bald man in a wife beater are standing by him. The albino keeps wiggling like a spastic man who needs to take a dump and the man in the suit says he’s from a company that helps people with special abilities. He also calls him “Mr. DeMille” so I guess the postman has a name.

DeMille says no thanks and takes a step but the albino steps behind him and hugs him. There’s a stretch sound effect, but no actual stretching. Also, the hug looks quite gentle. Nevertheless, the pudgy suit guy says that his friend is a “Constrictor” and that if DeMille keeps struggling, he’ll keep squeezing.

DeMille shouts and Pudge falls to his knees holding his ears, a trickle of blood coming out. He pulls out a gun and aims it at DeMille (why didn’t he just do that first?) and DeMille yells again. He takes his chance and runs away. Pudge is almost dead and Constrictor grabs his gun and shoots at DeMille but misses. Then he takes a phone call and casually shoots Pudge. He says, “Bob, Howard’s dead. It’s worse than we thought.”

He looks at his phone and there’s a nice lingering shot of a Sprint cell phone with a photo of DeMille kissing a beautiful girl. “It’s a shame. She’s so pretty,” says Constrictor, as the camera showcases the phone AGAIN. The time is 2:46 and oh my god, there are credits. Yeah. About 40 seconds of CREDITS. Apparently the director is Yule Caise. He also co-wrote this atrocity. That’s who I blame. Strange shots and bad acting? Yeah…

CHAPTER 2: THE HOUSE GUEST

Before the episode begins, I have to sit through a Sprint phone commercial that makes fun of product placement. Right after the last episode so lovingly featured Sprint in totally serious product placement. Weird.

Mr. DeMille runs home. He gets inside and locks the door. “Gina?!” he calls, breathlessly. He’s tired from running. He rushes through the house searching for Gina. He steps into the bedroom and a ridiculously hot girl is standing there in her underwear. “You’re late,” she says. This is simultaneously the best and worst moment of this show. On the plus side, we get to see a pretty girl and that’s better than the awful show itself. On the other hand, the concept of a mailman having this gorgeous trophy wife (girlfriend?) is less plausible to me than his yelling powers.

She is all over him but he desperately tries to explain that he thinks he just killed someone and can make loud sounds. “Sounds?” she says, confused. Also, it’s edited rapid-fire with extreme close-ups that do nothing to help hide the fact that this is some of the worst acting ever. It’s sort of like what you see on Saved by the Bell or maybe a really dull part of a soap opera where the actors just don’t give a shit. “Get dressed,” he tells Gina. “You gotta trust me.” To get dressed? Well, she says she trusts him and he steps out of the bedroom.

DeMille digs through some desk drawers for a pair of ear buds and notices the front door is open. He runs the 3 feet to the bedroom (this is a SMALL house) and Gina’s not there. So he picks up a guitar from the floor and brandishes it like a baseball bat. He sneaks through the house and enters a living room and I swear this really happens – the camera zooms in on a cat. It’s the strangest shot choice. DeMille hears a gasp and steps back into the other room and Constrictor is hugging Gina.

DeMille drops the guitar and says, “Ok. Just let her go.”

“Why would I let her go? I’m just getting to the fun part,” answers Constrictor.

DeMille notices that Constrictor is covering Gina’s ears by holding her and roars. The Constrictor drops to his knees in pain and lets Gina go. DeMille kneels down next to Constrictor’s head and asks if this is the fun part and then yells and splatters Constrictor’s brains all over the wall. Seriously.

Gina looks horrified but she lets him hug her. Then there’s a knock at the door and DeMille says, “oh shit!”

That’s the end of part 2. It cannot get any worse. It jut can’t.

CHAPTER 3: LET’S TALK

When I clicked the link to watch this (I watch it so you don’t have to), it said this was the latest adventure of Echo DeMille. I haven’t heard anyone call him Echo, so I guess it’s not important. Did his parents know he would grow up to have superpowers? If not, this must be the greatest coincidence of all time. Or do superpowers develop based on your name? Like, if he had been named Doug would he have had super-digging powers?

There’s a knock at the door and Echo tells Gina that they’re out of time and she has to go. How does he know it isn’t a concerned neighbor or maybe the paperboy needs to collect? He gives Gina earplugs and tells her to get the car and meet him at some street or other later. If he’s not there, he’ll find her.

“What are you gonna do?” Gina asks.

“Tell these guys to get off my front porch!” says Echo. By the way, Echo does not have a front porch. That’s the kind of thing a competent director sees and goes, “Oh, the location doesn’t have a front porch? Let’s make a note of that in the script.”

They kiss like dead fish and off Gina goes. A classy shot of the Nissan Gina drives is next.

FINALLY, Echo opens the door for two generic guys in suits. They see the dead Constrictor guy and say they just wanna talk. But no. Echo says they’re gonna listen. Then he yells. Not very reasonable, really. The guy is an ass.

13 Weeks Later. Echo wakes up tied to a chair and gagged, in a prison cell. Mama Petrelli looks at him from outside. “Echo, Echo, Echo… you always were the mouthy one. Welcome home.”

Echo tries to yell, but he can’t. That’s it. Pretty satisfying resolution, right? No. It was painful.

I give it 1/2 ball gags out of 5. And that’s just because it’s kind of funny to see how bad it is. Like that shot that zooms in on the cat that I’m still puzzled over.