Why television still loves superpowered teena

In her first episode of Heroes, Claire Bennett looks like the embodiment of the ideal American teenager: blonde, popular, a cheerleader, seemingly living a perfect high-school life. Then she jumps from a bridge. Her body hits the ground with exactly the consequences physics would suggest. But Claire gets back up, pushes her bones back into place and carries on as if someone had pressed Ctrl+Z on the laws of nature. When you are 17 and something like that happens, you do not necessarily call a doctor. You try it again, and you film yourself doing it. Hayden Panettiere, who played Claire and helped turn the phrase “save the cheerleader, save the world” into one of television’s defining slogans of the 2000s, died last month at 36. Like any sudden death of someone audiences grew up watching, hers invites a certain kind of collective reckoning.