A Cure For Heroes

Heroes is getting more convoluted and less compelling. I've already posted about some of the most obvious problems. Now let me offer some solutions.

I don't know if small fixes will do it. Time for a reboot. With all the magical powers going around, it'll be easy. But how it's done isn't important. What matters is recapturing the magic that made the first year so watchable.

In Heroes 2.0, here's what you do:

First, no more time travel. This leads to overly complex plots but also silly ones (not to mention ones that can be solved over and over by yet another character going back to change things). Think of time travel as a nuclear option, to be used only when you can't come up with any other solution. Even the power to glimpse the future should be used sparingly if at all.

Second, keep the plots clear. You can have a lot of different characters going in different directions, for different reasons, but have them all ultimately moving toward one goal, and make the goal fairly open to the viewer. But do this without repeating yourself--no time travel to a dystopian future and some threat other than a huge explosion.

Third, and I know this is easier said than done, try to keep the characters working at the top of their game, not artificially stupid so the scene will play better.

Fourth, keep the powers limited. Once someone like Sylar or Peter or even Claire have so much power that they can't be defeated and could easily get out of any situation unless they're stupid (so you make them artificially stupid for the scene), there's less excitement. What makes a story compelling is having heroes with great powers, yes, but significant vulnerabilities too, so you can never feel they're safe.

Fifth, don't keep inventing new characters with new powers. Sure, occasionally, that's fine, but if you're just going to pull out a new power every time you need one, that's almost as bad as giving one character too much. You get power inflation and each power becomes less important.

Sixth, even more important than the fifth point, make sure you have enough characters with no special powers. The show may be about heroes, but if everyone is a hero, then no one stands out. Characters like Noah, Mohinder, Ando and others are important in keeping a balance in the show. They're stand-ins for the audience, and that they have to live by their wits and are exceedingly vulnerable adds spice to the plot. This is why giving powers to Mohinder, or for that matter finding out someone you thought had no powers in fact has them, lowers the level of interest.

Seventh, make sure not everyone's in on it. The more the story goes, the more it turns out every character is part of the conspiracy. It's good to have character who don't know what's going on for two reasons. First, it makes the secret more important--what makes a secret powerful is how many don't know it. Second, it leads to scenes where we can have dramatic irony, with the viewer knowing something (and perhaps one of the other characters on screen knowing it) that a character doesn't know, and it also leads to powerful scenes of discovery, where one character gets to learn something deep.

Finally, when you kill off characters, keep them dead. Even if they're popular, when you're playing for keeps, it makes each death resonate. Also, it clears up a little room to introduce an occasional new character to keep things fresh (as long as you don't overdo it).