Heroic Finish
As expected, NBC finally canceled Heroes, though it has left open the option for a minseries to officially wrap things ups.
I truly enjoyed the first season, but it's hard to think of a comparable show that fell so far and so fast. The next three seasons were just about worthless. Even in the first season finale one could see the wheels coming off. They had a lot of good ideas and characters, and a lot of spirit, but they didn't know where they were going, and certainly didn't have a clue about anything past the first season.
Perhaps when I have the time I'll write an appreciation of the show. For a while, at least, it seemed like we had a comic book style companion to Lost. Since then, fans have watched it for the same reason you can't look away from a car wreck.
posted by LAGuy @ 12:15 AM
4 Comments:
Wow. Somehow I figured the cancellation announcement had already happened.
I'm glad it was cancelled, because otherwise I would have been tempted to watch it, and would have thus wasted more of my time. I'm quite proud of the fact that I stopped watching 'V' once I realized it was bad. I don't always do that.
What's amazing is how good season one of Heroes was, given that the same bunch of folks were in charge of season two (and early season three?).
Speaking of superhero shows, Smallville had a tremendous leap in quality in season eight and especially in season nine, and it has now been renewed for yet another season. Is it unheard of for a show to jump the shark and then jump back? Smallville had gotten really bad during seasons four and five. But then in seasons seven and eight several of their lead actors left, until only two of the original cast members remained. In response they brought in some new leads -- in some cases, promoting some of the more popular background characters to lead status -- and moved the show from Smallville to Metropolis. Now the show feels like what Lois & Clark would have been if it had been written for adults....
Like the Egyptian kingdom's, some shows have been known to rally and become great again, but its extremely rare.
I think with Heroes, they just got lucky in season one, and didn't know what to do once they were done. Season one is all about origins, and finding out what's happening, and introducing (and solving) mysteries. They also had a lot of actions, covered a lot of ground, and hit upon the brilliant "save the cheerleader, save the world" concept. But once season two started, and they had to take these heroes who'd already saved the world, they had no idea where to go, or how to start again. Hiro can't be naive forever, Nathan can't change sides forever, Niki can't fight herself forever, etc. You just had these characters, revealed--there was nothing more to do but put them on new, less exciting adventures, with less interesting characters.
I read somewhere that the initial concept for Heroes was that there would be a new set of heroes every year (or maybe every half season). They should have stuck with that.
As you point out, the most fun in season one were the origin stories. After year one, they did continue to introduce new heroes, but they wouldn't kill/depower any of the old ones, and quickly there were just too many chracters. To keep them all "interesting," the writers kept flipping allegiances and motivations.
On a reboot, I would have 6-8 heroes discover their powers, and then all but maybe one of them die or lose them by season end. The next season, 6-8 new heroes, and maybe a few spot appearances by the survivors from previous seasons. That would have been cool.
P.S. Verification word = behedu
I think this would make a great license plate for Faisal Shahzad.
Perhaps there's no way to replace the fun and wonder of origin stories, but I doubt killing off everyone and starting again could work. It'd be like creating a new series every season, and most new series fail. Furthermore, this is TV, where the thing that keeps people viewing each week is continuity.
The trouble is they had a nice bunch of characters, but they'd done all the fun stuff with them and didn't know where to go.
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