Fallen Heroes

Oh dear, oh dear. How the mighty falleth! When heroes started it showed so much promise and originality (on TV, obviously comics have been exploring super-powered peeps for a long time). Maybe it was just purely because expectations weren’t particularly high but Season one blew people away, yet here we are at the end of season 3 and well, I don’t think I’m alone in wishing they had just ended after one series. Somehow the show and its dwindling disheartened viewers have limped on to this point. What happened to this once dazzling star of a TV show? And is there any hope? Let’s explore.
I shall begin with a spoiler warning for anyone who hasn’t seen past season 2 of Heroes. More after the break...

Personally I think the problems all started in the wake of that whole writer’s strike thing early last year which set back a hell of a lot of movie and TV shows over in the US. With heroes we saw the original plan for volume three: Exodus scraped and instead we were thrown into Villans which had been originally penned down as the follow on for Exodus. Villains was terrible. And I don’t mean your normal “this isn’t going anywhere, why am I watching this poop?” inducing terrible. I mean “oh my God, surely something this bad is a sign of the end of days!”

The plots were all over the place; one second everyone is looking for impossibly super powerful daddy Arthur Petrelli, then they’re looking for a catalyst then they’re all falling in love and killing each other without little provocation or reason. Thing is though: that might have been tolerable maybe even enjoyable if any of the characters were believable in any way. I lost count of the number of times Sylar changed sides (and can anyone explain why he killed Elle? Especially after all that “I hate you so much! Oh wait now I love you, my bad.” Teen angst nonsense.), in fact I lost count of how many times just about everyone changed sides for no apparent reason.

The cracks which had begun to appear back in season two were exposed as gaping chasms by script writing which could make a toddler’s scribbles look like a masterpiece novel. The writers have a hell of a lot to answer to. But perhaps there is hope.

While many believe the 2nd half of season 3 (volume 4: Fugitives) has been more of the same, I am of the camp that sees massive improvements in the consistency and the believability of the characters at least in the 2nd half of the volume. Previous flip-floppers like Nathan Petrelli have revealed clear motives and have stuck to them. The increasing lack of originality can still be annoying at times however; many of the storylines are straight rips from comic books, such as the big twist in the series finale which I won’t spoil. I have to give immense Kudos to Bryan Fuller, the original head writer for series one, who came in mid way through the volume to repair the horrific damage done to the series before hand, and while some of the episodes since his return were a bit of a slog it’s represented a huge improvement. Importantly it was mostly damage control: tying off the many frayed story lines, so Fuller and his team can fully unleash on the next volume and produce something great again to regain the faith of the many viewers who have understandably moved on and rewards the weary nine or ten people who are still watching.

The simple fact is if they fail these Heroes will be forgotten and it will be a tragic waste of such a potentially great IP. I'm just hoping they can get back to the personal stories about the characters and a general simplification of the plot. The focus should be on the people who have the powers, and then secondly whatever merry-go-round search for "The Magical Thing" or "The Other Magical Thing" they are on. That said i pray there is no recurrence of emo Claire! I can take the bogus storylines, unbelievable characters and even Mohinder's drivel about destiny and the start and end of every episode but the line gets crossed when a beautiful talented teenager is endlessly depressed because her immortality means she can't feel pain. I mean, come on now!