I tired of "Heros" having character, wanting to live normal lives!

[Jayson]

Is it me or do they open every season with the exact same premise? i read in tv guide about the upcoming season and they will return to this theme, yet again until the run into the crazy carnival person or whatnot they are introducing next season.

Anybody else tired of seeing the "Hero's" or even character's on other shows always angsting over wanting to be normal. I mean they have all these kewl super powers and your telling me, people would be happy to go about their lives and not wanting to take advantage of those powers.

Jason

[SalvorHardin]

Yes I'm tired of it and I find it incredibly stupid in most cases.
Especially when we are constantly beaten over the head with it.

Oh how sad.
She's indestructible and can feel no pain but just wants to be a simple high school cheerleader.
He had a gazillion powers and could even stop time but he just wanted to be a humble, shitty paid, overworked paramedic.

Boo fucking hoo.

[Hermiod]

^That's my main problem with Peter. He lost his powers and just took it like a bitch. Even when he got his Captain Redundant power he still hasn't tried to find out why it doesn't work the way it used to.

Hiro was the same, though at least he tried by going to India.

[That Weirdo In The Corner]

I think the original premise of the show was fine for one season but couldn't sustain more. If you woke up one day and had super powers how would you react, how would it change your life.

the continuing seasons seem like a desperate attempt to find some other premise for the show, so it can continue.

[Alidar Jarok]

One thing that's weird is, even though they constantly bitched about living a normal life, only Clare seemed to make an attempt at having one. I can't think of anyone who's had a job in the last couple of seasons.

[The Comedian]

What I would like to see is the series go the "Watchmen" route and show them actually trying to do good with their powers.

Start the season with Osama Bin Laden suddenly materializing on the White House lawn with a note attached, and then proceed to watch our present world change, big time.

Flying men rescuing stranded mountain climbers. Brush fires suddenly put out by people who freeze things. Washington struggling with the appearance of superheroes and how to properly deal with their existence. Public rioting at the vigilantism...or treating them as celebrities. Or both, lol.

[Holoaddict]

I look at it as an example of the old adage, "The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence."

People who do not have these powers wish they did. People who do have these powers just want to be normal.

Besides Sylar seems so happy with his powers that he wants even more.

[Temis the Vorta]

Hmm, I can't recall what the S2 premise was. S3 was "villains," which sounded to me very far from the "normal lives" scenario. We were supposed to see the powers leading good characters to villainy and why the villains weren't so black and white. A good premise in theory, they just didn't have the first idea how to actually pull it off. There was no need for the hilarious ping-ponging between good and evil - that is NOT how you depict the "shades of grey" that make up a morally ambiguous universe.

Rewind to the premiere of S2 - the characters attempting to go back to their normal lives is what the show should have done but instead we got crazy scenarios involving amnesia, time travel and road trips to hell. That's where the audience started to realize they couldn't relate - the characters were still largely unformed and instead of stories that would allow them to cohere, we got sound and fury and meaningless action.

The overall season-spanning arc should have been:

Season One: Normal people get superpowers and only just start to cope; the major characters learn of each others' existence and inter-relationships start to form.

Season Two: After the death and insanity of S1, the characters retreat to lick their wounds. Of course this doesn't last long. This would have been a good place for the "Villains" story, since they're still only getting used to their powers and may have naive notions regarding their maturity level and ability. Their inexperience and hubris leads to disaster and they realize that their lives will never be normal, no matter what they'd prefer. Their inter-relationships are still touchy and antagonistic, but they are starting to come together.

Season Three: This is about right to introduce the idea that the supers are on the run from the authorities. The inter-relationships that started in S1 become solid now, because they are depending on each other for survival.

Season Four: Now that the supers no longer have the government on their backs, they re-form the Company to deal with the "bad" supers among them, realizing that there will be no safety or peace for them unless they tackle the problem themselves. And this means all of them, not just Noah.

Season Five: This is where the mythology of Generations would have made the most sense. Show the current characters coming to the same realization as the previous generation and then open the story up by delving into the backstory, making it grander and more epic.

Season Six: The supers make the same mistakes as their elders. Can they finally learn from their mistakes and turn things around? Series ends with a huge-ass battle royale, the end.

So really, we needed to see the "normal lives" in S2 so that the characters could grow naturally into their S4 alliance. We would understand what they'd given up. But the whole thing has been so botched that I can understand if Kring wants to just do it over.

Besides, Peter looks cute in his paramedic uniform.

I think the original premise of the show was fine for one season but couldn't sustain more.

Heroes has got the most open-ended premise I've seen since Star Trek. They can add characters, add powers, all of the planet and all of time are their playground. The basic premise is unresolvable: these people have powers and their lives will never be normal. Yet they want to be normal or at least safe. The story comes from watching this unresolvable struggle, which in theory can go on forever.

Very similar to the way Star Trek's premise is an unresolvable situation: patrol and defend the Federation via exploration. If the situation cannot be resolved, then you don't have the Gilligan's Island problem that every story is about them still not getting off the island for some moronic and contrived reason. It's great not to have a show that is goal-oriented, tying your creativity down and forcing you into stupid plots!

A lot of shows are goal-oriented. Some, like Prison Break, really do only have one season in their premise. Others like Lost can be stretched. Some situation-based premises, like Dexter, can't be stretched much more than the goal-oriented ones. Heroes has got it easy by comparison and there's no excuse for the way it's been botched. It represents a wonderful opportunity for talented, creative writers. Its problem is that it doesn't have talented, creative writers.

What I would like to see is the series go the "Watchmen" route and show them actually trying to do good with their powers.

They should come to that naturally. They can do the "woo-eee, I'm Superman" nonsense, and that should lead to the catastrophe of S2 because it's immature. Then they gain maturity and by S4, they understand what "doing good" means for people like them.

[Admiral_Young]

I don't see why we can't have them operate in public like normal superheroes do and save lives and all that other good shit. Instead we have this X-Men type thing where the regular people are afraid of them and the government authorites want to capture them, etc. Season One was good, the rest of the series has left me wondering what the hell happened.

[wamdue]

I think this is why a series that tries to make superheroes "real" people makes its mistake, superheros not wanting to be heroes is not why viewers tune in, Superman has not lasted this long, by not wanting to be a hero and losing his superpowers every 5 episodes (unless you count Smallville of course )

[Hermiod]

wamdue wrote:

---

I think this is why a series that tries to make superheroes "real" people makes its mistake, superheros not wanting to be heroes is not why viewers tune in, Superman has not lasted this long, by not wanting to be a hero and losing his superpowers every 5 episodes (unless you count Smallville of course )

Bingo.

Peter Petrelli is not much of a hero. He deals with the big stuff but what about the woman being mugged in an alleyway down the road ? Parkman should go back to being a cop. As long as he covers his tracks and makes sure that any evidence he brings to a case is admissible then he could do a lot of good.

It reminds me of the start of Joss Whedon's run on Astonishing X-Men where Cyclops brought back their old colourful uniforms to replace the black leather outfits they were wearing at the time. He told them it's time to start being superheroes again instead of just mutants.

Also it reminds me of the episode of Roswell where Max went in to a children's cancer ward in a hospital and healed all of them, nearly killing himself in the process. Claire could do that with one blood sample.

There is a small problem with the more heroic characters not having active powers. It's all a bit Light Side of the Force - defence, never attack.

Peter - Captain Redundant. He can't do anything the guy standing next to him can't already do.

Claire - Can heal any wound but is as about as effective in a fight as any tiny 18 year old girl would be.

Hiro - Can't do anything in case his brain explodes.

Parkman - Can read minds and make people think and do stuff, but that's unethical maaaaaan.

Ando - Can knock ordinary people down with his energy boosting power but what use is that against other empowered people ?

Nathan - He can fly but what he can carry is limited by his own strength as an otherwise normal human. Plus, well, you know, the other problem...

Angela - Can dream the future. She has to be asleep to be of any use!

Mohinder - Superhuman strength. Only problem is he can dish it out but he can't take it! He didn't get the superhuman durability that normally goes with it.

Ironically, this means that the most dangerous of the "heroic" characters is Noah - the only one who doesn't have any powers!

[Admiral2]

Wow. It took all of you long enough. This has been my biggest complaint against Heroes and Smallville, since, like, forever.

[Hermiod]

Admiral2 wrote:

---

Wow. It took all of you long enough. This has been my biggest complaint against Heroes and Smallville, since, like, forever.

I've been saying this since forever and it got worse when they turned their most powerful character in to powerless Bitch Boy and then turned him in to Captain Redundant.

[Admiral2]

Hermiod wrote:

---

I've been saying this since forever and it got worse when they turned their most powerful character in to powerless Bitch Boy and then turned him in to Captain Redundant.

Yeah, maybe, but you watched it long enough to see that. I called "bullshit" the minute Hiro called himself "Supah Hiro!".

[Peter the Younger]

After three seasons, it seems pretty clear to me that the Heroes folks don't understand their own show. The showrunners caught a bolt of lightning in S1 and had absolutely no idea what to do with it, so they just keep trying to repeat the same circumstances.

Claire, especially, really needs to friggin' get over it.