fix Heroes (spoilers thru S3 finale)

Apparently everyone now loathes Heroes. This is the thread for venting, or making suggestions for improvement, in one of two ways:

1. If you think it is salvageable, what can they do in S4 to salvage it?

2. If you think it is unsalvageable, where did they go wrong and describe what they should have done instead.

There will be many many spoilers in this thread, natch. If you don't want to find out that Mohinder is now a blonde cheerleader due to that nasty transporter accident, begone!

 

I stopped watching with the episode that ripped off the fly. This show was getting just plain boring to tell the truth.

 

They went wrong with the season 1 finale. Everything is leading up to Sylar being killed - and the inexplicably, they decide not to kill him off. But he had served his purpose in S1 of bringing the heroes together. He should have been killed off.

And then pretty much everything since they has been centered around Sylar.

How to fix Heroes? Clean house... Start over with a whole new cast of characters (and that means NOT casting Ali Larter as her 4th character) - Just as the original concept was. I truly think that the current characters are unsavable now.

I have certainly lost interest.

 

Focus as many episodes as possible on Zachary Quinto. He's carrying the damn show.

Give logical motivations to the other characters and try keep them from acting like idiots. Also, don't rely on any of the actors to actually act (except that guy who plays Noah). Let it be a surprise when it actually happens. Try to keep Claire Bennett from speaking at all.

Have Peter Petrelli say something other than "I hate/love you, Nathan."

 

Ideas for who to cast and characters for them to play?

I've spotted someone who'd be good on the show: Armie Hammer, who lately played Morgan, Sam's spawn of Satan brother on Reaper. Since that show is probably doomed, he'd be free. I wouldn't necessarily cast him as a villain, tho.

I'd love to see Edward James Olmos as a superbaddie. No aliens on Heroes, right?

Let's replace Zachary Quinto with Zachary Levi - I think he'd kick ass as a villain. I'm hopeful that Chuck will come back but if it doesn't...

And speaking of Chuck, Ryan McPartlin deserves to become Captain Awesome for real.

 

Get rid of everyone except HRG, Angela, Nathan--real Nathan--and Peter. Never speak the name Sylar again and don't give Peter multiple powers. No time travel. Craft stories that require the heroes to act like heroes and save people again. It's as simple as that.

Get rid of Kring, Fuller etc. Hire Eric Kripke, Ben Edlund, Jeremy Carver, Sera Gamble, and Ben Edlund away from the CW to craft the story arcs and write scripts.

 

A large part of the problem was that the examination of the characters and the slow revelations of their backstories is what drove most of the first season. Most of the characters were like a wrapped present. The more you tore away the more you wanted to keep going. But once everything was opened, there was no more mystery to the characters. Characters could act unpredictable, because nothing was established yet about them. So one could interpret that as just another layer. But once all that was over, they became established and any unpredictability seemed out of character because of it.

There was nothing more to explore with the these characters. We knew everything about them now. And so many of the characters became boring without the mystery. Which showed the weakness of Kring's writing. He doesn't understand established characterization. He still wants the characters to be unpredictable in their behavior. But by making established characters unpredictable, it more so makes them stupid, bi-polar, and unrelatable to.

This is why Kring should have kept to his original premise. A new cast each season. An open book of characters every year. It would have greatly disguised his short comings as a writer. Would it have alienated fans by replacing their beloved characters with new upstarts? Maybe. Not if they had kept a few. Hiro could have stayed on, as he has enough charm and classic adherance to The Hero Cycle to make up for Krings failings, which is why his material is usually the strongest. Parkman has enough one-dimensional "every man" charm to him I suppose. HRG going solo, minus Claire Bear and The Clan, would be nice. Either way, it couldn't have been much worse then what we got.

The Patrelli Brothers should have died. First, because coming back undercut their arcs. Their sacrifice was for nothing. Secondly, because the writers obviously have no idea what to do with an Ubermech like Peter and the more mundane, nuanced Nathan. Peter's too much for them to handle(which is why they eventually de-powered him). Nathan is too little. Which is why most of their stories over the past 2 seasons have either been derivative of season one, or just random as fuck with stupid motovations.

But, yes The Sylar worship is a huge symptom of what went wrong. Whenever a show starts worshiping the bad boy, it usually turns to shit. It's not always the cuase, but a terrible symptom of what went wrong. Like Buffy, Battlestar Galactica, or Lost. Sylar is a great villain, make no mistake about it. But he's been horribly overused and overexposed because of it. And with that overexposure, the act got old. There's a reason why Magneto isn't in every issue of X-Men or The Joker is in every issue Batman. When they show up it's an event. It's a "holy shit it's The Joker!" moment. It creates excitment and unpredictablity. You know shit is going to hit the fan at that moment right there. Having Sylar constantly around makes him boring and makes the heroes look incompetent because they can't get rid of him.

 

Just get it over with and rename it The Sylar Show.

 

That seems to be where they're going in S4 - they're re-forming the Company but since the likes of Matt, Mohinder, Peter and Claire will now be involved, it presumably won't be as sinister as before.

But if the writers are honest, it should at least be somewhat sinister. They are, after all, functioning as vigilante law enforcement. Maybe they are forced to, for self-defense - they have to round up all the other Sylars out there just to keep the metahuman threat from breaking onto public consciousness - but it should never been shown as morally easy.

I dunno who they are, but if Chuck ends up cancelled (which hopefully won't be the case), those writers should be hired - they write very disciplined stories that don't go all wild and wooly on us, but are still creative, and definitely have a good sense of humor as well as the all-important heartstrings-tugging routine.

The writers need to keep the characters moving on their character arcs, and in some cases, they need to start the character arcs. What are Claire and Hiro's arcs again? To grow up? Gotta be more interesting than that, and even if that were good enough, they've made no progress in three frakking years! At least Peter and Matt have gotten off the starting line.

They also need to have the guts to drop or kill characters who reach the end of their arc. Noah for instance, everyone loves him, but does he have an arc? He just pingpongs with Claire's mood swings. Angela is on an arc that leads over a cliff. Fine, then - that isn't a bad idea, but the writers have to push her over the cliff when the time comes for it.

Given the very poor track record that Kring has had with introducing new characters, that would have gotten the show cancelled by now. I'm not interested in wiping out the S1 characters so I can get a cast of Mayas and Alejandros and Wests.

There have been a constant parade of new characters, but the only successful ones have been Elle, Danko and arguably Daphne (but even in her case, she's marginal.) The only reason to stick with this show is because you like these particular characters. The idea of watching a meaningless gaggle of people played by the level of mediocre and charisma-free actors they insist on hiring discover their superpowers would get repetitive quickly.

 

Hiro and Claire had arcs at one point, but the writers forgot about them. Hiro was Luke Skywalker. Claire was Buffy Summers. Trying to make them more complex characters then they needed to be is what killed them.

I agree. HRG should have died protecting Claire at some point. I still think Nathan and Peter should have blown up at the end of season one.

 

Peter's Luke Skywalker, too. That's the problem, you don't need two characters of that type.

And what the heck was Buffy's arc? (Sorry I could never get into that show.) I thought she just killed vampires and occasionally slept with them.

How are they complex characters? They strike me as exceedingly simple, which is part of their problem. Hiro likes playing around being a hero for some reason, probably to avoid having to take on grownup responsibilities and working in some boring office. Lately, Claire has gotten it into her head to mimic Uncle Peter and play at being a hero, and get angry when people don't think she has any useful power.

Why are Hiro and Claire acting this way? Their motives don't seem to stem from their innate personality and drives, which makes it all seem shallow. They happen to have powers that allow them to live out fantasy lives or fit into a family that's cooler than their own boring family. The former is more Hiro's motive and the latter is Claire's, but in neither case can I respect the character.

What works better is when the person had a pre-existing career in a "helping" profession. Peter and Matt can be assumed to have pure motives because of their career choices. When they run off to be a hero, it's because that's truly who they are. And even without a power, Peter became a paramedic. The powers don't run his life. Mohinder being a geneticist also shows that his motives are innate and not just a by-product of having powers, which in his case, was a dumb idea and should be rescinded.

 

What's wrong with complex characters? That's what makes a show worth watching.

 

What about this? Everything that happened in the Season 1 finale stay the way it is. Only we don't see Sylar until Season 3, which would leave the audience wondering during Season 2 if he's really dead or alive somehow.

Matt's wife Janice didn't leave him but was instead kidnapped by someone involved with the Company. Out of his desperation to save his family, Matt joins a government organization that's been tracking and investigating rumors of the existence of people with special abilities. So far they investigated a number of Sylar's murders, the incident at the Homecoming in Odessa, the Kirby Plaza incident, and some of the Company's activities. Danko (who was one of the few favorable characters in Season 3) is the head of the organization and is trying to convince the President how criticial the organization in protection of the general public from those kind of people. Matt could be the very thing he needs to effectively prove that these people exist and how much of a threat they can be to others although Danko doesn't tell Matt this and goes along with his quest to find his wife for the chance of getting at the Company, who have been a major pain in Danko's butt. Matt is partnered with Agent Audrey Hanson who's been recruited by the Organization because of her role in the Sylar investigation. Matt is still suffering from some pain from his gunshot wounds and is getting increasingly addicted to painkillers.

Meanwhile, the Company is considering resorting to drastic measures to keep Danko from exposing their existence and making the very thing they feared would happen to them if revealed publicly to come true. They're even considering using the Shanti virus to distract Danko and his group long enough for them to go deep underground and bring the Company back when it's 100% in shape, which it hasn't since Linderman used it to put into motion his plan to blow up New York City.

Angela is trying to convince the other Founders not to do this while using some of the Company's agents without the Founders' knowledge to track down her sons, Nathan and Peter. To prevent any probing into their disappearances, Angela has assigned Candice to impersonate Nathan and came up with a clever cover story for Peter's absence. But Candice's impersonation of Nathan may not fool others for long as Nathan's wife Heidi and their kids begin to suspect something's not right with Nathan.

With Angela distracted by her search for her sons and Hiro's father waiting endlessly for her son to come back from the past, some of the Founders are secretly plotting to unleash the Shanti virus without a majority vote, which is how they can usually vote on things in their meetings. One of the Founders is the father of Matt's wife Janice. He was the one who sent the Haitian to get her to a secure location away from the wave of death that will occur in the virus's rampage. Janice doesn't know about her father's involvement in the Company and hasn't spoken to him in years.

Nikki and Micah are living with Mohinder and Molly at the flat. They didn't have anywhere in mind to go after D.L. died of his gunshot wound. Mohinder offer to take them in so they can have a roof over their heads and have time to consider their options. Over time, Nikki and Micah have grown accustomed to life with Mohinder and Molly. Before anyone have any ideas, there won't be any love stirring between Mohinder and Nikki. They'll just become close friends. From time to time, Mohinder would leave the flat to continue his quest to seek out others who are different like Peter and Matt and protect them from people like the Company. Meanwhile, Nikki is becoming a surrogate mother to Molly, and Micah and Molly are developing a close bond.

Hiro won't return to the show until the end of the first half of the season when he comes back from his time in the past a changed man. The new Hiro would be a bit grim and braver than he was before after spending a few years in ancient Japan.

I don't what to do with Peter and Nathan but I let some time pass before bringing them back into the show, maybe before Hiro's return. HRG and Claire we'll maybe see in the second half of the season to see how their life have been after the Season 1 finale and how Lyle and Mrs. Bennett are dealing with living on the run. I would give Lyle his own personal storyline to explore his reactions to what his family has been through with Claire having regenerative powers, his father turning out to be a secret agent for all these years, and some evil Company coming after them, forcing them to move from place to place constantly.

 

Peter's Anakian Skywalker. Uber-powers, Mommy issues and all. He's angry and emo about everything. Hiro's Luke Skywalker. Daddy issues and all. He's a light-hearted, fun, adventureous character who does good for it's own sake.

Whiny, spoiled, smartass cheerleader who desperatly wants to be normal more then anyting in the world but that doesn't count when she makes out with her superpowered, stalker boytoy.

You misunderstood me. They're not complex characters. That's what makes Hiro a fun character. He's like Army of Darkness. Fun, kickass movie. But it's not complex. And if anyone attempted to make it more complex if they remade it, would be met with scorn. Same deal with Hiro. The attempts they've made this season to make him more complex and nuanced have met with failure. Putting him against Ando and trying to bring on the anger and angst are contrary to the nature of the character and what he is about. Hiro is not about complexity. Hiro is about kicking evil's ass. Sure it's cartoony. But I think it's fun.

 

I still like Heroes, I've never really gone off it. I didn't like some of the storylines they did, but I'm currently up to episode 12 of series one of my marathon so I'll probably have a more in-depth discussion about the later series.

I'm glad D.L. was killed, I was a little annoyed it was done inetween series, but atleast they showed his death in series two.

I wish Hiro didn't change, I keep seeing cute little things that he does during series one which always make me smile and answer with an "awh", I haven't seen one of those during volume four. And Ando's status keeps changing, which just makes the storyline confusing. He got a power, but now Hiro thinks of him as competition(?) instead of a friend helping him on his quest, the whole bond between them in volume one is that Hiro is on a quest and Ando is his anchor, now it seems he is more of an annoyance.

I wish Claude was re-introduced during the later volumes, I'm a big fan of Chris Ecclestone, and I'd like to see more of him.

Killing Adam was a big mistake, I always found his cocky presence one of the good points in Heroes, I always enjoyed his presence on screen.

I wish they would just take Ali Larter away, I always cringe everytime I see her on screen. One of the main reasons I hated the third Resident Evil film was because I thought Ali Larter was a dry, soul-less actor who simply annoyed me everytime she was on screen. I wish they'd kill off Tracey, then get it over and done with and kill off Barbara too.

As much as I love Zach Quinto, I hope they keep him off for a long while and introduce someone else as the primary villain. Then nearer the end of the chapter, Sylar, having regained his conciousness, clashes with this new villain, then instead of a sterotypical good vs evil storyline, we've got a struggle to basically be the "main villain" of the series.

Also, why is Claire even still in it? She hasn't got anything to do except be saved all the time. Ironic that the girl who can't be hurt always needs to be saved - sigh.

Personally, I would like to see The Company make the full circle, and become basically what they were before, it's a bit boring, but I always like things like that.

 

I like the idea of the Company vs Homeland Security (and hope Danko is back) - seems to be where they are going next season anyway.

But without Sylar, Peter or Nathan through much of this season, I suspect I would have stopped watching early on in S2. Matt's fun but Angela is pointless without her sons being present and I really don't care about Nikki, DL, Hiro and Claire.

Yknow what's missing in this show? Why aren't smart regular people realizing that the existence of metahumans can be used to get themselves money and power. The essential problem of metahumans is that they cause power imbalances. They are too powerful versus normal people, but if they were somehow captured and manipulated by normal people, they could end up making the normals too powerful and undermining the social order.

If normals learned about the existence of metahumans, their first reaction would be fear and their second reaction would be greed. How can I manipulate or coerce these people to use their powers in my self-interest? The metahumans may seem dazzingly powerful but they are still a mere handful of people. Imagine Sylar vs a nation with a sizeable army - he could do some damage but they'd corral him pretty quickly, either through a clever plan, brute force. or just the promise to feed him metahumans on a regular basis.

Somebody should want to use Sylar (or any of the rest) in nefarious schemes, or just dissect them. Danko actually had the right idea, he just needed to stay further ahead of Sylar than he did. Not letting his colleagues know Sylar was a shapeshifter, for instance. If the normals stuck together and came up with clever plans, they could manipulate a deluded nutcase like Sylar into doing their bidding. As long as he's getting what he wants, he'll do as they say.

The irony that these incredibly powerful metahumans are actually more threatened than threats is interesting. Many of them are not terribly smart and even the smart ones have psychological issues that make them prone to manipulation. Now that several normals know the truth, that threat should be coalescing rapidly.

I've never seen that movie, but I suspect I wouldn't much care for it. "Simple" isn't something I generally go for. And something simple can work okay in a two hour movie; it doesn't work very well when you have to stretch it over years of a TV series. That's when "simple" becomes "stupid" and then "unwatchable."

Fun for two hours, tops. Hey, I liked Hiro when he was introduced in S1 for a few episodes, and then he started to wear out his welcome. And after a few years, you wonder why he's still around.

You mean Peter has depth that can be put to good use in a long form drama like a TV series whereas Hiro's simplistic take on the character type is best reserved for two hour movie format, so the shallowness of the character doesn't have time to become glaringly obvious.

Peter has an interior life that gives him some depth, and he's a remarkably positive person considering how he's been kicked around. Hiro gives me the impression of a stuffed animal with nothing inside.

So she has Data's "Pinocchio" character arc. Claire did used to have that arc but the trouble is, if she wants to have a normal life while everyone else is fighting for their lives, she just looks selfish, so that's why they dropped it. Doesn't work in this show.

 

Temis the Vorta: What about in addition to what I already written, that during his search for special people, Mohinder starts receiving mysterious messages from an unknown source who warns him about the Company planning something bad (the Shanti virus?) which would endanger a number of people. When Mohinder and the source meet, Mohinder is shocked to find out that it's Peter back from the dead. Only he has a scar across his face. Mohinder is eager to know what happened to Peter after the explosion but Peter refuses to get into that and just gives Mohinder bits of information to help him stop the Company. What Mohinder doesn't know is that Peter is working for someone who wants the Company destroyed for a very personal reason and wants his hands on the Shanti virus for him to use for his own purposes. Peter is doing against his will because the person he works for is threatening to kill his brother Nathan, who he has locked up somewhere unknown, if he doesn't do everything he says. So we have a three-way war between the Company, Danko's group, and the mysterious third party has Peter under his thumb.

We also find out after blowing up and putting himself back together thanks to Claire's regenerative ability, Peter could only absorb one ability at a time. If he tries to take on more, he would be the verge of another power overload like the one at the Kirby Plaza or maybe worst than that. This would put a limit on Peter's absorbing ability and keep him from becoming an all-powerful superhero.

 

They need to become the X-Men, which with them forming a new Company I'm hoping that's how it will turn out. They need to be a cohesive team that lives together in one location and works together as a team. They need to stop the bad mutants and recruit the good mutants. I know it's not going to happen but they need to kill off Sylar ASAP rather than continue to give him ridiculous storylines; having Nathan's identity in him is by the most ludicrous one yet! Also they need a Big Bad Mutant Mastermind who is NOT Sylar, basically like Arthur Petrelli was in the "Villains" volume. Everybody seemed to hate him but I loved him.

 

To fix Heroes, we'd need to go all the way back to the very first episode. Give Hiro the ability to stop and restart time and teleport through space, but not the ability to travel through time. The first three volumes all began with Hiro and/or Peter traveling into the future, discovering a new catastrophe, and then returning to the present to try and stop it from happening. Time travel makes things too easy.

Peter never should have been nerfed. They'd already given him a limitation in season one: he can only use a specific power when he draws on the emotions he feels for the character he leeched it from. He can't constantly use his powers or he'll overload and go boom.

Kill Sylar at the end of "How to Stop an Exploding Man." He just became overexposed after that. Also let Nathan die after sacrificing himself to carry Peter away from New York City. Hiro doesn't end up in feudal Japan at the beginning of Generations. Instead, have Hiro's father originally be Takezo Kensei; unlike Hiro, he can't stop/restart time or teleport, but he can travel through time. Have Kensei/Kaito betray Adam Monroe in the past and set him on his vendetta, which would extend to Hiro (and the Company) in the present.

Never give Mohinder or Ando powers. Mohinder should have remained the powerless narrator, and Ando probably shouldn't have appeared again after Volume One. Neither should have Claire. Her usefulness was played out after Sylar failed to take her power in V1.

Bryan Fuller shouldn't have left to go do Pushing Daisies. Sorry, PD fans.

Oh, and no gorram precognitive painting!

 

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Seriously? It's like a sin against geekdom to not like Bruce Campbell and Army of Darkness. Or so I've been told.

Most sitcoms are "simple". Most genre TV up until a decade or so ago was "simple". Chuck, could be described as "simple". I don't consider Hiro to be "simple". I consider him to be "classic" or "traditional". He's very much a traditional, mythological, hero with a modern geek flair. Stan Lee could have easily created him. That idealistic young boy, armed with his fathers sword and his own destiny, journeys off to fight evil. Persus. Luke Skywalker. Hiro. All fit the profile of Cambell's The Hero Cycle. He's a modern Greek myth. A retro-Arthurian. And if he is "simple", then he's my kind of simple.

1)The fans adore him.

2)His huge popularity as a character was one of the main reasons the first season was such a smash hit.

3)His comedic dorkishness and child-like view of the world is a good counter balance to every one else's personal melodrama, cynicism, anger, and angst. Everyone else is all emo about their powers or about what ever personal Hell they're going through at the moment. Hiro lets people get away from that and actually smile. Without him, the show would be NuBSG with Superpowers. And there's enough nihilisim and dark anger in genre TV already.

Well yeah. Hiro, at the end of the day, is sort of a comedy character. Not ment to be taken totally seriously. Part homage and parody of the comic book nerd worldview. But then we get to the main reason people tend to prefer Hiro over Peter: Hiro, despite his naive nature, is the guy who grows a pair and gets shit done. While Peter is constantly lamenting what ever personal melodrama he's going through(I've lost track at this point), Hiro is the one doing what needs to be done. Taking out The Bad Guy. Saving the innocent. You name it. Peter's just takes it from everyone and gets used time and time again like a Vegas hooker. Whatever depth he may have as a person is undercut time and time again by his weakness of moral character. Peter the Brain is the one who ends up trying to destroy the world time and time again because of it. Hiro the Fool is the one who ends up saving it. So, in the end, who's the real fool.

Don't get me wrong, I've always liked Peter. But I wish they could make him actually live up to his heroic potential more and quit being used for evil purposes.