Why so much hate here on Heroes?

[Brent]

I just got into the series, well, I've only seen the 3rd and now current season, and I really really really really like it, I think it is the awesome. I guess I have the fortune/misfortune? of not seeing the 1st and 2nd seasons? From a newbie perspective anyway, only seeing the last season and this current one, I absolutely love it! I want to check out seasons 1-2 now.

 

[Miss Chicken]

I lloved the first season. I watched the second season but was somewhat disappointed. I haven't watched the third season yet. I might if my son gets around to buying it.

 

[NileQT87]

Season 3 was my favorite because of the character development.

Some people wanted stagnation and the good guys always winning. The show became a soapy drama instead of a vapid superhero show and people got upset. Hell, they started getting upset when the show made that direction clear back at the end of season 1. A lot of the people who dislike everything past season 1 also don't like the end of season 1 for that very reason. They just wanted a pretty superpowers showdown. The morally gray direction doesn't fly well with this crowd either.

I'm glad you've liked seasons 3 and 4! Season 1 is also great (right behind season 3 for me--yeah, I said it). Season 2 is a bit iffy, but there is some good stuff with Sylar and Noah (as usual!).

My favorite episodes of the entire series are I Am Sylar, Into Asylum, An Invisible Thread and The Hard Part. Season 3 had a lot of amazing stuff. Most of my favorite dialog is also from that season (heavily from The Second Coming, Dual, I Am Sylar, An Invisible Thread, etc...). And I never liked Nathan more than from the moment he got pushed out of the window by Danko until his death in An Invisible Thread (I adore the Mexico trip). It was his most lovable stretch of episodes since How To Stop An Exploding Man. Noah, Angela and Danko also kicked ass all season.

Can you tell that I like the morally gray characters?

I love season 4 because of just how much is a result of season 3 (especially the aftermath of An Invisible Thread). It still strikes me as more season 3 than season 1. Once Upon A Time In Texas, for example, pointed out just how far Sylar has come as a more multi-layered character, despite the little peek-through of Gabriel's unloved and unmourned issues (which was the best part of the episode other than sweet Charlie and Hiro probably having his best episode ever).

 

[Australis]

Dislike brought about by disappointment. S2 was a bit flat.

I'm sorta indifferent at the moment, it didn't seem to be really moving forward in a consistent fashion for me, and what they did with Sylar last time I looked was messed up, though what else could you do with an all-powerful character? Also, free-to-ar here jerked around its timeslot.

 

[Aragorn]

Some people wanted stagnation...

 

[NileQT87]

You apparently haven't been to IMDb. There's a whole crew of people who talk about nothing else than wanting two-dimensional characters who don't get to grow or change, are only there to throw powers around and want black & white morality with nothing in between.

That's real stagnation.

Take the people who wish Sylar never grew issues that made him empathetic and/or psychological, claiming that they wished he had just stayed a mindless killing machine to be killed off without any expansion of character and 3-dimensionality. As I said, Once Upon a Time in Texas just pointed out to me how far Sylar has come as a character and the best part is acknowledging that this early shadow character did in fact have these layers (of course, he didn't hit rock bottom until The Hard Part and start growing these layers). There's a section of the audience that hates that he stopped being a mysterious shadow that was never sustainable and became a character like all the others.

Season 3 easily skyrocketed the character growth for numerous characters more than any other season. Season 2 certainly did the least.

 

[Aragorn]

I'll go to IMDb to read user comments if I haven't bled out after slashing my wrists because I was reading AICN user comments. And if I'm still alive after that, I'll read YouTube user comments with a loaded gun sitting nearby.

 

[Caliburn24]

I hate Heroes because it started out superbly, got me hooked for the first season. Then it peaked around the episodes Company Man and Five Years Later. And the season finale was just a let down on all fronts. And season 2 and everything since then has just dug that hole deeper.

Heroes had the potential to be an amazing show, one of my favorites of all time perhaps, but instead it got slow, it got boring, the writing went nowhere, nothing was ever resolved, the characters never changed in any meaningful way. The villians did not really make sense, the heroes were idiots most of the time and worst of all increasingly unlikeable.

 

[Scout101]

what character development? You might get more backstory, or stuff might happen, but these characters revert right back to their stereotypes at the drop of a hat. they might learn something, get tough and kick ass, and then they're stupid or helpless again 5 minutes later.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Love all the straw man portrayals of "Heroes haters" here.

I'm disappointed in the show because it's had a very obvious decline in quality. The first season was stellar. The second season was good. The third started a rapid descent into nonsense.

Changing a character's motivation at the drop of a hat is not "character development." Sylar hasn't experienced any true character development on this show. Instead, he just finds a new justification for killing people. He still kills people, of course, the writers just decide he does it for a different reason, and that was always the reason he did it.

I remember complaining last season that, each week, Mohinder would be horrified to learn he's helping the bad guys. And then, next week, Mohinder will be horrified to learn he's helping the bad guys. And the week after that, Mohinder...

While some people would have liked a "superhero show," I would settle for a well-written drama about people who happen to have powers. Unfortunately, they are missing the "well-written" part.

 

[Forbin]

I don't hate it at all, but I've been getting rather bored with it lately.

One problem it has is that Sylar is basically the most powerful person on Earth. If they let him run rampant, it's all over in an episode. So every season they try to come up with some new lame way to curb him and keep the show going.

 

[23skidoo]

I just got into the series, well, I've only seen the 3rd and now current season, and I really really really really like it, I think it is the awesome. I guess I have the fortune/misfortune? of not seeing the 1st and 2nd seasons? From a newbie perspective anyway, only seeing the last season and this current one, I absolutely love it! I want to check out seasons 1-2 now.

The big problem with Heroes, at least my interpretation of the "big problem" because like you I've enjoyed the show all the way through, is that a lot of people feel the show should have ended after Season 1. When you watch Season 1 you'll probably see why. When the show continued, with the same characters, and without resorting to stereotypical superheroics every episode, people turned away from it and many responded with their default fanboy setting - hate for the producers, writers, etc. The tipping point was a lengthy but rather sweet subplot involving Hiro in Season 2. For some reason it offended a lot of people.

Making matters worse, a number of subplots in that second season were abandoned or rushed because of the Screen Actors Guild strike forcing the season to end early. That created something of a disconnect that carried over into Seaosn 3. Season 4 was promoted as a new beginning, but by this point a lot of folks were starting to countdown the days to its cancellation, as if the existence of this series is somehow a blight on their lives.

If you really enjoy Seasons 3 and 4, then I think you are in for a treat when you get to Season 1.

Alex

 

[Deckerd]

Watched two eps at the beginning then dropped it. That can't be called hate by any stretch of the imagination.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

My reason is because the writers couldn't even be bothered to look up some basic facts about solar eclipses. I could ignore the rest of the bad science but not that.

 

[Mr Light]

I still enjoy Heroes. I think S1 isn't as grand as people remember (it really strung out the story, not much happens in each episode, the entire second half is a stall maneuver and the last episode was an absolute cop-out). I enjoyed S2 and my favorite volume is S3.1 "Villains". I did hate 3.2 "Fugitives" though, mainly because the baddies being unpowered soldiers was boring. S4 is alright so far but not amazing.

 

[Lindley]

I stopped watching late in season 3. When the most entertaining character by far on a show is the bad guy, something's wrong.

 

[RoJoHen]

I stopped watching after THE ECLIPSE (scary) where they lost their powers for...a few minutes!!! AH! How ever did they survive?!

 

[Borgminister]

I stopped watching late in season 3. When the most entertaining character by far on a show is the bad guy, something's wrong.

Like Dexter?



I know, I know....

 

[Galactus]

Because the show started off great and is not just a fanboy/fangirl show. I stand by the statement that they just completely rewrote their show sometime in the first season. Everything just completely changed from then on. S2 was bad and it just got worse from there.

 

[Broccoli]

I like seasons 1 and 2. 2, I think, is underrated. I did not like the first half of season 3, but loved the second half. I haven't checked out season 4 yet.