Could you ever predict "Heroes" would be a one-season wonder?

[StarTrek1701]

I was recently watching Heroes season one episodes again and it just made me sad that this once great show is now crumbled to nothing but dust. I tried to catch the last episode on the PC and I could barely watch half of it. Nearly every episode in season one was a gripping tale, holding onto you without a sign of letting go till the end. Even the filler episodes were better than the 'event' episodes currently.

Remember Sylar taking Ted's powers in the episode "Landslide"? He mutters the word 'boom' at the end of the episode which sent chills through the audience. Or episodes like "Seven minutes to midnight" or "Company man" that defined the freshman show? All that and more were expected for the future of the show. And here we are now, four years later, and its on the verge of cancellation.

The writers and Tim Kring must surely get a lot of hate mail for ruining this once great show. How can it be possible for the show to have the same creator, most of the same writers and still churn out shit after season one? Did the writer's strike truly deal a deathblow to the show? Or is it NBC's fault? The show is now a mess and without a proper direction. The stories literally create themselves if you put your mind to it.

What do you guys think happened? Did NBC deliberately dump their once flagship show? Or was it the writer's strike? And could you ever predict back in season one that this show would become full of crap just 2 years later?

 

[M'rk son of Mogh]

I know when people post "I'm alone in thinking this..." only to find many people down the thread agreeing with them, but, I really do think I'm alone in thinking season 1 wasn't that special, and actually enjoyed season 3 probably the most.

I watched season 1 with a friend, and I only stuck with hit because she was enjoying it and it was good hang-out time with the two of us. But I couldn't get past all the 'been there done that' feelings I had from the comic books I've grown up reading, Sylar was far from interesting to me, HATED Suresh (still do), and basically only found Noah and Hiro to be of any real interest. It wasn't until later that things, for whatever reason, started clicking. (Sylar finally became interesting!).

And even now, I think Samual is a great character and like where his plot is going. Sure, I hate some of the plots and characters, but I hate a lot less of them now than I did before.

Basically, I don't buy the 'one season wonder' stuff. I don't agree with and understand all the praise so early on when it wasn't earned, as far as I'm concerned, until much later.

 

[Obiwanshinobi]

hmm it's kind of when you're in everything is still considered new and exciting, but as Q says in The TNG finale, All good things must come to an end. Well it ended after the first season and we all were promised each season was going to be better than the next and that never really panned out

if rumors suggest it gets renewed for a fifth, let hope they lay it all out on the table and go out with a bang, jeez how many cliches did I just say

 

[Hunter X]

I remember thinking during the first season, "man, this is the kind of show Lost should be" (which was in its third season). Meaning, fast-paced, fun, epic, answering questions as it asked them instead of dragging things out.

Now...well, I'm glad Lost never became Heroes, and let's just leave it at that.

 

[FreezeC77]

Actually yes I thought it be a one-season wonder because in the beginning of S1 they were talking about how season 2 would have a largely different set of heroes with maybe some of the S1 guys appearing for certain story-lines, but that the main story would involve new characters.

I said "wow, I don't really see that working on a major American TV network"... Of course they didn't do that, although the show still teetered into irrelevance anyway. But I will say that almost every single 'new character' they've tried to add to the show has failed over the years

 

[D Man]

I remember back in '06 thinking "Oh man, Heroes is going to be my new show" w/o question. This was during the 6-episode streak of disappointing Lost episodes (At the time: I hated them, but now I love initial early Lost S3 eps now with the gift of DVD.)

Back then, Heroes was really the rising star. Its first season really was quite remarkable, and for a time I took my brand-devotion and tried really hard to love it during S2, but I just couldn't do it. By "couldn't do it" I mean "I have watched every ep since then and still like the actors, even though the writers are complete imbeciles." It's really been a fascinating decline. How could they have taken something so amazing as "Company Man" and messed it up SO fast? And somehow I CONTINUE to watch in order to find out how badly they'll trainwreck the next ep/season.

 

[Hermiod]

Heroes had signs of its current problems very early on, remember.

Even back in season one, characters would act stupidly or be nerfed to prevent them from resolving the entire season's plot immediately. The most obvious example would be the psychological block Hiro had that stopped him using his powers.

 

[Aragorn]

I loved season one of Heroes, but with very few surprises, they went though completely predictable steps. Watching Peter's powers develop in his journey, watching the Heroes come together (which they should've kept up instead of splitting everyone apart for no real reason), the evolution of Sylar, seeing Noah go from "the face of evil" commercials to being a good guy, all cool stuff.

But the anticlimatic fight to end the season was a sign of things to come, apparently.

On a side note, the Haitian is actually played by a Haitian and he just found out his parents survived the quake.

 

[Obiwanshinobi]

For me even back then I wad thinking why couldn't Heroes be more like Lost and I still think that. it's almost like in volumes 2, 3 & 4 they tried to overcompensate when they fell really short, blew there wad and now with this volume we're going thru a refractory period, hoping season 5 will bring us back for round 2 of some good lovin' like in season 1 like I mentioned earlier

 

[Hermiod]

But the anticlimatic fight to end the season was a sign of things to come, apparently.

Just think, when we saw "Five Years Gone" who knew that we'd never actually see a fully powered Peter vs. Sylar fight.

Even in season three, after Peter had been reduced to Captain Child Abuse Victim, it still took place behind closed doors.

 

[Mr Light]

Season 1 is not as glorious as it's remembered, really. I rewatched it myself a few months ago. Plotlines take forever to develop, there's no action, characters wander around doing nothing forever, the big final fight is a vast disappointment... sound familiar? I actually think the "Villains" arc was the best.

 

[Yeoman Randi]

I thought Season One of both Heroes and Lost was totally amazing and neither show lived up to what i hoped they would be.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

No, I never would have predicted that. The premise was wide-open (a lot of solid shows, like Chuck, Dexter and 24, have far more limited premises). I figured as long as the writing was competent and the actors were either good or well cast for their roles, there was no way for Heroes to fall on its face.

Comparing it to Lost and BSG, I thought Heroes had the easy path. Lost was potentially a convoluted mess that could easily get out of the producers/writers control. BSG hinged on a Big Mystery of the Cylon Plan, which easily could fizzle. Yet both Lost and BSG turned out far better than Heroes.

I still can't understand how a group of writers can turn out excellent work and then just lose it. I wondered if it was due to the loss of Bryan Fuller, but when he returned for a while, the problems didn't vanish.

Either Tim Kring sketched out the first season in great detail before the series was picked up, devoting years to that first season outline so that the kinks were worked out, and then didn't have years to devote to organizing subsequent seasons; or the first season was largely the work of some other very talented writer who was never officially on the staff and perhaps was murdered and dumped in a swamp so they wouldn't reveal that Kring stole their work and passed it off as his own.

I know that sounds pretty extreme, but from S2 onwards, Heroes seems like a story written by people trying to ape another writers' work, with all the right elements, but put together all wrong, like Very Bad Fanfic. It doesn't seem like the work of the same writer, who is just out of ideas. The volumes they've done - origins, the tension between heroism and villany, the danger of public exposure, the need for redemption - are all perfectly good topics for this premise that should have worked.

Heroes had signs of its current problems very early on, remember.

Even back in season one, characters would act stupidly or be nerfed to prevent them from resolving the entire season's plot immediately. The most obvious example would be the psychological block Hiro had that stopped him using his powers.

In S1, that was just the kind of crutch that writers often use, especially in a complex story with a lot of characters. It's hard to write everyone's storylines so they fit together seamlessly with no "cheating." I wouldn't mind the occasional cheat, even a great show like Dexter cheats every so often, but they've lost all the compensating elements that made it ok to wink at the cheats.

In S1, they also had the problem of surprises that were far from surprising. Jackie being killed instead of Claire. Peter's death being reversed because Claire remembered about removing the obstruction from the back of the neck. People predicted exactly how the finale would resolve itself, with Nathan flying Peter into the sky to explode.

And they also had the boring-plotline problem. I always groaned inwardly when they switched over to Niki, DL and Micah. Hiro and Ando's Vegas antics quickly became tiresome. Mohinder was completely worthless until the road trip with Sylar.

I thought Season One of both Heroes and Lost was totally amazing and neither show lived up to what i hoped they would be.

How much better did you want Lost to be?!? What didn't they do that they could have (other than small problems like the silly love quadrangle.)

 

[EyalM]

Heroes had signs of its current problems very early on, remember.

Even back in season one, characters would act stupidly or be nerfed to prevent them from resolving the entire season's plot immediately. The most obvious example would be the psychological block Hiro had that stopped him using his powers.

This.
The show had stupid plot lines and actions since the beginning, but in season 1 it had the benefit of the characters still being a mystery, and the audience still not being fed up with the characters acting dumb or being nerfed.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

S1 was genuinely better, not just new. The plotlines interwove organically and didn't seem forced. There was a point to it all, and a genuine sense of danger and anticipation, even if the plot twists weren't quite as unpredictable as they should have been, and some plotlines and characters were better than others.

Compare it to the current season, which is just incompetently structured. At least S1 seemed like the work of professional TV writers, with the right kind of organization, balance and pacing. Heroes is much worse now, simply at the level of writing as a craft, and setting aside issues such as the writers cheating by making characters too dumb or taking away their powers.

 

[Hunter X]

Another major problem that sets the first season apart from the rest has been the repeating of plot lines and "character growth" over and over and over and over.

Season one had the cool hook of Hiro seeing New York explode a few weeks in the future. It was fun to see how that was going to unfold, to be given a deadline, to not be sure of the whats, hows and whys of the explosion. We got little clues along the way in Peter's manafesting abilities, the introduction of Ted and the slow realization that yes, Sylar is crazy enough to try it himself.

Then in season two we got a vision of a virus-plagued future. Then in season three a superpowered future where Ando kills Hiro. It was the exact same thing with a different magical problem. It's not cool anymore when the writers just repeat the ideas that seemed to work the first time.

The same issues happened with character development. Noah and Claire's storyline was compelling, especially as we saw Noah go from the show's bad-guy to something more complicated, then to someone working against the Company. It all climaxed in the series' best episode, Company Man. It was an arc with a very clear development: Innocent trust to learning of secrets and distrust to re-earned and more mature trust. Then we saw the same thing over and over again with the two of them in every season since. Claire trusts her Dad, he does something to break her trust (or she's just a brat), then he gains it back. Same with Hiro's superhero issues. Same with Claire wanting to be normal and having a normal friend to confide in.

If you go back and watch the first season again it probably seems like it has a lot of the same problems. But they weren't problems then. And they wouldn't seem like problems if the writers had just developed their story and character forward instead of just groping for how to re-plug in their most successful elements over and over again.

You'll even notice this when they promise they'll improve the show and how:
"We're going to give Claire a normal friend again like what's-his-name!"
"We're bringing back Linderman for a few episodes!"
"Noah's going back to the company!"
"Hiro's rescuing Charlie again!"

It's all just season one, more contrived and watered down, over and over again.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Yep - all the major characters should have had arcs planned out for them so they don't run in circles like headless chickens. To whit:

Claire - Goes from callow youngster to mature young woman who understands that the nasty stuff Noah gets up to is sometimes necessary for the greater good and stops being such a bitch about it.

Peter - Goes from self-pitying, self-delusional dope with a major victim complex who can't effectively use his powers to a strong, mature person who can. Maybe this means understanding that he can't save the world and should stop trying, or at least be more focused about it. (The S4 development, with him focusing on being a paramedic, was a sign of actual progress, although cutting himself off from his family was a sign that he was still not coping well in all ways.)

Hiro - Goes from annoyingly self-delusional child to, I dunno, vengeful samurai warrior? (Don't want his arc to be too similar to Peter's; these people should all have reasonably unique arcs).

 

[23skidoo]

I'm in the minority as I've never felt the show "crumbled to dust". I've quite enjoyed it all the way through, and that even included the Japan subplot in Series 2 which seemed to kill the show for a lot of people. (Again, though, no one can rationally call any SF series that has made it to Series 4, with a 5th more likely all the time - thanks, Jay? - a complete failure. Just ask Firefly fans who only got a dozen episodes, or Terminator fans who barely got 2 seasons).

I do think that the concept of Heroes was one that I couldn't see stay strong for longer than a season. This would have been perhaps more appropriate as a mini-series like they used to do back in the 1980s, like a 12-hour event. Maintaining a show for multiple seasons, you get changeover in writing and producing staff, and there's the pressure to try and come up with new storylines. And that's where you run the risk of losing favor with audiences.

As I say, I've enjoyed the later seasons, but part of me feels the show should have ended with Nathan and Peter blowing up in the sky over New York City. Only in America, really, is there the culture of "entitlement" that seems to demand that all shows must run for 7 years to be considered successful. Not saying there aren't shows that haven't done that quite well - Lost, for example - but what would have been wrong with the producers of Heroes coming out and saying that they were going to do a single season of 22 episodes and then end it? No cancellation, just a predetermined length.

This is for a different thread, but I bet most people could name a number of series that might have been stronger creatively, and perhaps more successful commercially, if their producers and networks had had the discipline to say 13 episodes, no more or 22 episodes or 2 seasons, and that's it. Hell, I read somewhere that Lost might not end this season after all. So much for discipline of that's true.

I think having predetermined endings for series would, among other things, eliminate the "cancellation panic" fans continually face regarding their favorite shows. And it would prevent beloved shows from humiliating fade-outs. I'm sure devotees of Ugly Betty don't appreciate seeing their favorite show being beaten by Jay Leno in the ratings and critics and others breaking out their Ugly Betty Death Watch T-shirts. Had the show lasted only one or two seasons and then ended on its own merits, it would have avoided this.

Some shows that come to mind for me include both DS9 and Enterprise in the Star Trek arena, the Terminator series, and much as I'd like to see Morena Baccarin's Louise Brooks hair bob for years on end, I'd be just as happy to see the new V planned out for 30 episodes and that's all. There are folks who no doubt could say the same for nuBSG. And as far as I'm concerned the true final episode of Alias occurred midway through Season 2 when Sydney Bristow completed the show's original mandate by bringing down SD-6. The show spent the next several years treading water.

As it happens, Heroes, with its "chapter and volume" structure, is possibly the one show (other than, perhaps, 24) which is best suited for the predetermined end date format.

Alex

 

[Robert Maxwell]

It really is a shame Heroes turned out the way it did. Temis hit the proverbial nails on their heads, as usual. Season one was well-paced, well-structured, with characters who were drawn decently even if they weren't unique or very deep. And because it was a new show, there was the very real possibility of anyone dying, which kept tension high. Sylar was quite the boogeyman, too, until we got to know him better.

I actually liked "Generations," too. I think it was hurt by the WGA strike, though, because many elements and the overall storyline came off half-baked. Good ideas, some executed well, but some not, and it became rather predictable.

Over time, the whole show just became very sloppy. Character development was replaced by people just doing whatever the plot required. Plot points were dropped almost as quickly as they were introduced. The writers constantly fell back on crutches like apocalyptic visions, and nerfing the Heroes whose powers would screw up the plot. Rather than write the story around the characters, they smashed the characters into the story like jigsaw puzzle pieces, ignoring the fact that the pieces didn't fit together to make any kind of coherent picture. It's just a mess.

But now, we get this volume where most of the episodes have been over-the-top and ridiculous, like it's a deliberate parody of itself. If that's all the show has left, great--I can live with that. What I can't abide is it being so fucking boring, like it was this past week.

 

[broberfett]

I really hate how they try to stretch something way too long instead of dealing with it in an episode or two. Then they'll do something and forget the entire reason for it, like when Peter got the healing powers to heal Hiro then never bothered to find him or heal him. If I had healing powers to cure a friend of cancer then I wouldn't switch powers to some dumbass music power or whatever it is he switched to first. If It happened by accident then he didn't even seem distressed that he just doomed Hiro to death by cancer.