Fuller quits Heroes

[Chekov's Phaser]

Remember how great season 1 was? It wasn't without it's flaws, but it sure was entertaining. Great characters and story arcs. Suspenseful and riveting. That first time we saw future Hiro in a cliffhanger, I was counting down the minutes until the next episode. I couldn't wait for the ultimate showdown between Peter and Sylar. It was all building to this epic finale, and then a funny thing happened. It just kinda fizzled.

I didn't see it then, but it was the beginning of the end of this show. Since then it had a nice downward spiral. The second season was a let down, but the writers stike happened. I figured maybe the time off would be good, and the writers would get right what they got wrong. Even Tim Kringe said they understood what went wrong in season 2, but apparently they didn't.

Like many others I stopped watching half way into the 3rd season, and I'm usually the kind of person who will muddle through to the very end. I figured with Fuller coming back I would see how it played out, but it looks like that's a wash. It's a shame that a show with such potential when down so fast.

Oh well, as Rick Blaine would say: "we'll always have season 1"...

 

[Checkmate]

Even though I still watch it, Heroes is pretty much dead and gone. There's no way to win back its original audience (I've even, near the end of the last season, tried to tell some of my friends about how it was getting better -- but they adamantly refused to give it another shot).

That said, I hope whatever projects Fuller gets his hands on come to fruition and, more important, become every bit as successful as he deserves them to be. I've loved nearly everything he's ever touched as a creator/producer, and now consider myself a true fanatic of his work.

 

[Smiley]

The format of Heroes pretty much rules out the chance of a major comeback. There would have to be a rebranding, complete cast overhaul, and/or an effort to reach out to new audiences. Honestly, are there any dramas where people have collected S1 and S5-7 on DVD?

 

[startrekwatcher]

The format of Heroes pretty much rules out the chance of a major comeback. There would have to be a rebranding, complete cast overhaul, and/or an effort to reach out to new audiences. Honestly, are there any dramas where people have collected S1 and S5-7 on DVD?

That's why I was surprised that the studio renewed it for a fourth season instead of cancelling it especially with how costly the show is.

I don't enjoy the characters any more. The half-hearted attempt from the last stretch of season three was unsuccessful in rekindling any measure of emotional investment in any of the characters except for Angela who I have consistently enjoyed all these years. The show also seems to have trouble developing a season long arc. I'm not even talking about the kind of complicated arc from season one--just even a traditional linear arc where the ensemble is broken down into groups and cast into a few independent parallel threads. Heroes had gotten into a bad habit of throwing into the mix several interesting ideas but never really mining them-instead they just used them as brief plot points to thrust the characters into yet another anemically developed plot point.

If they really were going to do a fourth season they should have gotten rid of the entire cast including Sylar and Peter and tried to come up with another season long mystery arc using season one as a guide not a template.

It looks like LOST will be the only series that has not come off the rails the way BSG or Heroes did.

 

[Mr Light]

They could always just literally become the X-Men. They live in a big mansion together and go out as a team on missions to rescue/capture new mutants.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Apparently the new strategy is to become even more incomprehensible.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Apparently the new strategy is to become even more incomprehensible.

Ugh. Great... the stuff Pasdar says about Nathan tells me he doesn't even understand what they did to Nathan's character last season.

 

[Peter the Younger]

Apparently the new strategy is to become even more incomprehensible.

Ugh. Great... the stuff Pasdar says about Nathan tells me he doesn't even understand what they did to Nathan's character last season.

I've gotten into a few debates on that very subject since the finale, and believe me, there are many strong opinions on the subject. (Personally, I prefer the notion that the "Nathan" inside Sylarisn't just some mask to be cast off, but has grown into a real personality inside Sylar's head, who can fight for control: the Nathan software running on the Sylar hardware.)

In any event, shapeshifting = actors get time off to do other projects. I mean really, that's what it boils down to.

I'm sad to hear Fuller didn't stay, but it can't be fun cleaning up a mess you didn't make. Personally, I almost gave up after Villains, but Fugitives only had minimal input from Fuller, and it was a major improvement. One thing that helped immensely, I thought, was the realization that they didn't have to touch base with every single character in any given episode. This quote from Christine Rose makes me think they are sticking to that:

Rose added that the new season will spend comparatively less time with all characters. "All the stories are much smaller than they were, so each episode will be fewer people," Rose said. "So it'll be smaller stories for everyone, but I'm happy that they write my name in the script."

So I still have hope.

 

[Borgminister]

[Jesse Jackson] Keep Hope Alive [/Jesse Jackson]

 

[Christopher]

Apparently the new strategy is to become even more incomprehensible.

Ugh. Great... the stuff Pasdar says about Nathan tells me he doesn't even understand what they did to Nathan's character last season.

No, I think it makes sense. What happened to the character in-story is one thing, but what mindset an actor has to get into in order to convey that is something else. Sometimes an actor needs to approach a part by analogy, as it were. The person he's playing now isn't truly Nathan Petrelli, but someone who's been conditioned to believe he's Nathan Petrelli and is acting out that role based on his perceptions of what the man was like. So Pasdar can't play the same Nathan he played before, a character that emerges from the inside. He has to play a Nathan that's an illusion based on an outsider's perception of him. It doesn't matter that the outsider truly believes he's Nathan; the version of Nathan he's playing is still built from the outside in. So "someone pretending he's Nathan" is a very good analogy for the actor to use in that sense. Obviously Pasdar can't know what it's really like to be someone who's been brainwashed into actually believing he's a different person based on telepathically absorbed knowledge and memories of that person, so he needs to find a more familiar analogy as a starting point for that characterization.

Lots of acting is done by analogy -- not by literally trying to feel exactly what the character's supposed to feel, but by drawing on something within your own experience that lets you summon the necessary response to create the desired illusion. For instance, when a character's crying because her husband has been murdered in front of her, the actress could be summoning tears by thinking of the death of her beloved gerbil. That doesn't mean the actress doesn't understand what happened to the character, just that she's applying her craft, finding the best technique to achieve her part of the creative process.

It's the larger context in which that performance occurs -- the context shaped by the writers, the director, the editor, etc. -- that defines the character's arc. So the actor doesn't have to do all of it himself; he just has to contribute his piece of the greater whole. And the way he chooses to do that may be by analogy rather than a literal reading of the script. Especially in an SF/fantasy context where the character is experiencing something impossible to find a real equivalent for.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Apparently the new strategy is to become even more incomprehensible.

Ugh. Great... the stuff Pasdar says about Nathan tells me he doesn't even understand what they did to Nathan's character last season.

Yeah, there's no way to "redeem" Nathan now. But the guy Pasdar is playing this coming season could be an interesting and worthwhile character in his own right and in a sense, Nathan did help create that character, which I suppose is redemption of a sort, if the new guy turns out well.

 

[startrekwatcher]

None of this indicates to me the show is getting back on track. As Adrian points out--the same group of writers responsible for last season are still there, the show already attempted to slow the pace down and reduce the number of characters and plot threads focused on in a given episode and it didn't help that much. The majority of the characters became so off-putting that any attempts to rehabilitate them had little effect.

None of the interviews regarding season four have made me want to tune back in. I expect it to be more of the same. Also Adrian thinks that this "Nathan" can vicariously redeem the original Nathan. I don't buy that.

 

[melancholymecha]

Apparently the new strategy is to become even more incomprehensible.

Ugh. Great... the stuff Pasdar says about Nathan tells me he doesn't even understand what they did to Nathan's character last season.

Yeah, there's no way to "redeem" Nathan now. But the guy Pasdar is playing this coming season could be an interesting and worthwhile character in his own right and in a sense, Nathan did help create that character, which I suppose is redemption of a sort, if the new guy turns out well.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulacrum

which I think is intriguing. At least for me it's more interesting than just watching a person(Sylar) who thinks he's someone else. In this scenario we still get a Nathan(though not the original,) not just a confused Sylar, which has already been done to death.

 

[Peter the Younger]

Ugh. Great... the stuff Pasdar says about Nathan tells me he doesn't even understand what they did to Nathan's character last season.

Yeah, there's no way to "redeem" Nathan now. But the guy Pasdar is playing this coming season could be an interesting and worthwhile character in his own right and in a sense, Nathan did help create that character, which I suppose is redemption of a sort, if the new guy turns out well.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulacrum

which I think is intriguing. At least for me it's more interesting than just watching a person(Sylar) who thinks he's someone else. In this scenario we still get a Nathan(though not the original,) not just a confused Sylar, which has already been done to death.

Right. In fact, if they go with the redemption angle, it kind of promises an interesting moment when the Patrelli's wonder if Nathan 2.0 is a better person because he's based on the image the original Nathan as perceived by those around him, not the original weak-will politician. It's a sort of Solaris-esque take on it.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Sylar did take Nathan's persona via picking it up from objects (such as the gossipy cufflinks ), so in that sense, Sylar's new identity is based on the real Nathan and not the image that people have of him.

Unfortunately, I don't see how this story can really be "about" Nathan. It's going to be about Sylar finally getting what he's wanted all along - he's now got a family and an important role to play, so even when his Nathan persona inevitably becomes aware of the truth, I suspect that Nathan will want to hang onto his false identity, and the Sylar half will battle him for control. If Nathan wins in the end (and that's my bet), it will be because Nathan is what Sylar wanted to be all along, and being Nathan solves all his "issues" which causes him to be a psycho, rather than being redemption for Nathan.

But it would be easy for the writers to try to cloud the issue and convince us otherwise.

 

[melancholymecha]

the best thing they could do is just keep it vague somehow..that way the Sylar fans can believe that Syalr made the choice to be Nathan, & the Nathan fans can believe that the Nathan copy won the fight for the body.

 

[Guy Gardener]

O. Maybe that's why Angela could get away with saying that she was his mother when he saw the history of some one when Arthur couldn't pass his lie dinger? She'd known, dreamt ages earlier the fates installed for Nathan that Sylar would one day have no choice but to be her flesh and blood and begun to treat him so a little early.

Back pedal over the plot much?

 

[Alidar Jarok]

I don't think Sylar could tell the history of a person, just of an object.

 

[Christopher]

I don't think Sylar could tell the history of a person, just of an object.

From the Heroes Wiki:

Sylar was able to see at least some of Claire's history by touching her. He experienced the pain he inflicted on her by attacking her (Angels and Monsters). While Sylar was confronted by Nathan, Sylar told Nathan he knew everything about his life and told him that Angela helped him get an ability that allows him to see the history of an object he touches. He held up a jacket that Nathan wore when he "betrayed everyone." ( I Am Sylar) While disguised as Nathan, he is able to see that Claire and Nathan spent some time together in Mexico by touching her necklace. (An Invisible Thread) He was also able to identify Liam Samuels by shaking his hand. Sylar implies that he can use this power to absorb all of a person's memories, but only if they are conscious. He is unable to absorb Nathan's full set of memories because he was still unconcious from Danko's tazer darts, so instead he absorbs bits and pieces of Nathan's life story from the objects around his office.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

the best thing they could do is just keep it vague somehow..that way the Sylar fans can believe that Syalr made the choice to be Nathan, & the Nathan fans can believe that the Nathan copy won the fight for the body.

It's too late be vague; Nathan is dead. Nothing vague about that.

But how people interpret the situation depends on the individual. Some people apparently accept that memories can "actually" turn Sylar into Nathan; others don't believe that. But the writers being vague won't alter that debate since it depends on the audience, not the story.