My problem with HEROES

[Hermiod]

Let's see here Hiro went into the future twice in the first season and made changes by returing to the past, he made one trip to save the waitress and failed. But if he went back and removed part of the formula from the safe before he opened in the past then Arthur wouldn't have his half of it. Even future Peter altered the past just by going back in the first place. Plus we've had both Peter and Hiro going to the future and seeing a city destroyed or emptied, the only way around that is take away their power, if only for a short time.

As it stands, right now, Peter's powers have been removed. Completely. They're gone.

They can't make up their minds whether or not Sylar still has the powers he gained before Hiro nearly killed him other than telekinesis and intuitive aptitude.

Hiro is conciously deciding not to use his powers to the fullest. Which is, I might add, a better way of dealing with the problems you mention than taking those powers away.

That's three major characters who have been, for want of a better term, nerfed. Ruined. May as well kill them off.

I don't want to watch a show about a goody twoshoes hospice nurse, the CEO of a Japanese company who doesn't know how to run a business and an insane watch maker. Those people aren't interesting. Give them superpowers and see how they use them. That's interesting.

I don't know how often I have to say this - they already gave us reasons why Peter can't just replace all the other characters and why Hiro can't just float about in time whenever he likes. They did that in season one. Future Hiro specifically said "I am risking a rift just by coming here" when he delivered the message to Peter. Potential damage to the space-time continuum is a very good limitation.

 

[Yassim]

Future Hiro specifically said "I am risking a rift just by coming here" when he delivered the message to Peter. Potential damage to the space-time continuum is a very good limitation.

Which means what exactly? Why was there no "rift" when Hiro spent several mind-numbing days back in feudal Japan? or falling in love with Charlie? Or warning Ando about his fake stabbing? What exactly are the stakes? and why should anyone in the audience care?

Like magic, time travel is a dangerous story-telling device. It needs rules, or else anything can happen at any time, and the story is pointless.

The "drama" in these choices is phony, forced and makes the characters look like idiots. The characters have explained (for the audience's benefit) that time travel into the past is risky because "it could cause a rift" (???) and because "it might affect things" (duh!) but as for seeing these risks... the only risk I've seen is that Hiro might try to bang his friend's girl... I've known guys like that without powers.

For now, I'm content to read the episode summaries and see if they say anything interesting. Two seasons later is much too late to explain to me why Sylar was painting "FORGIVE ME" on the walls. This last episode answered a bunch of questions I never knew I didn't care about.

 

[Hermiod]

Which means what exactly? Why was there no "rift" when Hiro spent several mind-numbing days back in feudal Japan? or falling in love with Charlie? Or warning Ando about his fake stabbing? What exactly are the stakes? and why should anyone in the audience care?

That's because they didn't follow through with it.

 

[Good Will Riker]

In my mind's eye I assumed season 1 to be the origin story, and season 2 to be the formation of the official team of heroes led by Nathan with Peter as the team's pointman (causing friction between brothers), Ando (as Watson to Hiro's Holmes) falling into danger and Hiro having to come to the rescue, and with Mohinder as a "Professor from Gilligan's Island" type character.

Alas, it was not meant to be, so which is the reason why I myself gave up on "Heroes" in early season 2.

Plus, the show was going around in circles.

 

[MilitaryCoo]

Series finale:

"End Program."

The holodeck grid appears

Spock (Sylar), Uhura (Black lady from Season 2), and Sulu's (Hiro's father) clothing return to their federation garments.

Sylar/Spock turns towards the camera and says: "That show was highly illogical."

Fade to black.

 

[RobertScorpio]

Well when I read interviews with Kring or King, or whatever his name is, and people ask him questions about continuity,and he responds with "umm, you're not supposed to thing about things like that", it really pisses me off..

He was the one who said it wouldn't be like TWIN PEAKS or XFILES or LOST and leave strings out there that are never tied..and that the show would all makse sense at the end...I am now worried, more than ever, that this show HEROES is going to implode upon continuity errors and even more viewers will jump ship when it becomes even more evident that they are just making this stuff up as they go..

Too bad...Heros season one was great...its gotten progressively worse, almost like 24...

Rob
Scorpio

 

[blockaderunner]

Yeah it helps a lot to have the DVDs and have rewatched them recently.

That has been the biggest copout excuse I've ever heard of nowadays.

Back before the concept of recordable programming, television shows had the one and only chance to impress viewers. Showrunners didn't have the luxury of having their seasons put out in a boxed set months after they air in the hopes that their viewers "get it". I'm sorry, but a show can't wow me during the run of its season, should be worth my time?

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Yeah it helps a lot to have the DVDs and have rewatched them recently.

That has been the biggest copout excuse I've ever heard of nowadays.

I didn't really intend that to excuse the writers, just explain why things that seem confusing or illogical to some people might be less so to others.

And in addition to a very complex storyline, Heroes has genuine logic and character flaws, no doubt about it. So it's not that the seamless writing is just being overlooked by viewers. Taking a good hard look at it can also expose flaws.

It's also very possible for stories to be so complicated they really can't be properly told via regular broadcast methods because too many details are forgotten or lost. In the olden days, TV producers didn't try for very ambitious formats. It was just one disposable weekly episode after another. I'm certainly glad to have something more interesting than that to watch.

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

^To an extent, you're right. It's nice to have a bit more complexity than shows often offered in previous eras of television. However, I think that there should still be some resolution at the end of the hour; some reward for sticking through the entire episode. By all means, weave each episode within a complex web of mythology & character arcs but each episode must also exist as a satisfactory (if slightly confusing) portion of entertainment on its own.

With Heroes, I often feel that there is none of that. The episodes frequently run together because there's no rhythm to them. Each story thread simply begins & ends at some random point. The end of the episode comes not when they've reached some kind of climax or turning point but simply because they've run out of time for that week. It's just a poorly constructed show much of the time.

 

[JoeZhang]

man - I'm glad I gave up at the end of season 2 - I keep meaning to watch the third season and then.. find something else to do...

 

[Professor Zoom]

man - I'm glad I gave up at the end of season 2 - I keep meaning to watch the third season and then.. find something else to do...

And I would recommend you just keep finding things to do. If need be, I can give you a list. Just...don't watch.

I'm in for a little while longer, because I feel some masochistic loyalty...but...man...it's coming to an end soon I think.

 

[DWF]

Yeah it helps a lot to have the DVDs and have rewatched them recently.

That has been the biggest copout excuse I've ever heard of nowadays.

I didn't really intend that to excuse the writers, just explain why things that seem confusing or illogical to some people might be less so to others.

And in addition to a very complex storyline, Heroes has genuine logic and character flaws, no doubt about it. So it's not that the seamless writing is just being overlooked by viewers. Taking a good hard look at it can also expose flaws.

It's also very possible for stories to be so complicated they really can't be properly told via regular broadcast methods because too many details are forgotten or lost. In the olden days, TV producers didn't try for very ambitious formats. It was just one disposable weekly episode after another. I'm certainly glad to have something more interesting than that to watch.

Tim Kring might not agree with you.

http://www.scifilog.com/redir.cgi?77762

As part of the panel, Kring said that his initial desire was to create an serialized ensemble drama along the lines of “24″ or “Lost” for NBC. The Peacock network didn’t have such a series and Kring thought that “Heroes” would be a perfect fit for the network.
Now, three years in, it appears Kring isn’t quite as sure the idea was so hot.
According to a report on IGN, he joked that quickly he wondered, “What was I thinking?” noting that a serialized show is “an absolute bear to do.”
Kring said he’s also finding, “It’s a very flawed way of telling stories on network television right now, because of the advent of the DVR and online streaming. The engine that drove [serialized TV] was you had to be in front of the TV [when it aired]. Now you can watch it when you want, where you want, how you want to watch it, and almost all of those ways are superior to watching it on air. So [watching it] on air is related to the saps and the dips**s who can’t figure out how to watch it in a superior way.”
Kring went on to say that he has no definite idea how the series could or will end, saying it has “no island to get off of.” He also said that his original vision for the series was to have the main cast be ever changing.
“My original idea was more of an anthological vibe to it, where you regenerate the characters,” he said. “The problem is you run into a whole series of issues, where show and business run into each other. The network falls in love with characters, the audience falls in love with characters, the press falls in love with characters. And it’s contractually hard to get people onboard for a brief period. You find yourself writing for characters you thought would be gone.”
Kring also says he doesn’t really respond to audience demands based on specific episodes because of the lead time required in producing the show.
“It’s never directly, because we’re so far ahead of them,” he said. “We were shooting episode 13 [the final chapter of the current volume, “Villains”] when we launched [Season 3]. Any feedback by the audience is irrelevant in terms of that. But bigger trends you want to follow.”

 

[Forbin]

Honestly, I LOVED stand-alone episodic TV. I have nothing against serialized series at all, and have loved many of them too. But pulling out a DVD of an old 60s series like Mission: Impossible or Wild Wild West on a weekend and watching a nice tight one-hour adventure while eating lunch is just WONderful.

 

[stj]

A multipart story is one form of serialization. Season one of Heroes was one big story told in weekly instalments. The plot was relatively sensible, characterization was pretty consistent, motives and changes in motives were more or less plausible, there was a thematic unity in the disparate stories where ordinary people, heroes or not, confronted the extraordinary. Then they continued the story by, basically, doing it all over again. That's the other form of serialization, where the favorite fantasies are reenacted over and over, with new personalities grafted onto the old favorites (almost always temporarily) just to make things seem different. That's soap opera writing, and it has a bad reputation for good reason.

Overall, delaying story resolution weakens the impact. No rule in writing is without exceptions of course, but serialization is really about delaying resolution just so the viewers come back, not for a good artistic reason.
Adding a serial storyline to real dramas, as in ER, just lards in a soap opera about the doctors and nurses, in between the meaningful stories. It rarely helps.

 

[RobertScorpio]

That has been the biggest copout excuse I've ever heard of nowadays.

I didn't really intend that to excuse the writers, just explain why things that seem confusing or illogical to some people might be less so to others.

And in addition to a very complex storyline, Heroes has genuine logic and character flaws, no doubt about it. So it's not that the seamless writing is just being overlooked by viewers. Taking a good hard look at it can also expose flaws.

It's also very possible for stories to be so complicated they really can't be properly told via regular broadcast methods because too many details are forgotten or lost. In the olden days, TV producers didn't try for very ambitious formats. It was just one disposable weekly episode after another. I'm certainly glad to have something more interesting than that to watch.

Tim Kring might not agree with you.

http://www.scifilog.com/redir.cgi?77762

As part of the panel, Kring said that his initial desire was to create an serialized ensemble drama along the lines of “24″ or “Lost” for NBC. The Peacock network didn’t have such a series and Kring thought that “Heroes” would be a perfect fit for the network.
Now, three years in, it appears Kring isn’t quite as sure the idea was so hot.
According to a report on IGN, he joked that quickly he wondered, “What was I thinking?” noting that a serialized show is “an absolute bear to do.”
Kring said he’s also finding, “It’s a very flawed way of telling stories on network television right now, because of the advent of the DVR and online streaming. The engine that drove [serialized TV] was you had to be in front of the TV [when it aired]. Now you can watch it when you want, where you want, how you want to watch it, and almost all of those ways are superior to watching it on air. So [watching it] on air is related to the saps and the dips**s who can’t figure out how to watch it in a superior way.”
Kring went on to say that he has no definite idea how the series could or will end, saying it has “no island to get off of.” He also said that his original vision for the series was to have the main cast be ever changing.
“My original idea was more of an anthological vibe to it, where you regenerate the characters,” he said. “The problem is you run into a whole series of issues, where show and business run into each other. The network falls in love with characters, the audience falls in love with characters, the press falls in love with characters. And it’s contractually hard to get people onboard for a brief period. You find yourself writing for characters you thought would be gone.”
Kring also says he doesn’t really respond to audience demands based on specific episodes because of the lead time required in producing the show.
“It’s never directly, because we’re so far ahead of them,” he said. “We were shooting episode 13 [the final chapter of the current volume, “Villains”] when we launched [Season 3]. Any feedback by the audience is irrelevant in terms of that. But bigger trends you want to follow.”

This interview has convinced me to stop watching HEROES....this KRING guy is just a hack...

Rob

 

[The Old Mixer]

That's...very revealing, DWF. I'm sticking with the show for now, but I can see where they honestly don't know what they're doing with it. If they can't get some good, creative inspiration in there, this show is going to go down in history as a pretty good one-season miniseries and a bunch of wheel-spinning filler that followed it.

Maybe Kring should be allowed to go back to his original vision...I have serious doubts that it would have played well with the general audiences who made this a ratings hit in Season 1, but creatively they might have been able to make things eventually tie together in a satisfying way.

 

[TheArsenal]

Honestly, I LOVED stand-alone episodic TV. I have nothing against serialized series at all, and have loved many of them too. But pulling out a DVD of an old 60s series like Mission: Impossible or Wild Wild West on a weekend and watching a nice tight one-hour adventure while eating lunch is just WONderful.

The new series Fringe has its problems, but it has an interesting solution to the serialized v. stand-alone approach (and X-Files may have done this as well, but I didn't watch that show regularly or carefully). Fringe offers up, every week so far, a straight forward television story - someone needs to be arrested, saved, or some answer needs to be obtained - with a recognizable beginning, middle and end. Each episode also doubles as a piece of the puzzle in the larger serialized story and Big Mystery. So while it may meander along toward its Big Answer resolution as slowly as Heroes, Lost, or even BSG to an extent, the episodic nature of the individual episodes alleviates much of the "spinning wheels" feeling.

 

[blaXXer]

My problem with HEROES

...not enough sex, right?