NBC still clueless what was wrong with Heroes

[RoJoHen]

I know it was never the plan to continue with those characters beyond Season 1, but I honestly would have been annoyed if we never saw them again after that season. It just didn't feel at all like their story was over.

There was so much potential, and you're right, they could have gone in many different directions. I think their biggest mistake was splitting up the characters. The whole point of Season 1 was that all of these different characters were heading towards a place where they would all meet and interact. When Season 2 started and they were all separated again, I was incredibly annoyed.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

I know it was never the plan to continue with those characters beyond Season 1, but I honestly would have been annoyed if we never saw them again after that season. It just didn't feel at all like their story was over.

There was so much potential, and you're right, they could have gone in many different directions. I think their biggest mistake was splitting up the characters. The whole point of Season 1 was that all of these different characters were heading towards a place where they would all meet and interact. When Season 2 started and they were all separated again, I was incredibly annoyed.

Problem #1, I think, was the name of the show. It's called Heroes. Why was it not about people with superpowers doing heroic things? Instead, it was about regular people who just happened to have powers, and tried not to let it affect their lives--and they would, when forced, do something heroic.

It never made any sense that these people kept coming together and then splitting up--especially once the government was actively pursuing them! Get a clue, people: there's strength in numbers.

The overall arc of the show could have been about transforming the Company from a quasi-police organization that "bagged and tagged" dangerous supers into a paramilitary group that had teams of supers to counter the "bad" ones. They touched on this ever so slightly with the "New" Company, but never did anything with it. Just another example of the show's wasted potential.

 

[Aragorn]

It never made any sense that these people kept coming together and then splitting up--especially once the government was actively pursuing them! Get a clue, people: there's strength in numbers.

The scene in season 4 where Tracy showed up from out of nowhere to rescue Noah and Claire... and then just left instead of helping them take down Samuel, was so typical of Heroes.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

If the US started doing TV like the UK you'd see more quality and more risk. Shorter runs, fewer eps per season, etc. Look at HBO.

HBO has shows that run for years and milk every last bit of profit from them. They don't change lead characters.

The difference in approach between HBO and networks is because of the large percentage of revenue HBO gets from subscriptions vs ads. The reason for HBO's better quality is that they have the luxury of catering to small niche audiences because each audience member is more valuable than one audience member in the ad-based revenue model and fewer of them can support a TV show.

If we're all willing to fork over money for HBO style shows, we'll get more of them. This is just an example of getting what you pay for. Make yourself more valuable by forking over money, and your tastes will be catered to. Otherwise, be happy with garbage.

Heroes failed because it had one season-worth of story in it, from the perspective of the showrunners,

Then the showrunners lack imagination something awful. That premise had five or six good years in it, handled properly.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Heroes failed because it had one season-worth of story in it, from the perspective of the showrunners,

Then the showrunners lack imagination something awful. That premise had five or six good years in it, handled properly.

Absolutely. But the progression of the show reveals that they really had no idea what to do beyond the first season. NBC should've sacked the whole writing staff after volume 2 and put competent people in their place.

 

[RoJoHen]

Absolutely. But the progression of the show reveals that they really had no idea what to do beyond the first season.

Which is absurd. The natural progression was obvious, but they seemed completely oblivious to it.

 

[captcalhoun]

i was hoping that we'd get more villains, more heroes like Hiro - IE actually enjoying having powers and not moping and trying to do right - and that they'd eventually form some kind of X-Men/Avengers/JLA stylee team and that there'd be a RBF that would out the supers and the super team would be publically lauded.

and maybe some kinda government super-soldier team (like we almost had in Vol. 3) that would kick ass, take names and bring in an international dimension to it that it lacked.

 

[Hermiod]

^Yeah, I hoped we'd get more people like Hiro (well, not the part where he intentionally caused problems he had to solve) and less like Peter (who clearly didn't even give a shit when he lost his powers over and over again).

I've kind of drawn a line under Heroes. It had so much potential but they just blew it.

 

[Anwar]

Would've helped to get comic book writers on-staff, and GOOD ones instead of post-breakdown types like Jeph Loeb.

 

[startrekwatcher]

Why do you always hate on cop shows? Many have compelling characters and story arcs.

Because if you've seen one you've pretty much seen them all. I mean how many ways can you rob a bank, kill somebody and how many ways are you going to solve it.

Plus they recycle the same flaws in cops or in how they pair up partners--they are either corrupt, following in their father's footsteps, they are alcoholics, they let the job get to them etc etc. They are also very formulaic--you know someone in the standalone did it and most likely the least likely one you suspect.

I once enjoyed them when I was younger and it was all new because I hadn't seen them before. Now I know the drill and it isn't much fun.

 

[Hermiod]

^To be fair, there are shows like Columbo that have a compelling lead character that takes the show beyond the usual obvious nonsense.

 

[startrekwatcher]

^To be fair, there are shows like Columbo that have a compelling lead character that takes the show beyond the usual obvious nonsense.

I enjoyed Columbo, Hunter, NYPD Blue, Hill Street Blues but what I was getting at was the stuff that is out now isn't that good compared to those shows in my opinion. I've sampled Rizzoli & Isles, NCIS, CSI, CSI NY, Law & Order SVU, L&O CI, Memphis Beat, The Closer etc and I just find them very derivative and boring.

 

[Hermiod]

^Oh yeah, with cop shows, older is better, definitely.

The Law and Order and CSI shows are so mindlessly generic. Every episode I see seems to take people with some sort of unusual interest and then distort it to make out that there's something wrong with the people who enjoy it.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Heroes failed because it had one season-worth of story in it, from the perspective of the showrunners,

Then the showrunners lack imagination something awful. That premise had five or six good years in it, handled properly.

Absolutely. But the progression of the show reveals that they really had no idea what to do beyond the first season. NBC should've sacked the whole writing staff after volume 2 and put competent people in their place.

Yep. Sometimes the suits do need to "interfere."

 

[Sheep]

I'll watch the Cape for Summer Glau.

I'd watch Summer Glau mow the lawn.

In a halter top, and daisy dukes..... <mind wanders off>

My dirty mind was taking "mow the lawn" in a completely different direction...

As for NBC execs still not understanding why Heroes failed, it's nothing short of a miracle that we get ANY good TV shows at all given how the networks work (or don't work, as the case may be).

 

[Gaith]

However, the blanket dismissal of all crime shows as cop or procedural shows is at the least imperceptive. Cops as authority figures matter, and not all "cop" shows have actual cops as the heroes. Thinking that doesn't make a difference is just wrongheaded. The CSI shows and The Mentalist just aren't the same as the others, for that reason alone.

Please. A spade is a spade, and a show in which cop protagonists solve farcically elaborate murders is a cop show. I don't give a hot damn if the main main character is a novelist, a lab technician, a fake psychic or a real one. It's just a craven and smutty business.

The Law and Order and CSI shows are so mindlessly generic. Every episode I see seems to take people with some sort of unusual interest and then distort it to make out that there's something wrong with the people who enjoy it.

I think that there's a great deal of truth to that.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

The Law and Order and CSI shows are so mindlessly generic. Every episode I see seems to take people with some sort of unusual interest and then distort it to make out that there's something wrong with the people who enjoy it.

I think that there's a great deal of truth to that.

Actually, there isn't. The perps on the L&O shows are usually shown to be dysfunctional in some fundamental way beyond whatever unusual interest they might have.

Normal person + unusual interest = nothing to worry about.

Deranged person + unusual interest = recipe for violence!

I'll grant that it's been a while since I've been a Law & Order episode, but I don't recall any of the series making a habit of portraying non-mainstream interests in a negative light.

If anything is troubling about the L&O shows, it's the way they condition viewers to accept violations of Constitutional rights and dubious legal procedures in the pursuit of justice.

 

[Gaith]

Well, I think you're generally right about the L&O brand, though it can be disturbing to see them tie every social issue imaginable to some kind of weird murder. I was referring more to cop shows in general for adopting this practice; I actually mostly respect L&O, but not so much CI, because of the maddening complexity of the cases.

 

[McCoy]

I just found out that there was a show like L&O on the air 30 years earlier. Arrest and Trial. I hadn't known that before. Makes me wonder if Wolf ripped off the idea. Or maybe just figured that time was right to revive the concept.

 

[Myasishchev]

But seeing how the show spun its wheels while in neutral is only common sense, a trait not held by many of the brass at NBC apparently.

I think there might be a problem with your car. : /

There was enough setup in the first volume that they could've gone in a lot of different directions. I enjoyed "Generations" up until we got Adam Munroe's paper-thin motivation. I never did figure out why he wanted to wipe out the rest of humanity except to be a raging asshole. Great villain, there.

I basically got the impression that they were riffing on Ra's al-Ghul there. Immortal? Check. Wants to pare down humanity to an ecologically manageable level? Right. Likes swords? You betcha.

Unfortunately, while I'm sure that in 500 years of wandering this brutal Earth, Munroe might have developed some exceedingly good reasons for wanting to drop a plague bomb on humanity, the only one they actually showed was that he was prevented from sticking his dick in a girl that he'd known for about three days and who spent most of those yelling at him.

Also, what's up with the art design for this dumb Cape show? I thought I was looking at an Assassin's Creed sequel set in the late 1970s. Hell, even his breastplate looks like the plaque from Voyager 2. This clod looks like he ought to be shot into deep space.