Peter/Elle: Another example of failed Heroes potential

[Joe Washington]

I think this relationship had some potential the show only explored a bit of but they could have gone farther with it. I think they would have made an interesting, exciting couple like Buffy and Spike. Elle could have helped mold Peter into becoming the badass version of himself that we saw in the Five Years Gone future.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

We haven't yakked about Heroes in a good long time! I thought everyone had forgotten.

They should have stuck with the notion that Elle and Peter had a weird, kind of icky relationship, where Elle was obsessed with Peter, and Peter just tried to stay the frak out of her way, because that girl just isn't right. Gabriel and Elle should also have had a relationship, but let's face it, it was always Peter she wanted. I'm sure that wouldn't have bothered Gabe in the least.

I also liked the soapy twist of making Gabriel the brother of Peter and Nathan, because it gave Gabe a storyline that might have evolved him into a character who didn't need to pingpong annoyingly between "oh I'm so guilty" and "BRAAAAAINS." He could have seen himself as the successor to Arthur Petrelli, which would have laid to rest the idea that he wanted to be "special" as a motive (which made him too pathetic) and replaced it with a straightforward power struggle between himself and his brothers. And of course, he could still have been a psycho, but not an out of control one. At least not usually...

And they really did need to cast Peter Coyote as Arthur Petrelli. They needed an actor who could gleefully sink his teeth into the role of an outsized villain, who simply sees himself as superior to mere mortals and therefore justified in anything he does. That guy they cast just didn't have it in him.

I also liked the maternal relationship between Angela and Gabriel, but I wouldn't have made her his literal mother (which is implausible - how did Nathan not notice another brother being born???) I would have kept Virginia as Gabe's mother. Arthur could easily have been a bigamist, for the purpose of seeing what kind of wacky powered kids he could produce with another woman (and maybe it wasn't just limited to Angela and Virginia either).

Since Virginia didn't have powers, she must have come from a family who did, otherwise Arthur would have had no particular reason to think she was genetically interesting. So why couldn't Angela and Virginia be estranged sisters? That would give Angela a blood relationship with Gabe, and make the whole thing a hilarious, soapy mess, which I kinda love.

 

[Obiwanshinobi]

Peter Coyote? If he hadn't already done The 4400, I'm sure he would have taken it.

 

[Joe Washington]

I could see Virginia and Angela being estranged sisters. With these two as sisters, it makes you wonder and fear the family environment they were raised in.

Though I can see Peter trying to stay away from a sociopath like Elle, I can also see him feeling drawn to what Elle represents-the dark, tempting freedom to use one's powers, to hell with consequences. Peter would sometimes act as a moth to Elle's flame the way Buffy did with Spike in Season 6.

I also think Peter could have helped Elle be a bit less crazy (not entirely) and open up more emotionally which her father kept her from doing, seeing her as nothing more than an asset to the Company.

 

[Professor Zoom]

Elle was one of the reasons I started to hate Heroes. Not that I didn't have enough, but she was annoying as hell.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

I can also see him feeling drawn to what Elle represents-the dark, tempting freedom to use one's powers, to hell with consequences.

Yup. Also, let's face it, Peter's got serious masochistic tendencies. The masochism is the way he diverts the guilt over doing anything for himself. So if he started to use his powers selfishly, he would have needed to compensate all the more by being self-destructive. Elle would have just accelerated that cycle. That relationship could have been wonderful sick fun.

 

[melancholymecha]

sigh...Heroes, was season 1, what, 5 years ago? man they really screwed that show up huh? I still have the first season box set sitting on my shelf & I always ponder whether i should just sell the thing or give it another rewatch. I think Id just end up depressed again rewatching it & knowing how badly that show ended up being squandered.

 

[Professor Zoom]

sigh...Heroes, was season 1, what, 5 years ago? man they really screwed that show up huh? I still have the first season box set sitting on my shelf & I always ponder whether i should just sell the thing or give it another rewatch. I think Id just end up depressed again rewatching it & knowing how badly that show ended up being squandered.

Just look at it as a Maxi-series. That Season 1 was all there was and all that it was meant to be. That's what I do.

 

[Shurik]

Season 1, minus the final episode, is a pretty good superhero series. The rest of this mess is better left forgotten.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

It's really amazing how Heroes went from being a show with so much promise and potential to the utter trainwreck it became.

 

[Skywalker]

That's what happens when you start a show with no real long-term plan. Tim Kring was crazy to think his idea of telling brand new stories about brand new characters every season would have worked. He forgot to take into account the possibility that his first batch of characters would catch on (which, for the most part, they did) and make plans for longer-term arcs for them, if that were to happen.

Instead everything after Season 1 was just a meandering, jumbled, confusing, and (worst of all) boring mess.

 

[Myasishchev]

Counterpoint: There is nothing really wrong with Season 2 that was not already wrong with Season 1, just intensified. The seeds of Heroes downfall can easily be seen growing into a mighty oak of failure from the first episode on.

S1 was still pretty good, though.

 

[DevilEyes]

I could see Virginia and Angela being estranged sisters. With these two as sisters, it makes you wonder and fear the family environment they were raised in.

Though I can see Peter trying to stay away from a sociopath like Elle, I can also see him feeling drawn to what Elle represents-the dark, tempting freedom to use one's powers, to hell with consequences. Peter would sometimes act as a moth to Elle's flame the way Buffy did with Spike in Season 6.

I also think Peter could have helped Elle be a bit less crazy (not entirely) and open up more emotionally which her father kept her from doing, seeing her as nothing more than an asset to the Company.

I would find that a very interesting idea, if I didn't find Peter so dull and blandly acted. If he had been played by an actor with a bit more charisma and presence, I could get more enthusiastic about his storylines.

Anyway, even if they had gone with the Peter/Elle story, it would have ended the same: they would've ended up writing Elle out just the same, because they couldn't get Kristen Bell anymore. I really liked Elle, she was one of the few interesting female characters on the show (besides Angela) - sociopathic, but sympathetic because she was emotionally damaged, isolated all her life and manipulated by her father. They gave her some interesting (potential) storylines - she was set up as a parallel/contrast to Claire, and I liked Sylar/Elle, though more as an idea than in its execution (and by execution I mean the writing - Kristen and ZacharyQuinto had amazing chemistry and acted it really well). But I hated the way they proceeded to ignore her completely after she was killed off, like she never existed.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

That's what happens when you start a show with no real long-term plan.

But there was enough advance planning ability to come up with a coherent full season storyline, which is way better than most shows ever do - usually shows apart almost immediately, like The Event or at best you see partway into the season that they're headed off a cliff, like Flashforward. Why did Heroes go from being a show that could handle a full season of planning to a show that wasn't even tolerable on a week to week basis?

The show's problem wasn't just that there were no long-term arcs for the characters. There weren't even interesting short-term arcs, or short-term storylines. I could have been fairly happy just watching a show that doled out good stuff over the short run, nevermind the long run.

 

[Shurik]

That's what happens when you start a show with no real long-term plan.

But there was enough advance planning ability to come up with a coherent full season storyline, which is way better than most shows ever do - usually shows apart almost immediately, like The Event or at best you see partway into the season that they're headed off a cliff, like Flashforward. Why did Heroes go from being a show that could handle a full season of planning to a show that wasn't even tolerable on a week to week basis?

The show's problem wasn't just that there were no long-term arcs for the characters. There weren't even interesting short-term arcs, or short-term storylines. I could have been fairly happy just watching a show that doled out good stuff over the short run, nevermind the long run.

The main problem with the later Heroes seasons was that everything that happened was random and didn't make any sense on any level. Worst of all, this made the show boring, because it's hard to care about what's going on if it's impossible to care for any of those characters, because everything they do has no reason and makes no sense at all.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

That's what I mean, even the coherence of S1 was suddenly missing. If the show had continued with coherence only within a season but not between seasons, that would have been a vast improvement over incoherence between episodes.

For instance, if Kring wanted to introduce new characters all the time, and was more interested in writing for them for no more than one season, he could have done much better with Elle and Arthur. But those are examples of two characters whose stories went nowhere, even within the context of a season, or half a season!

And those are two characters who had some potential. Most other new characters, like Monica or Maya and Alejandro, were DOA from the first episode (in the case of Monica, it certainly wasn't the actor's fault).