Shake Up With Heroes - Loeb OUT!

[Temis the Vorta]

Double posting be damned, this deserves its own post:

Kring's plan to salvage Heroes.

Kring has assured NBC and Universal Media Studios brass that he intends to focus on simplifying what's been criticized, even by ardent fans, as an overly complex storytelling structure to get back to the show's comicbookish good vs. evil themes and to emphasize character development more than plot twists.

...

Now, the thinking is that his focus is needed most in breaking stories and refining the tone of the show for the remainder of its third season.

GOOD! Loose the tangental characters and don't add ten thousand more. Focus on the key characters, and what they are "about," and let the plotlines emerge from the characters, don't shoehorn characters into a pre-detemined plot and make them stupid in order to get them to fit. Reduce the number of storylines by placing at least two main characters in each storyline; tangental characters who remain can be added to these storylines as it makes sense (like when Noah and Matt teamed up with Ted in S1).

But Heroes never had "comic bookish" good vs. evil themes in the sense of being simplistic. And for that matter, the best comic books don't have simplistic good vs. evil themes, either. But if this means that the themes and characters need to be clearly explained and have a point, I'm all for it.

More scuttlebutt, from eonline, in support of the notion of Bryan Fuller's return!!! Amazing how well they're following my psychic commands.

I've just been told by reliable insiders at NBC that Heroes most likely will replace Jeph Loeb and Jesse Alexander with at least one new writer-producer, and one of the names being tossed around is Bryan Fuller, the creative genius who served as a consulting producer for the first half of the first season.

The upside? This would be nothing short of awesome, as Fuller's Heroes episodes were some of the strongest ever. If anyone can save this show, he can.

The downside? One would assume this could only happen if Fuller's current obligation, Pushing Daisies (which he created), does not get picked up, which would be a heart-breaking TV tragedy.

Maybe we should inform the Pushing Daisies fandom because this certainly would seal that show's fate.

 

[the Dagman]

I saw something rather interesting last night during the SNL Presidential Bash...

Spoiler: Hiro...

There was a preview scene where Arthur Petrelli had both hands on Hiro's face with Hiro screaming. Perhaps leaving the elder Petrelli as the only remaining time traveler.

 

[Snaploud]

I saw something rather interesting last night during the SNL Presidential Bash...

Spoiler: Hiro...

There was a preview scene where Arthur Petrelli had both hands on Hiro's face with Hiro screaming. Perhaps leaving the elder Petrelli as the only remaining time traveler.

...unless Hiro is just experiencing a vision (through another character's eyes)...

 

[roguephoenix]

They have already written an out for them to use for Hiro. Ando kills him. I think that as long as they give Ando good reason for doing so, they should stick with it and kill him for real. The only other way out would be for Arthur Petrelli to eat his power. But he already has it thanks to Peter. So kill him.

i suspect that was more like a pretense like what they did with the sword. he needed to appear to kill him. that was never intended to be an out. and plus the fact that he knows about it, he'll be more guarded when the time comes.

^Over 70 years of Superman has proven that there's nothing wrong with having a hero that's at the top of the food chain.

There's no reason to reboot anything. The simple motto "Don't Do Dumb Things" applies here. Taking Peter's powers away - dumb thing. Having Hiro fail to use his powers to fix problems without a good reason - dumb thing.

well as we've seen there are a lot of beings that are capable of taking down superman at least for a while so that kind of balances out.

taking peter's powers away - good thing. they wrote him too powerful. there's no way to go from there but down. they don't know how to make him use his powers. if you really think about it, all the stuff he can do, there's not much need for the others. contrary to what they've shown us about him, he can fix most of the things that have gone wrong. that's the problem. he makes everyone else redundant and at the same time necessary because he's practically useless for all those powers he has. he needed a restart. hiro needs the same because he's just getting irritating. he's being put in situations that he doesn't need to be because he can undo or fix them with literally a blink.

i just don't know how they'll be able to pull the show tight now that they've delved into more grandiose stuff. they're here trying to save the world then we'll be pulled back to a smaller scale? it's not as easy to accept because you want shows to grow bigger not smaller. but they just went overboard this season. maybe a reboot might not be such a bad idea. giving everyone a clean slate, ending the current predicament, making it more acceptable to look at the show at a smaller scope. hiro can certainly make this happen. if a reboot has to be done, then he'll probably instrumental in making it happen.

 

[stj]

Heroes has already savagely cut supposedly tangential characters, such as Matt's wife, Nathan's wife and kids, Claire's friend Zack (yeah, I know that wasn't all their doing, but still,) Hiro's sister and turning Angela and Arthur into supers. And they've cut Ando in the sense that killing him or him killing Hiro means he's not an ordinary person any more. One of the enormous differences between Heroes first season and later, inferior Heroes is the indifference to ordinary people. Ando probably survived only because he was almost purely comic.

The main characters are Peter, Claire, Hiro and Ali Larter. Peter is, was and will always be Emo Boy, and there's nothing you can do with that. He is monstrously self absorbed but his Kring Power means he will never grow up. That means all Nathan and Angela storylines eventually abort.

Claire is destined to be purity constantly in threat of defilement, Supervirgin. Her perpetual anger is only sensibly motivated by daddy issues. The problem there is that Noah Bennett was retconned as good, and his cruelty and ruthlessness turned into humdrum badassness. Now Claire has no true problems. She's just neurotic.

Hiro was intended as a comic figure from the beginning. The Comic Hero does not grow up, but does the same routine. Whether they will ever have nerve enough to let a pudgy character, and a Japanese one too, actually become a true hero is doubtful. Heroes does not handle off-white characters well, I fear.

Sylar was nothing but a maniac. Keeping him around to motivate the plot has nothing substantive to offer. Trying to change him was the only smart move they made, but too late for me.

Ali Larter's first incarnation was doomed by being a white character in a interracial relationship. I couldn't see anything in the new version. But plainly she too has the Kring Power.

 

[Good Will Riker]

Hiro was intended as a comic figure from the beginning. The Comic Hero does not grow up, but does the same routine. Whether they will ever have nerve enough to let a Japanese character, and a pudgy one too, actually become a true hero is doubtful. Heroes does not handle off-white characters well.

Ali Larter was doomed by being a white character in a nonracial relationship. I couldn't see anything in the new version. But plainly she too has the Kring Power.

Racist Hollywood.

 

[stj]

^^^Writing errors corrected.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Sylar was nothing but a maniac.

Poor Sylar, why do people continually misunderstimate him! The first things we learned about him:

1. Voice mail to Chandra (before they'd even cast Zachary Quinto, so the voice was someone else, I think Maurice La Marche from Futurama?), blaming Chandra for "making him this way." Classic method for deflecting guilt by casting blame on someone else.

2. Mohinder discovering the secret room that Sylar covered with FORGIVE ME scrawled all over the place. That's serious guilt, expressed directly and obsessively.

Taken together those two HUGE clues tell us that Sylar was consumed with guilt from the very first and was always a complex and ultimately very human character. So why is it so hard to believe that he is relieved to have a means of trying to turn his life around, and making a serious effort to do so, now that he has a reason to have any faith in his ability to succeed?

SYLAR! WAS! NEVER! JUST! A! MANIC! From the start, he has been portrayed in a multifaceted way that gave the writers all sorts of directions in which to take him. A lot of viewers like him being a simplistic maniac, so they're seeing things the writers never intended. Don't blame the writers for your own wishful thinking. They've telegraphed their intentions from the start: "Don't get any settled ideas about Sylar because we haven't settled what we think about the guy."

They kept their options open by sending mixed signals. Now in S3, they've finally told us which way they've decided to jump, and it's as valid a decision as any other they could have made.

I've been telling you people for a year now or longer, since we learned Quinto was cast as Spock, that Sylar would be redeemed to keep him a viable character long enough to take advantage of the publicity tsunami that will be hitting this winter and spring. Kring is no dummy. It's been obvious for a long time where Sylar would go and if you're surprised, you just haven't been paying close enough attention to either the in-show hints or the external real-world factors.

 

[stj]

Well, the first thing we learn about Angela is that she is a pathetic loser caught shoplifting. Rather hard to reconcile that personality quirk with what we've seen lately? Initial hints about any of the characters are probably meant to be misleading. The later backstory revealed for Sylar's relationship with Chandra Suresh doesn't easily fit the Complex Sylar thesis. As I remember the motive for killing Chandra was the opposite of the message. And there simply is no room given for the secret room, which I think is like the three toed giant on Lost.

The case for a more complex first season Sylar really rests upon the scene with his mother, though. I think it does show a Complex Sylar. But the manifest of horror of matricide also reads as Evil Maniac. That Sylar was quickly turned into the nut job who kills his nurse while he's still barely able to walk. Then, powerless, he's the guy who can't manage to manipulate his own mother somehow turns into a blu-ha-ha Svengali who can get satisfaction by manipulating Maya, who is little more than a mass murder machine.

So, strictly speaking, second season Sylar was nothing but a maniac, who had no good reason to be resurrected. And the return of Sylar to the more nuanced view of first season was one of the few good things they've done. But still too late for me.

 

[the_wildcard]

I actually bailed out a few episodes into season 2.

I guess I did not miss much after all.

I bailed out after a couple of eps into the season. I actually only caught on in season 2. I had to catch up on season 1 through episode summaries, which sorta sucks since from everyone's response, season 1 was the best.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Well, the first thing we learn about Angela is that she is a pathetic loser caught shoplifting. Rather hard to reconcile that personality quirk with what we've seen lately? Initial hints about any of the characters are probably meant to be misleading.

The writers toss out all sorts of crap and then wait to see which elements they will find useful to bring back into the story. They're smart that way, because then they can rationalize whatever direction they decide to take the story and characters in. But because the "clues" were out there, there's no basis for us saying they were "wrong" when they finally make the decision which way to jump.

There's definitely no basis for saying "Sylar was just a manic." From the start, Sylar was both a maniac and a complex, guilty conflicted soul and there was even the implication of a religious tie-in (a crucifix type object on the wall in the secret apartment that Mohinder discovered - that element has never been followed up on, and I'm pretty sure it will be kept that way.)

The writers were holding back on a definitive characterization until this season, and now they've gone for "complex, guilty conflicted soul." it's no more wrong than anything else they could have opted for. You're dissapointed that they didn't go for your preferred characterization but it's their story, not yours, and they gave themselves an ironclad out for whatever decision they made. Clearly, they hadn't decided which way to jump way back in S1, so they were planning for the future by keeping things loose.

And as far as we know, Angela's shoplifting will be brought back into the story, as will Arthur's so-called "suicide." Or maybe they will be more elements that the writers decide to drop, like the crucifix on Sylar's wall.

 

[Hermiod]

taking peter's powers away - good thing. they wrote him too powerful. there's no way to go from there but down. they don't know how to make him use his powers. if you really think about it, all the stuff he can do, there's not much need for the others. contrary to what they've shown us about him, he can fix most of the things that have gone wrong. that's the problem. he makes everyone else redundant and at the same time necessary because he's practically useless for all those powers he has. he needed a restart. hiro needs the same because he's just getting irritating. he's being put in situations that he doesn't need to be because he can undo or fix them with literally a blink.

If this whole season proves anything, it's that Peter and Hiro can't fix things that go wrong just by time travelling.

I doubt one Blu-Ray buying viewer from the UK will make a difference to whether or not this show stays on the air, but it's doing dumb things like taking a superhero's powers away that makes me not want to watch.

 

[RJDiogenes]

He's only been powerless for a couple of issues... er, episodes. Taking away a superhero's powers is a time-honored trope of the genre. I'm betting it won't be long before his powers are returned, at least partially.

 

[Hermiod]

He's only been powerless for a couple of issues... er, episodes. Taking away a superhero's powers is a time-honored trope of the genre. I'm betting it won't be long before his powers are returned, at least partially.

Doing it once is enough, and they used up that Get Rid of Powers Free card with Sylar in season two.

 

[stj]

So, strictly speaking, second season Sylar was nothing but a maniac, who had no good reason to be resurrected. And the return of Sylar to the more nuanced view of first season was one of the few good things they've done. But still too late for me.

That is myself. And much bigger disappointments were the abolition of ordinary people and the way too easy redemption of Bennet, not the ludicrous Sylar of season two.

But no, I don't think random bits of charactization tossed out qualify as smart writing.

 

[ClayinCA]

Indeed, it's the oft-delayed Hulk that Loeb writes.

I wish that was the actual title: "The Oft-Delayed HULK"!

That and the abomination known as Ultimates 3.

...which doesn't actually have The Abomination in it! (Sorry, I couldn't resist. I do agree with your assessment, though.)

I had an idea a few years back that you could have a sequel to Commando that focused on his daughter, "Jenny" played by Alyssa Milano, who grew up being trained by her father (as shown in the opening credits) and takes on the Matrix tradition of kicking ass and leaving only bodies behind. Loeb has some free time now...

Loeb has actually had this same idea. He talked about it in a recent podcast interview, I seem to recall.

 

[Mallet]

The shoplifting thing bothered me as well, but it could easily be explained that she had a dream and it was important for her to do that to bring Peter and Nathan together to have that argument at the police station so that Peter would go out and try to use his power to fly. Or some such, explanation.

Also, Matt did use his power in season one to stop a regular crime. he was in a corner store and "heard" the guy planning to rob it. He confronted the would be robber and got him to take off.

 

[Hermiod]

I wish that was the actual title: "The Oft-Delayed HULK"!

I just wish they'd stop calling him "Rulk".

...which doesn't actually have The Abomination in it! (Sorry, I couldn't resist. I do agree with your assessment, though.)

Considering what the Hulk did to him in Ultimates 2, I'd be glad if I was him.

 

[blockaderunner]

I had an idea a few years back that you could have a sequel to Commando that focused on his daughter, "Jenny" played by Alyssa Milano, who grew up being trained by her father (as shown in the opening credits) and takes on the Matrix tradition of kicking ass and leaving only bodies behind. Loeb has some free time now...

Loeb has actually had this same idea. He talked about it in a recent podcast interview, I seem to recall.

Yeah, but the feat would be to try to make Alyssa Milano a believable commando-type soldier without making her out to be yet another cliched, post-Buffy Mary Sue.

But back to topic. I think what made Season 1 was so compelling, to me at least, wasn't the premise or the characters. It was the theme. The idea that ordinary people from all walks of life were suddenly thrusted into amazing circumstances due to the amazing things they found out they could do. And you had a diverse collection of people whom the average audience member could identify with. The office drone with a Walter Mitty complex, the beat cop trying to do right by his family and community, the morally conflicted rising political star, the nurse who feels that he is destined for much more, the single mom trying to support her son through internet porn, and the list goes on. That "ordinariness" was pretty much put at the back burner in favor of X-Files-esque conspiracies and implausible plot twists.

Another thing that has hurt Heroes was the fact that the core group form Season 1 were created with a short shelf life. Kring said that idea was to have a new group of supers for every season. But when fan reaction was was positive for the characters, Kring had no choice but to bring back the season 1 group that wasn't built for the long haul. I'm not going to go all Trek and say it was the fans' fault, but had the audience fell in love with the concept instead of the characters, much like they did for Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone, we'd probablay be seeing a much different, and marginally better, Heroes this season.

 

[TheArsenal]

Another thing that has hurt Heroes was the fact that the core group form Season 1 were created with a short shelf life. Kring said that idea was to have a new group of supers for every season. But when fan reaction was was positive for the characters, Kring had no choice but to bring back the season 1 group that wasn't built for the long haul. I'm not going to go all Trek and say it was the fans' fault, but had the audience fell in love with the concept instead of the characters, much like they did for Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone, we'd probablay be seeing a much different, and marginally better, Heroes this season.

I agree. The characters coming right out the gate were pretty broad, easily recognizable sketches built to scurry about a well constructed story and serve the plot. They, with the possible exception of Noah to some degree, were not really built for in depth characterization or to last over seasons. The longer they're around, the less they do makes sense.

And, listening to fans is one thing. Can do some good on occasion; a tweak here and a tweak there for improvement (see: Lost's Nikki and Paulo). But listening to fans instead of sticking to your long term vision: disaster in the making. Fans taste will hijack things to a degree where Urkels, Fonzies and Boba Fetts populate the screen.