It's dead Jim. Heroes.

[coyote6]

Heroes suffered from poor writing, some of the worst I've seen. I stuck through all of the episodes and was frequently ashamed to admit I watched it.

Sylar, season 1, was an EXCELLENT villain. Why did they screw with that? They should have either,

a) let him die at the end of season 1, or
b) kept him as a bad guy.

The problem is that I don't think there was a way to keep him as an effective bad guy for long; either he'd win, and kill everyone (end of show), or he'd keep losing but somehow survive. After your villain has lost a million times, the villain tends to be less scary. Or maybe he's especially horrific, and keeps upping the ante; then people's suspension of disbelief begins to fail spectacularly when the heroes don't kill him or otherwise dispose of him completely. It's kind of a lose/lose situation. That's why actual superhero comic books have rosters of villains; you beat one, then he goes off to lie low for a while before he comes back to lose again.

I think one of the core problems with the show was that Hiro's, Sylar's, and Peter's powers were lousy for an ongoing show. Hiro's powers, once he's mastered them, are basically an I Win Button. Something happens? Teleport there, freeze time, fix it. Peter has Hiro's powers, plus everyone else's who he meets. Sylar has the powers of anyone he kills (and eventually, he doesn't have to even kill them). The characters either have to be stupid, the situations have to be incredibly contrived, or they solve them way too easily.

So the writers struggled with those problems. I think the last season was better than season 2, and light years better than season 3 -- and look what they did: restricted Hiro's powers, changed Peter's (mimic one power at a time), and messed with Sylar's brain such that it took most of the season for him to recover, and then stuck him in a loop for years, so he could change his personality (and thus make an anti-hero turn plausible, whereas the previous attempts foundered horribly on the simple fact that he was too crazy for any epiphany to seem plausible, and didn't have time to change organically).

I'm not sure if it took them that long to figure out how to change the characters, or if it took them that long to figure out that they needed to make those changes. In the meantime, we got two seasons of Peter and Hiro carrying the Idiot Ball, Sylar carrying the Mopey Ball, and them introducing way too many characters while keeping all the old ones. Combine that with the unfortunately common stretching out of storylines, and we got months where no storyline advanced appreciably, or they'd move forward two steps then back two.

I'm kind of sad that it's cancelled, in that there was theoretically a chance for it to be good -- especially if they didn't play stupid "we're going back to the status quo" games with the finale's public revelation of powers thing. If they went forward with a changed and changing world, that could've been neat.

OTOH, Hiro's powers were back to full strength, and Sylar was maybe a good(ish) guy and his powers were fine, so they were probably headed right back to "and why can't Hiro + Sylar + Peter solve this" territory again. So I'm kind of relieved that it was cancelled, and the chance of even greater suckitude was avoided.

 

[Steel_Wind]

Never in the history of 1 hour drama was a show so thoroughly and utterly screwed up by the writers of the show. The acting was fine, the budgets were fine and the effects and production values for one hour drama were high quality.

The writers and the series creator were shown to be third rate hacks who just got lucky with the first season. They weren’t comic writers and didn’t understand the problems they set themselves up for from the get go. Given what the writers had done with the first season, I don’t think there ever was a place to go with the show that would have worked.

Tim Kring was not a man who understood comic books – never claimed to - and the writers he engaged in the series did not understand them either.

By the time the first season was over, the writers had already painted themselves into a corner from the very first show. Peter was too powerful, so that the only way to balance Peter Petrelli’s power was through super stupidity. Once you go there with your protagonist, you cannot but antagonize your fans.

Sylar was a great villain, but the flip-flop madness that was the third season never made sense. He was the best thing about the show – but they never moved beyond him.

Hiro was always too powerful. They “solved” this problem with increasingly unlikely plot devices. It was always gong to end in tears. The Hiro we wanted to see the most of was the one they only showed us twice: Future Hiro from the first season.

In retrospect, the second season actually wasn’t all that bad. It wasn’t as good as the first and suffered from the writer’s strike. But as it turned out, it actually was the second best of the seasons. The third season was the spike in the coffin. Incompetence. Sheer incompetence.

A few lessons to be learned:

1 – Don’t let people who don’t understand comic books develop super hero shows.
2- The origin story of all superheroes is the interesting part. After that, it’s increasingly downhill. If you don’t plan for this well ahead of time, you’re screwed.

I was a faithful viewer of every episode until the death of Nathan in season 4. It wasn’t even that I liked Nathan that much. I just sensed at that time that was the place to let the show go. It was the series’ natural ending.

A shame really. But – make no mistake. Tim Kring discovered not by talent but by accident and was utterly unable to find it again. The fault is 100% his. NBC gave Heroes just about every opportunity for a high profile show that there was. And Tim Kring utterly squandered it -- from the very beginning.

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[Remus Lupin]

And, I'll add to that, NBC gave the show way more opportunities to fail than most other, equally feeble shows get. They kept looking to recapture that first season magic, and despite continually declining ratings and really rotten stories, NBC just kept going back to the well. I mean, heck, even now they're talking about a 2-hour send off movie. Would that the Sarah Connor Chronicles had gotten the treatment Heroes did!

 

[Fast Learner]

Tim Kring was not a man who understood comic books – never claimed to - and the writers he engaged in the series did not understand them either.

What's worse is that he was extremely proud of not having been a comic book guy, early-on he crowed about how he wasn't a comic book guy. Sadly, he's probably still proud of that, but it's the very thing that made the show suck so badly.

 

[fba827]

By the time the first season was over, the writers had already painted themselves into a corner from the very first show. Peter was too powerful, so that the only way to balance Peter Petrelli’s power was through super stupidity. Once you go there with your protagonist, you cannot but antagonize your fans.

This is more of a general comment, Steel-Wind was just the last person to mention it which is why I quoted him(her?)

Keep in mind that when Heroes was first developed, they intended it to be slightly more anthology type. So that with each volume they'd have new "heroes" allowing each volume to open with more origin type stories and how they learn to incorporate their abilities into being in their real life work/activities.
But after the reaction to the cast in the first couple episodes, the execs told the show they should rework the premise to stick with the cast that were made overnight stars.

I would link to stories if I took the time to google, but there were several interviews and stories to that effect back when the show first premiered.

I, personally, would have preferred that original concept.. more anthology and seeing how people were affected, etc.
also, stuff like sylar... yeah, he really shouldn't have survived as long as he did..his story dragged far beyond what i found interesting... the same is true for several characters actually.

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

This is more of a general comment, Steel-Wind was just the last person to mention it which is why I quoted him(her?)

Keep in mind that when Heroes was first developed, they intended it to be slightly more anthology type. So that with each volume they'd have new "heroes" allowing each volume to open with more origin type stories and how they learn to incorporate their abilities into being in their real life work/activities.
But after the reaction to the cast in the first couple episodes, the execs told the show they should rework the premise to stick with the cast that were made overnight stars.

I would link to stories if I took the time to google, but there were several interviews and stories to that effect back when the show first premiered.

I, personally, would have preferred that original concept.. more anthology and seeing how people were affected, etc.
also, stuff like sylar... yeah, he really shouldn't have survived as long as he did..his story dragged far beyond what i found interesting... the same is true for several characters actually.

I remember hearing something along that line and being surprised when season 2 came back with the same cast. I was expecting one or two carryovers to help transition and keep something familiar for the audience, but not just another story with all the same people. Thanks for reminding me of that. We'll never know what might have been if the execs hadn't forced that decision.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Keep in mind that when Heroes was first developed, they intended it to be slightly more anthology type. So that with each volume they'd have new "heroes" allowing each volume to open with more origin type stories and how they learn to incorporate their abilities into being in their real life work/activities.

An interesting thought. It would probably have been a stronger series if at the end of Season 1 Peter and Nathan Petrelli are heroically dead, Sylar is dead as per the prophecy and Hiro is trapped in the past forever.

Season 2 could have had fan-favourite Hiro having a story where he actually becomes his hero in the past, a few carry-overs from season 1 into season 2 and essentially new heroes 'breaking out'. The three most foolishly powerful heroes from the first series are out of the picture, giving the opportunity to develop new ones.

Ah, the power of lost opportunities eh?

 

[Merkuri]

An interesting thought. It would probably have been a stronger series if at the end of Season 2 Peter and Nathan Petrelli are heroically dead, Sylar is dead as per the prophecy and Hiro is trapped in the past forever.

That sounds like a show I could've really gotten into. (You meant "at the end of Season 1", right?)

 

[Phaezen]

Would it be blasphemy to think that Heroes season 2+ make me relived that Firefly was cancelled when it was?

 

[Plane Sailing]

That sounds like a show I could've really gotten into. (You meant "at the end of Season 1", right?)

Yes, I did - I'll go and edit it to make sense!