NBC
One of the women’s magazines used to have a popular column called “Can this marriage be saved?” That’s how I feel about Heroes. I need a mediator to help me work through my feelings about Heroes. Who among you is willing to take on this monumental task?
Clearly, the show is doing some major damage control lately. Publicists are staying up late trying to figure out which entertainment mags will do cover stories, and interview requests are flying fast and furious (I’ve had a few land in my inbox unsolicited). They are BEGGING viewers to keep watching this show, but it might be too much too late, if ya know what I mean.
The Oct. 31 issue of Entertainment Weekly featured a cover story suggesting ways that NBC could rescue the dying sci-fi show. And a few days ago, they published a story noting that heads were rolling in an effort to chart a new direction for the show. Those heads belonged to co-executive producers Jeph Loeb and Jesse Alexander. Oh yeah, they rolled like Usutu’s sorry head in the African wilderness. Hey, maybe that scene was a message to viewers!
Still, the numbers don’t look good, people. Ratings are down 22 percent from last season, and the show is averaging a mere 9.4 million viewers, down from last year’s 11.6 million average. By comparison, season one hit a high of 16 million.
Ok, so numbers, numbers, numbers … what’s it all mean? It means Heroes better fix itself damn fast, or there won’t be any viewers to try and keep! I have a few show-saving suggestions of my own:
Stop with the ridiculous time-jumping! I loved season one because we could see the natural progression of the characters’ lives. We didn’t know why they were “special,” and they didn’t either. It was edge-of-your-seat fun watching them figure it out and eventually intersect with each other. The time jumps this season are screwing with the consistency and, well, our heads. And if you miss that crucial 2 seconds at the beginning of every scene that sets the time and place, well, just pack it in and knock back a couple shots of something. Trust me, it’ll help.
Create a big picture, dammit! Sure, we’ve got bits and pieces of a big picture, i.e. Pinehearst, The Company, Level 5, and so on and so forth. But it’s all over the place. We need more vision, less vague explanations. And along those lines…
Focus, people, focus! In season one, the episodes often focused on a single character and their journey, with bits of other characters thrown in for good measure. We connected with single mom Niki paying the bills by webcam stripping, mind-reader Matt going a little crazy with all the voices, cheerleader Claire jumping from tall buildings to test her healing powers. In this season, not only have these characters been absorbed by the larger black hole that is Heroes (another metaphoric scene perhaps?), but we only see a blur as the characters go by in every episode. It’s like watching the show flash before our eyes, a scattered collage of images and storylines. Really, it’s like a nightmare.
Trim the Heroes fat, and lots of it. It’s been said before but, OK, I’ll say it again. There are too many characters to keep track of! Contrary to popular belief, I am not alone in this thinking! Why not focus on the characters we either have a history with or have a really compelling story, like the puppet-master Eric Doyle and his past relationship with Meredith. Hell, why not kill off a major character or two, and see how the ratings soar. This is not rocket science, people. We need a reason to tune in every week. And so far this season, you’re not giving us one.
Tim Kring promises that the next volume – “Fugitives,” which begins early next year – will once again focus on core characters intersecting in a plot inspired by current events: homeland security, invasion of privacy, the war on terror. He says nothing about it will resemble anything from “Villains.”
Well, thank frickin’ God for that! Because I’ve invested several years of my life in these characters, and I’m not ready to start singing D-I-V-O-R-C-E quite yet. I’m pullin’ for ya, Heroes! I want you to succeed!
Clacked by Jane Boursaw 
on Nov 13, 2008 @ 16:00 EST5EDT
I totally agree. I love, love, love Heroes. I have followed it for three seasons. I have to admit, season 2 was not great but the writers’ strike didn’t help.
The need to trim the extra characters. Go back to the basic cast from season one. One more suggestion… quit with the Syler trying to be good… he was so much better as a bad guy. As a good guy, he is kind of a momma’s boy.
Good points all, but as an initially die-hard Heroes fan, I’ve found myself not really caring any more. We keep getting promises of things changing for the better, but nothing of the sort seems to happen. I don’t even look forward to new episodes any more.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t Kring say about last season that the “Villains” half, which was moved to season 3 because of the strike, was more focused? Didn’t he say that if there had been a full season 2 that when we got around to the villains chapter things would begin to click? Now he’s saying the same thing about “Villains” flowing into “Fugitives”.
Sounds like a lot of noise, but little action. I hope I’m wrong, but I don’t hope as much as I did last year (or the year before). I won’t quit watching before the season’s out, but if things don’t get “fun” again I’ll probably bail before season 4.
Well with Pushing Daisies canceled in all but being confirmed Bryan Fuller is going to go back to Heroes and waste his talent on the trash. They need to fire everyone and have only Bryan Fuller run the show.
I think Heroes is beyond saving. I was a die-hard who stopped watching after too much of the silliness of season 3. This show was very well conceived — for one season and one storyline. “Save the Cheerleader, Save the World” was excellent television which I really enjoyed. Everything since then has been pretty mediocre. I deleted Heroes from my DVR a few weeks ago.
Yes! You touched on a lot of what I felt when I stopped watching. I was telling my friend today that I stopped, and was telling her about the split second scenes and too many characters. She asked if the cast was like the size of Lost’s, and I said watching Heroes makes Lost look like a one-man stage play by comparison. The disjointed two minute segments when they try to feature every single character every week – it’s just done so poorly.
And when you talked about the first season, I realized something that happened that shouldn’t have. The first season, it was “save the cheerleader, save the world.” Most didn’t know coming into the timeline of the series that they had powers. They were all confused, a bit bumbling, but ready to give their powers a whirl. Some for good, some for bad. In absolutely no time at all they all seemed arrogant and cocksure of their powers and their place in the world. It really took away from the magic of the show’s premise. Somehow, seems like every “powered” person in the world now knows they have powers, about all the groups of good and bad guys….how did that all happen so fast? Where the hell is the magic?!
Thanks for a great post!
(1) Get rid of most of the characters. It’s not for me to say which ones. That should be determined by story, not by popularity, but most problems on this show (the reason most people don’t care) is because we’re presented with just too many characters to care about.
(2) Create more clash. Most ensemble shows work better when the two moral poles are well articulated. Most of the revelations in this season should have happened in last season, when they were supposed to talk about the previous generation. They tried to make this season more adult by creating moral ambiguity about the characters, but like every problem on the show, that the ensemble is too large is a huge problem in effectively doing that.
(3) Quit the time traveling or reading the future. 24, Alias and other shows that have evil people out for world domination don’t skip to the future and yet are still able to create suspense and thrill. The time jumping just takes away from the heroes in the present.
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I argue the points above, but in fact, I don’t think Heroes can be saved. This season is not as awful as last season, but it’s still bad. Kring whined to us last season, too. “Oh just wait till next season”, and has nothing to show for it. The first season was good, but at this point, Heroes should just die a semi-peaceful death.
Why is this crap allowed to be on, yet NBC canceled the great show Journeyman? Sorry, I had to get that in there.
Heroes kind of lost me with the rubbish ending to season 1, I honestly couldn’t care now since they’re in this endless loop of skipping back and forth in time to add new things which make it look like everything was part of an even bigger more convoluted plot. We’re supposed to think it’s clever, but it just makes me think I’m being mucked around with.
I agree, I invested in Heroes from the very beginning and even with the mediocrity of last year, I couldn’t bring myself to pull the plug. I do miss the episodes where they focused mostly on one or two characters at a time which really helped not just bring about a more coherent story but also give us insight into the characters. Monday’s episode for me was great, but then again, I had the show recorded so I could go back and watch bits that I missed or didn’t quite understand. I think that the two best things the show can do the regain its former popularity are as you mentioned, quit with the time jumps and focus more on one, MAYBE two storylines per episode (as long as they have a way to bring them together.) I’m rooting for you Heroes!
It can’t be saved while Kring is running the show. The cast is 3x bigger than it should be, each episode is schizophrenic, the characters get stupider each episode (that’s the only way the plot moves along), the dialog is insipid, most of the cast can’t act and the “big budget” special effects are a joke.
Kring had a good idea but it’s obvious that he never plotted out any long term direction for the show. Apologizing every 10 episodes and promising that it will get better isn’t cutting it for me (and apparently 7 million other viewers). I’ve stopped watching.