Could New Heroes Save NBC?

Even with the crack that was Season 2 and the worse crack that was the writer’s strike, Heroes Season 3 still premiered to a more than respectable ten million viewers. What killed the show was the constant side-switching and confusion in Season 3, and don’t even get me started on killing Nathan. That, more than anything, was probably the final nail in the coffin for the show.

What?

Hi, I assume you mean me. I’m not saying these things to boost my personal opinions as more valid than yours. If you actually read what I’m saying, I am trying to act as YOUR advocate. Some of us do have their collective ear, and have met with Kring and other writers in an effort to try and improve the show on YOUR behalf. We’re not going in there with solely our personal opinions on what would have made the show better, we’re reaching out to all corners of the fandom and the general public when we approach them. So, despite the anonymous slap to the face, you’re welcome.

I would take it back just to have some closure to some character arcs. Plus to see more of Samuel and Papa Sylar.

The Cape was a disappointment.

I think the “Company” would work. A series based on bagging and tagging “supers”, so you get fresh one’s every couple of episodes, along with their origin stories, etc, and if you really wanted to keep them around, make them join the Company, and probably some against their will, to see the dynamics.

Yeah, I still don’t care. I agree the first season was great, but I would add that its season finale was way anti-climactic and set the tone for the remaining run of the series. If there is no follow through, then I don’t care about the rest. (Hi, Lost!).

This is a horrible idea. But let’s pretend NBC were to use it.

“Keep everything that’s happened in the previous four seasons of the show in place, so that the fans of the show can be happy with the revival and that whoever’s in charge of the revival doesn’t have to start from scratch again.”

Or try alienating your new audience because people who haven’t watched the show before and there would be lots since this idea would be multiple production cycles away.

Also since the show was hemmoraging viewers it wouldbe hard to convince them to give the show another try if it was a defacto fifth season.

“but what if the series became one that ran all year, instead of all season, with stories lasting however many episodes necessary before passing off to an entirely different character/director/writer team?”

First of all massive change in creative direction, sorry massive repeated change in creative direction, as you envision it, would be a terrible idea. You yourself complain that the problem with Heroes was that it did not remain consistent. Also when the creative direction is being handed off and one team is fully wrapping up its storyfor another to jump in, many viewers will find that as a jumping off point not a continuation especially if the show is being aired year round as you imagine it.

“(No need for reruns = All-new material each week = More audience, in theory)”

This equation makes me laugh. At it.

Do you know how costly this production schedule would be???? especially because in order to maintain your schedule multiple production crews would haveto be filming at thesame time. This would have to pull the highest network ratings ever in order for NBC to invest that much money in it. And it most certainly would not.

1. Its fighting the bad reputation its already garnered from 3 of its 4 seasons.

2. Its not a reboot and that will inevitabley put some people off, regardless of how its executed.

3. Most people will not watch a show year round especially in the summer season. There’s a reason networks don’t air their big programs in summer, many people are out in the evenings and not infront of their TV sets. If those people miss a few episodes of Heroes then they’re almost guarunteed out altogether.

And yes there are DVRs but that doesn’t do much to help shows scheduled for friday nights let alone all summer which is basically as far as TV viewing goes one long Friday.

This is the worst idea ever, in no way a viable sollution for any problems NBC might have, and in no way a feasible option for creating a tv show.

Maybe I just don’t understand; but people here actually liked Heroes?

I grew up with comics, have been reading them for decades. I’ve been through the good and bad times of the last 30 years, and I cut my teeth on my mom’s collection from the 60s and 70s. I love superheroes and comics. This show had nothing to do with comic books and was no better executed than The Cape, The Event, or any other train wreck out there.

Heroes was, at best, mediocre in the first season. If you’d ever read a comic book or even a heroes journey-style fantasy novel, you saw the path of the narrative. Even if you didn’t, the writers spent no small amount of time telling everyone about the future through the deus ex machina of Future Paintings, which I hoped would go away when Isaac died. Of course no less than 3 more people managed to get future painting power, 4 if you count the one-off African who died. It was haphazard and poorly put together as the story drew all the characters together, and almost entirely unnecessary since at one point, Peter had every power set there. At best you could say it was watchable in the first season.

Then came the 2nd season. I can only assume that the writers woke up one day and said “Man, we really didn’t think this through. Let’s make some sweeping changes in order to correct our mistakes.” Most powerful character? Gets amnesia and his powers work erratically because someone realized Peter could raze cities with the amount of power he’d accumulated. New characters are introduced in order to try and spawn new stories, because origins are the only thing they can write, and a little lip service is paid to multi-culturalism because two of them are Latino. Time travel proves a tricky beast again, and some poor Irish girl is left in an alternate future full of dead people, and the topic is never brought up again. The Company…does things, none of which are very effective, especially trying to corral Sylar. Claire dates a flying emo kid who hates her dad. She eventually wants to reveal her powers to the world because she really can’t do anything other than heal, and finds that so very boring. As if that weren’t enough, there’s another threat, from the future, a virus that will kill everyone, perpetrated by someone from the past that Hiro was stuck in, who ultimately causes Adam to hate humanity and superhumans enough to want everyone to die. After that’s stopped, someone shoots Nathan. Why, you ask?

Season 3: because the future is bad again and Future Peter must shoot his own brother, even though he has about 100 other options with which to murder his brother, and only a few thousand more that don’t involve murdering his kin. For some reason, this causes Nathan to become Graydon Creed. Matt, whose powers just keep growing (this is when secondary mutations were stolen from X-Men because Loeb has nothing resembling an original idea in his head), has a strange pseudo relationship with someone who looks 17 who has zero chemistry, only to have her die. Supposedly, this is supposed to be character development. Claire, who is the most boring character, is pretty, so the writers have to find something for her to do. She runs an underground railroad for powers! No wait, she’s evil and bad ass from the future! No wait, she’s a loving/petulant daughter who constantly risks her family’s safety because she doesn’t feel emotionally fulfilled. There we go. And then there’s Peter, WHOSE POWERS CHANGE COMPLETELY FOR NO REASON WHATSOEVER, because the writers finally realized that having a god-level power makes all the others obsolete, including Sylar. Now he touches people and copies one power at a time, about 13 episodes into the season. This season was the worst written of all of them. I won’t even get into the stupidity of the cloning, the pointless first half of the season about the virus and evil father Petrelli, or the fact that the writers had to nerf Hiro because, once again, someone realized how incredibly powerful a time traveler who teleports with no seeming limit to his powers truly is, and how impotent it makes every other character. Oh, and then Nathan is murdered, Parkman evolves a new power just in time to do a mindswap on Sylar. Cue the bagpipes and eclipse. Oh yeah, Eclipses take away powers. Because. For a show with an evolutionary-minded geneticist on staff, they really didn’t spend a lot of time figuring out how the powers worked. I suppose it was more interesting to see Mohinder punch things, whenever he remembered he had super strength.

Season 4:Despite the power change, Peter seems to enjoy his new life actually doing something heroic for a change and far less grim mugging for cameras. Claire goes to college, again reveals her powers because, ultimately she wants to, all the time, because she needs constant attention from the world around her. Also, she’s a pseudo-lesbian because it gives her something to do and allows a few tight shots of her breathing heavily next to another pretty girl. And then the Carnival. This was actually interesting as viewers got to see new types of powers, or different characters using old powers in new ways. A fairly charismatic villain with a not unsympathetic outlook on life was presented. Things were looking up. And then we spent hours on HRG trying to be a father/family man/bachelor/independent investigator of superhuman affairs. Also, he has even more secrets about his past, all of them having to do with his sex life apparently. Hiro gets a brain tumor, because time travel is too powerful and they already made him a 10 year old. This also treats the viewer to very long, drawn out Twin Peaks-like dream episode with judges and flashbacks and absolutely no plot development. He gets better. The carnival becomes less interesting as the days go on, but NYC, again, is at risk of being blown up. Sylar becomes good, then bad, then ambivalent, then good again and he and Peter bond over rock breaking. They save the day. At the end of the season, Claire, in desperate need of attention again, jumps off a ferris wheel, revealing her powers to reporters, which is what got Nathan almost murdered 2 season ago, but Future Peter must not care all that much because he doesn’t appear to murder her…oh wait, he no longer has every power in the world so he couldn’t stop Claire from ending the world. Fittingly, thus ends Heroes; a bullet to the brain of nearly dead horse.

There was almost nothing good about this show. Poorly scripted, lacking in direction, even more poorly acted (note to Hayden and Milo; you’re uncle and niece in the show. Try not to eye-hump each other in every scene you have together), incomprehensible at times, tragically aware of its flaws at others…I cannot understand the popularity it garnered, though I suspect it was simply good timing since superhero shows and movies had been absent from pop culture for a few years when season 1 rolled out. I was forced to watch this show for work, and it boggles my mind how how anyone who likes television, stories, or logic was able to stomach them.

The show fell apart because the writers were total hacks. They had no concept of characterization or pacing. They would consistently forget (or choose to ignore) character abilities. Instead of Sylar remaining a serious threat, they bring him in as a regular and neuter him. So many failed opportunities. No reboot will work unless you have intelligent writers who approach the genre with respect.

More like insulting to Namor.

The world at large never cares about this kind of thing. That’s a moot point.

first season was amazing.

2nd season sucked because the culminating moment was essentially someone NOT dropping something (instead of the high drama of saving New York City from an exploding serial killer madman).

that season killed whatever momentum they had gained from the wide popularity of the first season. Subsequent seasons had merits but also had plenty of faults and holes in plot you could drive a truck through.Which is why viewership dropped – online viewing probably had something to do with it too. People chose to watch it later as it wasn’t the priority it had been.

The Cape’s cancellation has more to do with NBC not giving a show a fair shake.

The Cape and Heroes are polar opposites.

Check out our opinions on the subject here: http://comicsaredead.yolasite.com/reviews-news/the-cape-is-dead-nbc-continues-to-cancel-monday-night-fan-boy-favorites

Never Mind Heroes, check out Misfits, its a british TV show, and its what Heroes should have been

well for a show with no budget its entirely more watchable than the later seasons of Heroes, maybe they should do a US version of it like they are doin with Being Human.

Heroes is for adults.

I would love to see Heroes return to our screens but not in the timespace it left. Personally, I want to see Claire and Sylar fifty or even a hundred years down the road. Does Claire still hate Sylar with a vengeance for killing her father and is she actively trying to neutralize him. Does Sylar still grapple with the ‘hunger’ or has he learned to adapt the IA to something more constructive and fulfilling.

As much as I like the show, I have to admit your analysis is spot on for the problems the show had.

I agree with almost everything except I think they need to lose the carnival and the bicurious claire! They need to get back to the marks and the company.

Is it a suggestion or is there rumors about it ?

I agree with you. I love heroes and the ideal of them but really how many times can claire skylar and hiro save the day.Bring back peter and other people with differnent skills. The first seaon of heroes was the best.