Giving up on Heroes

I had the last two episodes of this latest Heroes storyline on TiVo, but I spent a few weeks waffling about whether I actually wanted to watch them.

As I noted a month ago, I was still enjoying Hiro's scenes, and (to a lesser degree) Noah's, but pretty much nothing else about the show.

But I found out that the storyline really did end with these two episodes, so with some trepidation, we watched them the other night.

And I'm glad we did. "Our Father," the second-to-last episode, was by far my favorite of the current season (as long as I ignore various annoying bits); I really liked the handling of Hiro's and Claire's mini-adventure in the past.

But then the final episode was back to the usual annoying standard, and even though the explicit moral at the end surprised me by actually being somewhat relevant to the themes of the storyline (and even making me more sympathetic to the writers' muddying of the moral waters this season), it's time for me to stop watching the show.

Yes, even though Michael Dorn may have a central part in the next storyline.

The other day, I happened across an article about Tim Kring speaking at Screenwriting Expo, which contains this bit:

Kring explained he had thought they could almost completely replace the characters each season, remarking, "I was primarily fascinated by the origin story. Once the original story is over, and the character has no more questions about what's happening or existential drama, then the questions become just about plot, and then it becomes harder for me personally to connect to."

This explains so much! I couldn't figure out why essentially all the characters underwent radical character transplants at the start of season 3; now I know. It's because Kring wanted to replace them with new characters, but the network and the fans wouldn't have stood for that.

Anyway. I'm done. But I'll miss Hiro, and Noah.

5 Responses to “Giving up on Heroes”

  1. Colin

    While I agree that Chapter 3 was more of a downward spiral, I’m willing to give the series one more change simply because after episode 4 of the upcoming series, Bryan Fuller, who was the original writing lead in Season 1 is back on the show (only after the demise of Pushing Daisies.)

    By his own admission, the first 3 episodes of the new chapter are great (no mention of episide 4 which probably means it is back to the same staid miasma which the series has been in since the first season.) Which means I’m willing to give him about 3 episodes after that to jumpstart the series. If not, then I too am probably done.

    However, given his track record with TV shows that I’ve enjoyed (Wonderfalls, Dead Like Me, Heroes Season One and Pushing Daisies)I will give him the chance to save the show.

    Colin

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  2. Tim Pratt

    What Colin said. I was ready to give up on the show completely, but I’ll stick with it a bit longer to see what Fuller does. Maybe he can convince Kring to steal story ideas from somewhere *other* than Chris Claremont’s X-Men comics, because the Days of Future Past stuff is getting played out.

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  3. Jed

    Interesting; hadn’t heard that.

    But although I’ve heard good things about all of them, I haven’t yet seen any of Fuller’s other series, and unlike many people, I didn’t love Heroes season one–though I did like it a lot more than I’ve liked it lately. Oh, and now I see that Fuller is credited as writer for what’s hands-down my favorite episode of the whole series, “Company Man.” Hmm.

    Even so, I don’t think I’m willing to give it another seven episodes at this point, especially because that’ll take us halfway through a new storyline and I always want to know how things turn out.

    So I think I’m gonna stay given up on it. But I’ll be interested to see the general reaction to the new storyline; it’s possible I’ll change my mind if everyone says it’s good.

    Hee re X-Men comics. (Though as someone online pointed out, this latest storyline also stole from the TV series 4400.) I loved “Days of Future Past,” and I’ve actually quite liked most of the imitations of it in Heroes–especially DarkFuture-Hiro and DarkFuture2-Peter–but yeah, it is getting kinda old. (I think Kring said there would be no time travel in this next storyline.)

    [Spoiler warning for the rest of this comment: the next two paragraphs contain a minor spoiler for the end of the most recent episode, and arguably a spoiler for the general topic/premise of the upcoming storyline. If you don’t know the title or premise of the upcoming storyline, and you don’t want to, then you may want to skip the rest of this comment.]

    Which reminds me: At the end of that last episode, Kam said something like, “Yeah, it’s always a Senator who’s trying to round up the mutants, isn’t it?”

    …Though I suspect that the new story will also steal from the recent Marvel Universe Civil War mega-crossover storyline.

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  4. Kir

    Um, sure wish you’d cut or marked “Spoiler” the last line(s).

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  5. Jed

    Marked now. Sorry about that.

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