“Heroes” returned Monday evening with a two-hour episode, continuing the “Redemption” storyline.
Of course, if the ratings are any indication, not many viewers took notice. If you’re curious about the ratings of the show, tune in for an interesting segment on this week’s Slice of SciFi. (You can hear the live feed tonight or catch the episode starting Saturday)
Web site io9 has seen the episodes and come up with three things that could be done to help save the struggling series and, perhaps, breath some new life and enthusiasm into the show. They are:
STEP ONE: Kill the following three characters
Hiro Nakamura. It’s clear the writers don’t know what to do with him, given last week’s geek-babble la-di-da. Be done with him. It’ll also cut down on the temporal storytelling — time travel is to Heroes what the holodeck was to Star Trek: The Next Generation: a dramatic crutch that long outlived its usefulness. The death of Hiro will also let you tell some interesting stories with Ando, the sidekick who’s gotta step up into the big leagues. Or to never have us travel to Japan ever again. Or read anymore subtitles.Sylar. He should’ve died at the end of the first season. But Sylar’s, and Zachary Quinto’s, popularity saw to it that he endured, and so we’ve had to endure him. But he doesn’t want anything — and a villain without a plan is just a child behaving badly. Besides, the fact that all of the “heroes” combined haven’t been able to kill him in four years renders said heroes woefully inadequate. The show needs a new Big Bad, and badly…we’ll get to that later.
Noah Bennett. He’s a hunter who no longer hunts. He mopes and goes on dates. As such, should be put out to pasture. What dramatic purpose does he serve? He can do more for us in death that he could in life, and that’s…
STEP TWO: Make Claire Bennett the villain
With her father gone, she’s sent into a spiral of hate and despair and pain. Maybe she comes to the conclusion that the world is a better place, for everyone, if there were no abilities — and no one with abilities. Or, perhaps, she decides the only way to be “normal” is to make everyoe “abnormal.” Or come up with something better. That’s what you’re paid for. But an invulnerable girl who’s got personal ties to all the heroes, knows what makes them all tick, and has access to her father’s files and contacts? She’d make a formidable villain. And surprising.STEP THREE: Cancel it.
Set an expiration date. That’s what rescued Lost from it’s third season aimlessness: deciding when it would all come to a close. Heroes hasn’t been building towards anything, and so every perambulation of the story has just been gear-spinning folly. Sound and fury signifying an hour I couldn’t spent revisiting the joys of ham radio. Focus, and give us the big, honking superhero fight we’ve been waiting for. Go out with a bang, rather than simply limp into inconsequence.
So, do you think these three things could help save the show? Or have you tuned out by now and just don’t care anymore?
Left Heroes off the list of shows to watch this season and accidently ran across it on G4 just this weekend so I gave it a shot and actually caught another couple of episodes on the web.
I wholeheartedly agree with getting rid of Hiro but I think Ando could go as well. As for Sylar and Bennett…not sure. Bennett has indeed become boring but I don’t know if he’s beyond saving as a character or not. As for Sylar I liked the Nathan/Sylar storyline…or more accurately the Peter/Sylar showdown.
Claire as the villian…didn’t they try that before and she killed Peter in the future?
Agree with the last one…when Lost put a time limit on when they were going to wrap the show up all the filler episodes were tossed to the side and the story began to really move. Maybe with a time limit they would come back to explaining about the eclipses and all the unanswered questions from the first season.
Of course, Mitch, answering the questions from season one would mean someone on the writing staff remembered those questions….
Go back to the second last episode of season 1 and reboot
I think it is beyond fixing at this point, so I agree with point #3.
I think they just need to cut out about 1/2 of the characters from the show. It seems like a new characters are introduced every episode and they try to jam a plot around them – making it impossible to follow everybody. I would also stop doing the long story arcs – make the show more episodic (finish the story line each episode or maybe over two episodes).
I agree with numbers 1 and 3, but I don’t think Panatierre can pull off being the villain for the entire series. Besides, her biggest complaint is that her power is entirely defensive. Unless Claire suddenly develops series ninja skill or instantly becomes an evil scientific genius, she really isn’t much of a threat to the rest of the cast. Sure, they can’t kill her, but either Peter or Matt could subdue her pretty easily. Unless the Haitian is on her side, she really isn’t much of a threat to the other heroes.
If they want to do a “kid goes bad” series, then I think Micah is a better choice. He could trick various heroes into fighting each other by feeding them false information. Or worse, he could hack into the IRS’s computers and get them all audited. 🙂
But honestly, I gave up on this series after last season’s “epic battle” was just Claire watching a light show through a crack in the door.
Seriously, I don’t care. It’s still relatively fun to watch. If it ends, it end. If it gets a season 5, so be it… I’ll watch it then too.
Don’t care for Chuck, so I don’t have a stake either way.