Thursday, November 6, 2008

Not an advocate


Most websites and magazines are trying to find ways to make Heroes better. Not I. I say yank it off the air. It's done. Finished. Never going to be good again. Am I the only one who sees this? I want it to be great; I want it to be stellar again, but I'm only kidding myself at this point. I'll give you five reasons why it should be yanked.

1. The people (collectively) are begging for the same Heroes we had back in season 1. Folks, this is not going to happen. The shock and awe of revealing new heroes isn't the same. When we were first learning about this phenomenon and people with special powers, everything was shiny and new. We were glued to our seats and couldn't wait to find out what the next piece of the puzzle was. Now though? Everything is so convoluted that I can't tell the A story from the B story, and I fall asleep during all of the C story. For the record, I think that the A story is something about the Petrelli family and something Oedipal, the B story is something about Hiro being an idiot, and the C story has to do with the black dude in Africa. I could be wrong though.

2. All the cool powers are already taken. This was proven a few weeks ago with Vortex Guy. I kept thinking back to the Family Guy episode where the family was splashed with radio-active sludge and Meg got the power to grow her fingernails really quickly. Seriously, ask the question 'if you could have any super power what would it be?' to a group of people, and these will always be your answers: Invisibility (done), never being able to get hurt (done), the power to fly (done), to move objects with your mind (done), to read people's minds (done), and the ability to make time go by faster to get out of work (done). I think the only thing that hasn't been covered is x-ray vision, but I could be wrong. So really, what else is there to cover? The show proved that there are awesome powers that I never even thought of, like freezing everything I touch and super sonic moving, but being able to create a vortex? Black ooze out of your eyes? Lame. (And, lest everyone forget, black ooze was done on The X-Files and it was done about 40 times better. So, there you go.)

3. No one really cares anymore. At least the people I talk to. The story has been so clogged with pointless information that it's too exhausting to care. On shows like Battlestar Galactica, no matter what they throw at you, everything comes back full circle and makes sense. This hasn't happened in a long time on Heroes. For example, we all know that back in that disaster we'll call season two, Sylar had no powers and it was a time of rehab for him. Fine, I'll believe that. But it is my full belief that the writers forgot which powers he had. For example, super sonic hearing? For someone who supposedly has that ability, he sure didn't hear Claire sneaking up on him back in the first episode of the season. And he didn't seem to pick up on that conversation with Noah, Claire, and Vortex Guy. I'm willing to believe that he's had some trouble gaining some powers back, but could the writers please go back and say that? I'm thinking they just forgot, and if they just had Sylar say something to the effect of 'when I regained my powers some were missing' I'd completely delete this paragraph and I'd go back to thinking the writers were awesome again. (Well, awesome is a stretch.)

4. They take away likable characters and keep characters that are pointless. For example, Maya and Adam. (I totally just typed Adama.) I have never been able to stand Maya, even when she was part of the Mexican Banditos. I think she's a pointless character with a stupid 'power'. When I thought Mohinder killed her, I thought it was the smartest thing the show had ever done. And then, for some inexplicable reason they brought her back! She's not dead; she might be gone now to live happily ever after without her 'power', but it was so much better when I thought the writers took a cue and killed her off. And then there's Adam. His story line was really stupid back in season two, but he could have been awesome this season. And just when I was starting to warm up to him, Arthur Petrelli sucked the life out of him. Why bring him back at all, then? And instead of bringing in new characters like Knox and Daphne, could you please tell me what's up with Micah and Molly?

5. I don't care anymore about characters I should because they've turned stupid. I blame this solely on the writers. For example, Mohinder. This was a dude who was supposed to be there to explain the sciency stuff and be the cool head amid all the chaos. Now he's injecting himself with formulas before they've ever been tested. Uh, hello? Mohinder? Attention writers: Isn't he supposed to be brilliant? Even a three year old knows you don't go around sticking yourself with stuff. I really don't care that he's turning into The Fly. Serves him right. Idiot. And I feel like I should feel something for Matt Parkman as he was easily one of the most sympathetic characters in the first season. But now I feel nothing but sleepiness when he's on screen. With Hiro I'm in a constant state of stupor because not only is he stupid, he's taking the stupid to a whole new level. What super hero goes out LOOKING for something bad because they're bored? Hiro, apparently.

Other miscellaneous things that add to the death count are the number of characters in the show which was already kind of addressed, and the fact that they won't let us really get to know any characters anymore. They tried it with Hiro in Japan and that sucked really bad. But rather than learn from their mistakes, the writers just keep piling on pointless fodder.

Do I think the writers could take this list and fix it all? They could but instead I think they should just cancel it. It's never going to be great again. Ever. Ever. Not ever. You're right, I have no faith. No hope. It's all lost. Never to be seen again. Let's just pretend that the show was a made for t.v. movie back in season one and that nothing else after that point exists.

2 comments:

Nicole said...

Amen.
I don't see Heroes gaining it's awesome status ever again. It's a shame, really, but what can you do?

Anonymous said...

I think Heroes is one of those shows that when it was pitched, it was considered an awesome take on the whole superhero thing - something new and original and interesting. But they threw everything they had to make it so cool and amazing into the first season.

Then the first season made so much money from the viewership and the DVD sales that they thought it would be a seriously dumb idea not to make a second or third season, so they did, even though they were grasping at straws already at this point to keep people hooked.

And with so many lead characters - especially having them intertwined as they are - it became way too convoluted ontop of the lameness of all the writers pretty much throwing any idea they had into the series, no matter how random, nonsensical or lame.

Plus I'm pretty sure the continuity virus jumped ship from CSI and onto Heroes, but that's perhaps JMO.


IN CONCLUSION, I agree. Cancel the damn thing. Some things, like The Wire, should just be planned out properly from start to finish, make that limited number of seasons and leave it at that, so the show will have a long lasting legacy of being awesome (even if the fans are left wanting more) rather than just leaving it to peter away into shitty confusing nothingness, so people only really end up remember the shitty final seasons of the show before it's axed midway through a storyline and nothing is resolved.