If you don't already know, I am a nerd. I can accept this. And one of the shows I latched onto early in my acceptance of my nerdihood was Heroes, a TV serial that was much like X-men. I loved the first season for various reasons which I couldn't quite place. Was it the quirky characters, the strong dialogue or the effing superpowers? I could never tell. But bottom line, the show rocked, but the ending... well, I could tell where this was going.
Heroes is a textbook example of "Star Wars," "Pirates of the Caribbean," and "Pretty much any damn Disney movie" syndrome. The first movie or season was so excellent that the studio decides to make a sequel and fucks it all up. I'm not saying that a sequel can't be done right, it's just that the studio or director tries to change the formula that made the first season work so well and ultimately ruins the experience for real fans.
Lemme run through the painful second season of Heroes before my brain starts to hurt. At the end of the first season, Hiro (The Japanese otaku who could control time and space) was transported back in time to the feudal period in Japan's history, to meet his hero, Takezo Kensei. He turns out to be a douchebag, a drunk, and a hero. Wait, what?
The first season really did a good job of making us care for the characters, and this is possibly where season 2 stumbles the most: they introduce too many damn new heroes! There are these two Hispanic siblings who want to see Suresh (The doctor character who is working on cracking the genome) to take away their powers. This takes up something like, 30% of the series. Read my lips: I do not give a shit about these guys! I want to see Hiro do something funny with Ando, or have Sylar closely stalk another hero, waiting to kill them.
The second season also focused more on "The Company," the mysterious corporation that was controlling everything behind the scenes. This was exposition alley, and it made the thing boring. Even as these people were being taken out right and left, I couldn't feel anything for them, because we were never given enough time to get to know them. As almost every episode ended, we were either shown a new character brought in on a whim, or someone who inexplicably came back from the dead. This theme of overly dramatic endings still persists today, and it makes it incredibly annoying to follow. I need a fucking flowchart to keep track of all the new characters. If I made one, it would probably take up an entire apartment complex.
And now, the third season is even worse. I don't even need to see the rest of the episodes to know that they're going to suck. It seems like this season is trying to explain the origin of the heroes, how most of them got their powers and how the Company gave it to some of them and blah de blee de blah.
This makes absolutely no sense! If powers are controlled by a kind of gene, how in the hell can Hiro control time or Nathan fucking FLY?! Things were fine when we didn't know the origins of heroes. We didn't particularly care. We accepted it and focused on the characters instead. Trying to explain these kinds of things just opens more plot holes.
So that's my feelings on Heroes. I really hope that this season will bring the closure I need from the series, even though I know it won't.
1 comment:
Hmm, I don't watch much non-anime television, but I have been following Heroes from the start as well. The first season was decidedly great. The second season was not so much, though I think it partly turned around a bit toward the end.
So far, I'm actually thinking that the current season shows some promise though. It has a renewed focus. The writing still kinda weird in how they make the characters take some strange actions, and the acting is pretty bad, but I'm still enjoying watching it each week.
I actually like series with an overabundance of characters to keep track of. Sure, story's that focus on a single character will always be more solid than the scattered one (the best episode of Heroes ever is pretty clearly in my mind the first season episode dedicated entirely to Noah). Heroes has some great characters too. The new characters this season seem more tolerable and the annoying ones from the last season are being killed off or ignored.
And I'm pretty sure the part about the powers being genetic was well established in the first season. That has been the basis of Mohinder's character since the beginning. It's unrealistic, I know (it is a show about super powers though, so I don't see why realism should be expected), but if powers like this did exist, they would certainly be linked to a person's genetic makeup in some fashion.
I'm not expecting the show to blow me away anymore. Maybe I'm just immersed, but regardless of the quality I'm still finding it enjoyable even when it becomes stupid or ridiculous.
On a minor related note, I'll assert that both Pirates of the Caribbean sequels, though not superb and not as good as th first, were decent films in their own right, and that the best Star Wars movie was the second, not the first.
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