What a tumble this show has taken. In fact, I actually rank amongst those viewers that never really felt Heroes ever really had anything that great going for it, and it still ranks among one of the most unspeakable declines in the quality of a television show I’ve ever seen. Just for the sake of clarity, I’ll recap my thoughts on the series up until this point.
I felt Heroes started off rather slowly. That’s not necessarily a problem; several shows, including one of my all time favorites, 24, had a slow start to its first season as well, and once it found its feet, the series was unstoppably excellent. Fringe, from this season, got off to an extensively plodding pace, but has since redeemed itself for me. A slow start does not kill a television show.
As the season went on, and the characters began to come together, and grow some meaningful personality elements, it picked up. The peak of the series, in my opinion, was the five episode stretch in the first season from 1×17 “Company Man” to 1×21 “The Hard Part”. This was the only section of the show that consistently gave me the emotional involvement I expect from good television, before leading up to an underwhelming finale.
There’s no denying that Heroes always has had its set of inherent challenges to overcome, not the least of which is that the series chose to go for some, however small level of moderate realism, making the necessity for balance amongst the characters and their abilities to be handled with a lot more care than a straight up fictional world would. Therefore, the Heroes crew ran into some serious suspension of disbelief issues that they clearly didn’t know how to handle as they moved into season two.
Perhaps larges amongst these problems were the characters of Peter, Hiro, and Sylar (whom also happen to be three of the show’s most popular characters). The issue was clear; these three characters were too powerful, and assuming that they wanted the viewer to believe that these characters were not, in fact, complete idiots when it came to using their powers, they had to come up with alternatives. Soto begin season two, we got Sylar mysteriously “powerless”, Peter with amnesia, and Hiro still conveniently unable to justify using his power for just about anything.
It is widely believed that season two was an outright disaster, and while I often disagree with the majority when it comes to these things, season two of Heroes is one that I definitely agree with. One can add a small amount of blame, perhaps, to the writers strike messing up the rhythm they were getting into near the end by forcing them to cut the season short and begin Volume 3 later on in Season 3. But that does not adequately defend the fact that season 2 was a mess narratively, with so many storylines/alternate timelines/canceled timelines/and so forth going on that only the most devoted follower could not have gotten at least a little confused. Adding to the annoyance factor was that the new sets of characters, including Micah’s cousin Monica and the Latin siblings Maya and Alejandro on the run did not strike well, and the writers seemed simply obligated to keep them running due to contractual obligations.
Plot threads were developed then forgotten about, and then once the writing team knew they were on a limited time frame due to the oncoming strike, they rushed the story to completion so as not to leave it unfinished. Was this a good decision? The final 2 or 3 episodes of the season were its best, but were still frustratingly weak.
Going into Season 3, we were promised the now standard “shake up” treatment for Heroes, the standard response when a show’s popularity drops off the face of the Earth. Little did we know that this “shake up” was, at first, little more than Suresh (one of the most useless characters since the first half of the first season) gaining an ability, Ando eventually gaining one, Hiro losing his (which I fully support, as his character had been made into a supreme moron throughout the Villains chapter in order to allow the plot to occur without him stopping it), Sylar having a jaunt with the good side for a time, and of course, who could forget Sylar being the son of Angela and the secretly alive Papa Patrelli? Oh – except it was all a scam to get him to do their bidding. And all of this took an entire 14+ episodes to take care of, with the filler taking the form of the “villains” theme, something that was incredibly wasted. Take the character of Knox; he had amazing potential, the same degree that Adam Monroe had had in season two, and he was squandered. Disappointing to be sure, but hey, at least we gained Parkman’s Turtle.
Another frustrating point of the season for me was how annoying it was that they have ANOTHER character played by Ali Larter around, despite the original Ali Larter character (who also had several Ali Larters living inside of her) was killed. This makes three Ali Larter characters, and another potential one who has yet to be seen. To be perfectly honest, she’s not the greatest contribution to the acting sphere of the show, and I can’t help but assume she was either a), under contract, or b), deemed necessary in terms of demographic appeal, and therefore kept on the show for no apparent reason.
So where are we as Volume Four begins? Well, we’re not really anywhere; we’re lost in a sea of characters who have canceled each other and themselves out, run the gamut of ins and outs and ups and downs in terms of character progress, and this labyrinthine ocean has no obvious way out! Heading into the Fugitives volume, I feel the quality of the series is perhaps better than it has been since the first season, but it is not anywhere near decent, and I feel that there may be no hope whatsoever for this show to progress.
