From Heroes to Zeros?

I've tried to deny it. Over the last few weeks of the series, tuning in increasingly less eagerly every Monday, I've wanted to like it, to believe that it'll get better and recapture some of its past glories but what the hell has happened to Heroes?

I mean, seriously, this is a show that is really starting to stink. The diabolical Mutant X is even starting to look comparative in terms of quality - man, I never thought I see myself writing that!

Heroes began in 2006 to a slow-building wave of popularity that became a phenomenon. Not just a series about super heroes but a show about people, with a stunning narrative and compulsive drama to boot.

I have the season one boxed set in front of me. It's a nice looking box, it's shiny and impressive - just like the season itself. Heroes took on a flavour and built a fanbase that transcended the geek fraternity and spoke to something that tapped into the zeitgeist of the time.

'Propulsive, surprising, and emotionally charged storytelling' - that's what the quote reads on the back. It's from Jeff Jenson, reviewing for Entertainment Weekly. What would Jeff make of the current state of affairs in the Heroes franchise, I wonder. I doubt there'd be as many plaudits.


By the time season two came around there was a lot of anticipation after the heroics of the phenomenal opening chapter. So the ill-timed Writers' Strike took the wind out of its sails a little and maybe dented the ambitions of creator, Tim Kring and his writing team. It's true, there was compromise needed to round the season off with a shorter amount of episodes. That didn't help, but there was a lot to recommend season two. I maintain that it was actually pretty good.

I think part of the problem was living up to the previous series. It's like second album syndrome or something. You're going to get judged by what came before and if that is 'propulsive' and 'emotionally charged', winner of as many superlatives as you can shake at a TV show, you're inevitably going to fall short of such a high mark. It would have been nothing short of a miracle to live up to that. The mistake was, I think, for the show's creators that they effectively threw away everything they had done in season two and pressed the Heroes reset button.

What happened to the 'mutant plague' that so ravaged the alternate future? That was an interesting storyline and something that was foregrounded in season one. What about the muscle memory girl - she was a cool character, not just an X-Men rip off. I liked Adam Monroe as a villain and he was just thrown away in the opening few episodes of season three - killed off by Nathan and Peter's megalomaniac father (who pretty much adopted the Sylar role from season one, just not as compellingly). Okay, so the Irish accents were pretty awful (hire Irish actors next time, there's got to be some in America right?), but the storyline worked okay. Sure, there was a lot that didn't quite work with season two and, yes, it was slow at times but that doesn't mean it should be discarded.

This perceived slowness that was one of the main criticisms of season two, seems to have informed the decision making process for the equally, if not more, troubled season three. It just seems a strange strategy to me - 'If it's pace that's a problem, let's ramp up the plot-omater to the max!' So, instead of a slower, more considered storyline we get a baffling, 'thrill ride' that fails to build or develop with any satisfaction, throws away interesting narratives for the sake of resolving them in one or two episodes and attempts to end every episode of a 24-style improbable cliffhanger. Throw in the fact that the core of the season focused on a nebulous 'formula' and then a 'catalyst' (which, yawningly predictably, was Clare) and you've got a show that is starting to look pretty desperate. 'Look! We've still got it. It's fast paced, it's awesome, you don't know what's happening from one scene to the next!' Too true. Despite Greg Grunburg's annoying enthusiastic patter about how 'blown away' all the cast were about season three's episodes falling into their laps, I wasn't convinced. Sorry Greg.

I read something about how the whole catalyst and formula thing failed so badly because there's no emotional connection it. Not like in season one which had that immortal line 'Save the cheerleader, save the world'. Where has that snappy storytelling gone? I reckon they should tap up the writers from Dexter or Crime Scene Investigation to pen a few episodes; maybe that would change the show's fortunes.

By the end of season three (which, in cold light of day retrospect was pretty bad), I was still a believer. I really was. So, I still had hope for the fourth installment. I was actually quite excited when I watched the preview at the end of 'Villains' - a kind of 'Days of Future Past' style set up with our protagonists hunted by a black ops government agency, and all sanctioned by the White House. Promising.

How wrong could I have been. Mohinder's degeneration into a human spider glossed over and tucked away (again, fascinating stuff that should have been exploited - instead, he's just a boring super-strength, angsty ex-scientist, on the run with Grunburg and co). And, man, am I getting tired of Clare Bennett. Is it me or is Hayden Panettiere starting to believe her own hype. It certainly looks that way.

Poor old Peter, so integral to the first season and still remotely interesting in season two, has lost all of his powers but somehow retained his 'abilities empathy' shtick albeit in a form more akin to Rogue of the X-Men, in that he can't keep a power but swaps it for the next time he attains one. I liked the fact that Sylar and Peter were delicately poised as opposite sides of the same coin in book one, effectively ability sponges; one taking his powers by killing the original bearer, the other doing it by being near to them.

Having two such uber-super powered individuals roaming around would be difficult to handle (who could stop them and what significance would the other heroes have in that scenario?) but don't just rob them of their abilities for the purposes of an easy narrative. Build it in, make it an integral part of the story (let's just say writing in that Peter's father steals his powers after he gives him a fatherly hug is lame and lazy).

So, season four rolls on and I'm still watching, but Heroes can rest on the laurels of its earlier successes no longer. Good stories, well told, well acted. They should be logical and not repetitive (and how I am sick of the repeated storylines, even within the same episode characters go back and forth to a single location, the same storytelling device employed each time to destruction and often to no significant end).

Let's just hope it gets better or Heroes might not be gracing our screens for another season...