After this week’s episode of Heroes, I started thinking about the first season, reminiscing about how good it was. One of the things that struck me was that in season one there was direction. There were goals (“save the cheerleader, save the world”), there were definite, clear cut villains (Sylar), and there was promise of interesting things to come (dark Hiro).
In fact, one of my favorite episodes from season one was “Five Years Gone” when Hiro and Ando traveled into the future where the exploding man had gone off, destroying New York City. It featured a dark vision of the future, with lots of the familiar characters in unfamiliar situations.
Now, about two years later, I’m wondering if the future that we caught a glimpse of in that episode would be a whole lot more entertaining to watch than the past couple seasons of Heroes.
The more I think of it, the more upset I am that all the heroes saved the day at the end of the first season. It would have been a really bold artistic choice to let the destruction of New York occur, and I think it would have allowed the characters to evolve and become a lot more interesting. I would like to think that Hiro would be doing something a little more compelling than using his powers to stop a coworker from photocopying his ass. Who knows, maybe he would even be fighting crime, kicking some butt with his big sword.
I could get behind a show with an angry, overpowered Peter, a scheming Sylar, a shady government, and general mayhem. Think back to that great episode. Even Nikki was interesting. Nikki! How great would it be if we got to watch Noah running around bagging and tagging supers, Mohinder working with Nathan/Sylar in the white house, trying to find a cure for the superpowers, or Matt actually doing something with his life?
Alas, it just wasn’t meant to be. The makers of Heroes chose a … different path. What do you think, would Heroes be a better show today if the bomb had blown in season one?
Clacked by Bob Degon
on Oct 07, 2009 @ 10:00 EST5EDT
My day is a little sadder now, because you’ve described a version of Heroes that sounds friggin’ awesome.
If only there was a character who could go back in time and change what happened…
woah, wait…people still watch Heroes?
If only Hiro could apply his time traveling powers to the scripts -
The show had the lamest season 1 finale ever and anything would have been better than the trash we got.
A bomb going off killing all the characters on the show would be better than season 1 finale onwards.
I’ve given up on Season 4 already. Spending all that time watching Hiro trying to stop some guy from photocopying his ass was the death knell.
There is just nothing to look forward to with this show.
It just comes done to the fact that every choice the creators of Heroes has made has been the wrong one.
Like all shows they had to decide between making a shows that have no history and work by following a repetitive pattern (like CSI and Law and Order) or a show that develops over time and requires a committment from its viewers (like Lost)… With Heroes they never decided. So nothing that happens in Heroes affects the next episode/season because the makers of Heroes don’t trust their viewers to follow their own show.
Like Sylar not being dead after Season 01
Or pretending the Season 2 didn’t happen during season 3
or that first half of season 3 didn’t happen during the second half of season 3
Other terrible calls:
Focusing on Claire, worst character, worst actress, whining, annoying, plotless, terrible.
Having only one bad guy who never does anything really bad to anyone that matters and can never be killed and has no effect on the plots of the episodes, yet everyone is obsessed with “stopping sylar”…
And of course, spending an hour showing us their most powerful hero use time travel to stop someone from Xeroxing their ass.
But Hiro still hasn’t learned his lesson: Next week Hiro will travel back to 2006 and keep Tim Kring from jumping that shark…
They’ve finally stopped the wince-inducing Mohindar voice-overs, but its too little too late. I’m done with Heroes