TVSquad

I think this is the beginning of the end for Heroes. I just hope they wrap up some loose ends and give us closure before they pack it in. Can cancellation be far behind?

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If you're a true fan of the show, just go with it.

FAIL.

I agree that people need to let the writers do their thing and not try to make it meet any preconceptions, but the show has been lacking over the last two years. It's been clear what the problems were last season, and they never did anything to address it. I'll agree that the overall plot is better than last year, but the show is still problematic.

They're trying to make it too much like a comic book, with all of the plot problems that entails. They need to get the narrative back in control, avoid the major shifts in tone/focus from week to week, and the fact that they're firing the people who seem to be responsible is a good step for the show.

But to say "just watch it anyway" is false. I have better shows that I could be watching. I could read a book. I could read a GOOD comic book. I want Heroes to get better, but I'm not holding my breath anymore.

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You can make excuses for this show for as long as you like but the facts are plain to see. The show started great and could have stayed great but there was no plan beyond the first year. The creator has admitted this I think and said the original plan was to cycle through the "heroes" killing some and introducing new ones each season. Now that might have worked.

They are just recycling the same plot lines and misusing time travel to patch the absence of any internal logic.

I am sorry but I liked this show to start and now am disappointed in it.

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this show has time traveled the shark.

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I still think Heroes is one of the best shows on TV. It's one of those shows I watch more than once and can't wait for the next week.

I'm not sure why people have lost interest in it. I've heard some say it's because of last season's lackluster story, and others say that it has something to do with all of the great super-hero movies that have come out over the past year. I can sorta understand and accept both of those reasons, but when people claim it's becuase of the amount of characters they have added I feel baffled. In the first season we were asked to follow more than 25 different characters. Several of them are gone or were killed, and in their place new chracters were added. I haven't yet put together the numbers on this season yet, but i just don't think there are that many more characters now than in the first season.

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"Heroes" is dead. All that's left is the removal from life support and a proper burial.

The first season was complex, with a point and a plot. What's happened since is daytime soap hackery, with super-powers.

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There are waaaaay too many characters.

Easy comparison to season 1:
early episodes: Who is this guy in the horn rimmed glasses? Is he good? why is he killing people? OMG ITS CLAIRES FATHER, MAYBE HE'S EVIL

halfway through the season it's kind of cleared up, and we have a clear idea by the end of season 1.

Season 3, they introduce people, like the black hole guy. Is he good? Is he evil? Oh, he's good, he said so himself. Wait, who cares? He's dead.

seriously. Don't introduce people if you're going to kill them, and don't kill characters unceremoniously, like Parkman's father before they are actually explored.

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I think there is a very good Jeph Loeb comparison to be made.

Heroes Season One = The Long Halloween
Heroes Today = His run on Batman/Superman (possibly the worst comic I have ever read)

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You know, the first few eps of the first season were pretty crummy, too, but then it hit its stride. Of course, the S1 finale stunk, and everything since has been mediocre at best. The show is just too all over the place. We'll see if new writers/producers can save it. Doubt it.

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The biggest thing that Heroes lacks now is character development. The thing that made Season 1 stand out is that they took efforts to actually give the characters some backstory and enable viewers to build relationships with them. Now it seems that characters are coming in out of nowhere with no explanation and being killed or captured and pretty much not heard of since.

Take the character of Doyle for instance. He is by far the most interesting character of the past two seasons. He could've been built up to become the next Sylar but instead he got what.....1 episode? What's up with that?

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I've heard all the clap-trap from Heroes apologists... I loved season 1. Smart, plot & character driven fun. Second Season, meh. Third, Super Lame. Here's my take on what went wrong: There is no internal logic to this world they've created. There are apparently no rules for them to follow or violate. All good Sci-Fi, or any drama for that matter, is based in a universe with its own system of logic. You write within these confines and it all works, if you arbitrarily ignore what has already been established than it's nothing more than hackery and smoke & mirrors. Aside from the time travel the core of the show takes place over the course of three years and none of the characters seem to remember what they even did a week prior. FAIL.

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there are too many characters and not to mention future and present characters so technically theres 2 of everyone. hrg is annoying. claire needs to learn how to act. mohinder is also annoying but its interesting to see who takes him down and when they find out what he becomes.

nathan and this triplet whatever her name is annoying they should have stuck with the original one.

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I love Heroes. I love the sci-fi and I like the comic book genre. I don't think there are two many characters. If you want less to keep track of, then watch Two and a Half Men. I agree that the show has many flaws and failures.

Traveling to Africa has been boring. Almost as boring as Hiro in feudal Japan. These story lines can be completed in one episode.

Let people die. Sure, make Claire special, but I better not see Adam again. Move the story along.

And the time travel is not a good plot device. These people are supposed to have amazing abilities. Continue to make the show about that and less about what may happen in some sort of future butterfly effect reality in the future.

I agree that the producers should have been let go. This is an amazing franchise. It would be extremely disappointing if Heroes was not picked up for a fourth and fifth season. Let the series end with a proper finale and wrap up.

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Since season 2 I felt like the writers are a bunch of teenagers trying to make a complex show in a day by day basis , there is no control of logic over the plot, almost every one's dialogue seems immature and out of character, they let things go out of their hands like having the wrong ppl getting the wrong powers that maybe were useful in season 1 (time travel, power acquisition) but now are just baggage and since the fan favorites are the ones who have it they can't get ride of them too easy.

I know this is a comic book based show, but come on, even super-heroes movies don't go with that cheesy dialogues that make any daytime soap opera look like written by Shakespeare. Grow up!!, this is not a Saturday morning cartoon don't let the protagonist go out of character just for the sake of the plot.

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I wish the Heroes writers would read Squanto and alexmonty's comments. Yes, the problem is character consistency, folks!

Sure, characters can grow and change over time, but this is ridiculous. When I was a kid I used to make fun of my sister's soap operas, it was like the whole cast had Multiple Personality Disorder. A scheming witch in one story arc turned into a sensitive, sympathetic character in the next. I was amazed my sister tolerated such lazy writing - I stopped watching Heroes a few weeks ago after I realized I was tolerating it, too.

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Your reasons for the show being lousy are bullcrap. Just look at Lost. 1) its NOT new. 2) They have a large cast as well.
It's all about the writing and the vision. Lost doesnt try to cram everyones storyline into each episode, leaving 3 mins of screen time for every single cast member, that is idiotic and unsatisfying. Lost focuses heavily on a particular cast member in its flashback, and ties that in to the current storyline. It's brilliant and it works.
They should have fired more that 2 producers of this crap-assed show that is called Heroes.

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The gold standard for this kind of show is Joss Whedon's "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", and one of the things that made that show so darn good was it's internal logic and structure. The "through-line" of even the most minor character was never, ever changed: who they were and what they liked or disliked, could do or couldn't do, etc.. was established early on and STUCK to, so that the characters always seemed like very real people, no matter how "unreal" the plot. The fantasy aspects always have to have that solid underpinning, or the whole thing disintregates, like Heroes did.

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It's funny that this is coming up now. Watching last week's eposide, I was struck with the now-familiar sense of uneasiness about this mess of a show. Mulling it over later, I decided that it was noisy and busy but had become an ultimately pointless exercise with no underlying theme or idea to hold it together. There are plenty of excesses to address here, but really it's an excess of all the excesses (characters, time travel, etc.) that make it almost unwatchable.

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