It’s been a good long while since “Heroes” was watercooler television, and they really had no one to blame but themselves. Overcomplicating their own concept with byzantine storylines about corporate schemes and government conspiracies, plus excessive time-jumping and world saving, they drove away their core audience faster than Glenn Beck suddenly advocating a second term for Obama.
Now reenergized and refocused, “Heroes” is three episodes into the new season and seems back on track.The original concept of “Heroes” was people trying to live normal lives which suddenly become overly complicated through the unexplained acquisition of powers. That “grounded” aspect to the series has been reacquired. Claire is endeavoring to fit in at college (the only storyline that’s garnered any media attention since supposedly she will be doing some same-sex exploration–which is certainly a not-unprecedented concept for college life, although some are characterizing it as “Gay the Cheerleader, Save the Show”). Her dad, Horn Rim Glasses, is retired. Mohinder’s aimless opening and closing narrations are mercifully absent. Tracy (Ali Larter, who has more lives than a cat in this show) is back from a watery grave, so to speak, and is trying to take up her life as a political consultant. Matt Parkman is treating his power like alcohol addiction and is trying to be a regular cop. The heroic core of the series, Hiro and Ando, are attempting to use their powers to help the commonweal by essentially becoming Power Man and Iron Fist, heroes for hire. Time travel is there, but instead of it having world-changing consequences, the writers have wisely narrow-focused it so that Hiro is mostly trying to change the mistakes and shortcomings and failures of his own life. This will likely have farther-reaching consequences, but at least they’re starting small. Peter is continuing his work as a paramedic and, in a nice twist, is suspected by others of somehow causing the very accidents that he’s so Johnny-on-the-spot in showing up at to render assistance.
The elephant in the series remains the spectacularly unbelievable denouement of the previous season. With the death of Nathan Petrelli, and an unconscious Sylar at their mercy, Nathan’s mom convinced Parkman into overwriting Nathan’s personality onto Sylar because she didn’t want to lose her son. Rather than say something reasonable such as, “Your son is dead; you need to deal with it and we need to dipose of the guy responsible for his murder before he kills your other son or any of us,” Parkman agreed to this ludicrous scheme. As anyone could have predicted, this is rapidly going off the rails as “Nathan” becomes increasingly suspicious that something’s wrong (his memories feel imposed and he’s acquiring new powers left and right) while Sylar appears to have set up shop in Parkman’s head and is slowly driving him around the bend.
Considering that “Heroes” seemed to have lost its ability to create interesting new characters around season 2, I’m pleased to say that I find most of the new additions to be eminently intriguing. Most prominently in that regard is Emma, a deaf woman who starts seeing sound manifested as color, leading to the single most haunting display of powers in the history of the series as she picks up a cello and produces a visual symphony (why her power is only manifesting now, years after the eclipse, I’ve no idea, but fortunately I also don’t care.) Added to the mix is a group of carnival freaks, led by a new guy named Rictor…I’m sorry, Samuel (Robert Knepper, appropriately, from HBO’s “Carnivale,”) and also featuring Darth Maul and a tattooed lady named, of course, Lydia. Their motivation remains obscure, but doesn’t seem to have a thing to do with destroying the world, and that’s fine by me.
For those of you chased away by the heavy-handed, turgid storylines from last season, catch up via on-line replays and get aboard what is shaping up to be a very compelling season.
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Nice analysis, Peter. I was ‘this close’ to removing Heroes from my DVR schedule. Now it’s surviving week by week. I had totally not picked up on the fact that the tattooed lady was named Lydia. Nice touch by the writers.
We’re still watching Heroes, but whereas we once considered it appointment television, now we might let it go a week or two before watching.
Of course, the presence of the newborns in the household might also have something to do with that. 😉
Heroes has fallen to DVR and watch later status, partially due to a now 6 1/2 month old in the house, and partially thanks to USA Network earlier this year running tons of House episodes (I think we’ve seen just about all of the by now) and turning House into one of our current favorites.
I couldn’t do it.
I stuck with it this long, but I couldn’t even make it through the series opener. So boring.
I suppose a huge part of that is that I’m bored beyond tears with Sylar. I GET IT. In TV shows, actors/characters get popular, so you try to keep them around… but they’ve already rendered his character entirely uninteresting to me. Whatever arc had him struggling with his “evil” (before he finally just goes stupid and kills Elle) was the only one I’ve found him interesting in.
You know why Darkseid/Magneto/Apocalypse/etc. are still interesting villains after half a century? Because they aren’t in every $%$%%%ing comic book. When they are, people get sick of them quickly. The Heroes writers should have been able to learn that lesson from comics. It’s a simple one.
Same things with the 100 lives of Ali Larter. Even Jean Grey gets a few years break in between. Convenient way to keep her on the show and shove Micah & the New Orleans cast out.
The bizarre speed with which Parkman got over his dead girlfriend and moved back in with his (ex?)-wife is also a bit disturbing and gross. I mean, really?
Agree 100% about overusing Syler. Before the strike, when Quinto was going off to play Spock, they were all set to write him out of the show, and they should have, at least for one volume. It’s also annoying that they de-powered the only hero (Peter) that had a chance of ever stopping him, ensuring that no matter what happens to everyone else, Sylar will be back again and again. At least this season he’s been pushed back to a sub-plot, as I like the Carnival and can’t wait to find out what their agenda is.
Was I the only one who got the sense that, as season 3 opened, they were trying to set in place a shift between Sylar and Peter, where the villain was gaining control over his hunger and setting down a path to redemption and rediscovery, and the hero was starting to become overwhelmed by his powers and taking greater and greater risks with the people around him? Maybe it’s just me, but that’s the impression I was getting last year, and I thought Peter going bad and Sylar going good would’ve been quite interesting. But then Sylar killed Elle and was back to his old self.
Yeah, they set up the idea that Peter was losing control. He got too much from Sylar and the hunger would…
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Oh, never mind. They dropped that thread.
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But at least we got other cool stuff, like Claire making an underground rail-
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No, wait, they dropped that too.
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Instead we got Claire working in a comic sho-
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Nope. Done with that too.
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Heroes. The show with lots of interesting ideas that will never, ever last. Just ask Caitlin, the girl that Peter dumped in the future.
Heroes — the show with a really short attent
I watch way too much television and have decided that I will wait and see how the overall season plays out for Heroes, Dollhouse, Fringe and FlashFoward. If they all get cancelled then at least I wont be disappointed like I have been with so many other great shows. If they finish out the season I will either watch the episodes online or probably just buy the DVD.
Im glad Peter has given the new season a thumbs up (so far) but I am still cautious of bad storylines and acting creeping in.
I’m at the other end–I hardly ever watch TV anymore. Ironic, since I WORK in TV. I just don’t have the time barring my dinner break at 3 in the morning. I WANT to watch Heroes, Fringe, Flash Forward, but I just don’t have the time lately. I actually haven’t seen Heroes since the third or fourth episode of the second season.
I’m glad someone else is noticing…I note that this week’s ep was written by Bryan Fuller, who was with the show in its first year and then left to create/run Pushing Daisies. I like to think his presence has something to do with the return to watchability.
Did anyone else think that the scene between Claire and HRG was played so affectionately that they seemed to be flirting? Yeeee.
Well, he is technically her “adopted” father… but yeah, ewwwwwwww.
Oh, and Claire’s creepy college friend kisses her? Great re-run, but I liked it more the first time I saw it, on Buffy with Tara and Willow…
Y’know, I’m used to Joss being credited for pretty much everything (fans routinely claimed that storylines and characters in my run on “Supergirl” were rip offs of Whedon even though mine were either developed simultaneously or even came first) but I think even the most ardent Whedon supporter is going to have to admit that Joss didn’t invent college lesbianism.
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I wasn’t “giving Joss credit”, get over yourself.
I haven’t watched the other TV shows featuring superpowered college lesbians, so yes, Willow and Tara were the first I noticed.
Plus, I can’t stand Claire’s new (probably em-powered) girlfriend either. At least Tara was genuinely likable.
It sounded like you were giving Joss credit. You could have just said it’s been done before, but instead you specifically mentioned Buffy.
If Joss Whedon invented college lesbianism, I’m sure there are a lot of websites owing him royalties.
Unfortunately, that was Fuller’s last episode, and he’s off the show again.
Bummer.
So far, I’m willing to watch Heroes this year, and I like how Angela’s plans concerning “Nathan” are coming unraveled; but I still think the whole Nathan/Sylar arc exemplifies bad writing, and that Sylar shouldn’t still be around.
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I went into more detail about those issues in a Heroes related thread last spring.
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I’m in no hurry to buy the season 3 DVD set, but I remain cautiously optimistic about season 4. Next week looks interesting, based on some of the previews. “Nathan” has reverted to his Sylar form (for reasons I won’t mention to avoid spoilers), but does he still think he’s Nathan? How would Angela handle that? Have the Haitian mind-wipe the cops (and anyone else) “Nathan” encounters? Maybe. But suppose she needs Matt Parkman to get Sylar/Nathan to shape-shift back to Nathan’s form? That might not be such a hot idea, considering that Sylar’s Katra, if you will, is rattling about in Matt’s head.
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For his part, Matt doesn’t seem to want to have anything more to do with Angela, but it’d be ironic if Sylar compelled him to go to New York, mostly to annoy him, but in the faint hope it might lead him to answers.
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By the way, I liked the scene a few episodes back with Matt and (invisible to all but Matt) Sylar at the 12-step group.
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I also liked some of the exchanges between Claire and Noah this week, especially elements of the mock job interview.
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Hiro’s Sam Becketting (i.e. “making things right that once went wrong,” such as Ando’s spilled drink on Hiro’s sister’s dress at the carnival) seems to fit his personality, and I suspect that Hiro will continue to try to fix the “little things” despite the fact that his powers seem to be killing him. And some of these “little things” will probably be very minor, things that the people involved long since forgot (unlike the repercussions of Ando’s spilled drink).
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Concerning Peter, it’d be interesting if the subplot about him being suspected of causing the accidents where he shows up to help continues to be played out (despite the dropped lawsuit), and that Peter’s abilities become public knowledge. Would people realize that Peter got there so quickly because of his powers, or conclude that he did cause the accidents and was using his powers to showboat?
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Heroes does seem back on track, but is it too late to keep the show from being canceled? I understand viewing figures were pretty low for the first and second episodes. I hope it at least gets a full season, and if this is the last season, that they get to wrap things up.
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Rick
For the most part I’m enjoying the new season, but I can’t stand the Parkman scenes. I now mute the TV whenever he’s on screen. Oddly, I find the “Nathan in Sylar” scenes to be a lot more interesting and effective, perhaps because A) they’re a subtler use of the existential crisis plot, and B) Nathan’s not being such a whiny loser about it all.
If only I could stop mentally referring to Madeline Zima’s character, Gretchen, as “F***ing and Punching,” the book her “Californication” character stole from David Duchovny’s Hank Moody–and then got published under her own name.
Personally, if I hear, after the season is done, that it ended up being great….maaaaaaybe I’ll check it out on DVD. But this show has burned me so many times, I doesn’t deserve the benefit of doubt from me, not after just 3 episodes. I’d rather watch something else.
That’s great and all, but no love for SMALLVILLE?
Smallville is that Ex Girlfriend that started out great, burned out, and is now trying everything to relight the romance.
Someone needs to change the locks on Smallville before they embarass themselves further.
Maybe it’s just me, but so far I haven’t been able to get into the season, plus the whole college lesbian stuff just seems like such an overused cliche at this point, (you ever notice how it rarely guys experimenting in college).
I lost interest in season 2, when the show went from normal people suddenly dealing with their sudden powers (Claire’s rejection, Peter’s hopefulness, Hiro’s zeal, Nathan’s ignoring them, even Sylar’s homicidal selfishness) to having the characters always bumping into each other even if they were halfway across the country from each other!
Season 2 could also be when they went overboard with Sylar. I *think* that was when he absorbed Claire’s power, rendering him virtually immortal. They also started assuming he had whatever power he needed to advance the storyline (he needs to fart Froot Loops? Well, let’s figure he killed someone who had that power) and he kept being captured and escaping. (Heck, in the ep “One of them, one of us” they sent him with HRG to stop a metahuman bank robbery — because, really, why not send an incredibly powerful, homicidal, and untrustworthy person who kills superhumans and steals their powers into a situation with a bunch of victi-er, superhumans and a human agent who can’t stop Sylar.) And mind-morphing Sylan into Nathan is one of the wort ideas ever done in fiction.
I caught a little of this season, and while the Carnival is intriguing (they’re powerful, yet apparently trapped) I’d rather read about it than watch it.
Thank you. This is precisely what I was waiting for. After the end of last season with the whole Nathan being dead even though Claire had been able to save him before, and the over reliance on Sylar, I officially gave up on Heroes, and was just saying the other day that I would need someone who;s opinion i respected to actually say, “hey this new season ain’t so bad.” You sir, are that man! Don’t get me wrong. I’m still leery, but i might be willing to give it another shot.
My problem with heroes was never the storylines themselves because IMO they never existed. Ever since the first season finale i realised that heroes was a collection of cool plot elements shoved together, in hope that it would make a coherent sum. And in the beginning it had the benefit of the doubt. Yes, i still watch it but i never expect to see something original and really coherent, i go in for just what it is
Rather than say something reasonable such as, “Your son is dead; you need to deal with it and we need to dipose of the guy responsible for his murder before he kills your other son or any of us,”
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Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t Claire in the building at the time? It was already been proven that her blood can resurrect the dead when a transfusion cured Noah of a bullet to the head. I’m surprised all the writers and characters completely forgot that fact.
They remembered, but I felt the same way, but they didn’t want to hit that particular Dues Ex Machina too often…
I’m stoked by the Deaf character but a little disappointed in the fact that the writers chose to turn her into Dazzler-lite rather than something more interesting (in spite of the beautiful display PAD mentioned).
wow, really? between just forgetting it’s on (surely not a good thing, right?) and not hearing anything about it from people who used to be rabid, i really thought this was all done and pointless. i suppose i’ll catch up when 3 hits disk. i didn’t even know about nathan. and yeah, not letting removing sylar from the realm of the living was clearly a huge mistake.