Hype around ‘Heroes’ just a bunch of hoopla
Hayden Panettierre and Jessalyn Gilsig play a superpowered mother-daughter pair on NBC's "Heroes."
“Save the cheerleader, save the world.”
That’s what a creepy raspy whisper told me throughout the entire first season of NBC’s “Heroes.” Since then, the show has remained one of the highest-rated programs on television, despite a critically ashamed second season. Season three premiered a few weeks ago and since then we’ve learned that the cheerleader can’t die anyway, and saving her didn’t put the world in any less danger.
As a modern geek, I pride myself on my love of science fiction. I’ve sat through every “Lord of the Rings” movie, read all seven “Harry Potter” books, and I have novel-long theories on the mythologies behind “Lost” and “Battlestar Galactica.” A series with a comic book-inspired style and superhuman characters discovering their powers should have been right up my alley. And it was, for a time.
The first season was good. Despite overacting and poor character development, it was good. Not great, but good. It left the series with the potential to be great. The second season crushed that potential, ate it, crapped it out, and set it on fire on someone’s doorstep.
Some, including the series’ writers, have blamed the epic failure of the second season on the writer’s strike. Acknowledging their bust and claiming the strike had necessitated it, they cut the season in half and ended it early. The writers promised that the third season would make up for the flaming pile of crapped that was season two.
Four episodes in and I am not impressed. The third season, entitled “Villains,” has simply engorged the same flaws the series has suffered since its first season.
“Heroes” began season one with a whopping ten lead characters. With only 23 episodes, it was impossible for the series to develop each character in time for them to converge and participate in the grand finale. Over the course of season three, instead of cutting or writing out characters, even more characters have been written into the series. So far, the main cast has grown to about 13 people, with five or six supporting characters, none of which I have grown attached to and care the least about.
With an army of superpowered cast members, “Heroes’” characters are no longer unique. When the series started, its main appeal was in the “uniqueness” of its characters—special individuals who discover powers that would enable them to solve a problem no one else could solve.
The concept of ordinary people doing extraordinary things has always been an overarching theme in science fiction, one that usually does the trick in capturing and relating to an audience. But with new characters and new powers being introduced every episode, the characters have lost their uniqueness, becoming just a few of many “special” people.
Instead of strengthening and expanding on its initial appeal and cleaning up its flaws, “Heroes” continues to suffer from poor acting, overabundance of characters and poor character development and has lost sight of its initial appeal. As much as I had hoped that this unashamedly geeky comic-styled show would be the first of its kind to go mainstream, it’s only been a disappointment.
At least I know that if I need a good fix of genetically superpowered heroes whose lives are chronicled in comics, there is always “X-Men.”
Chelsea Otakan can be reached at cotakan@nevadasagebrush.com
This entry was posted
on Monday, October 13th, 2008 at 10:48 pm and is filed under Arts & Entertainment, Television Reviews, Vibe.
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