(I like how the news is so causal about funnel clouds in California. You’d think that someone would be trying to overhype this, but I guess there’s two juicy disasters going on currently.)
We’re talking about Heroes and its utterly wasted potential that somehow lasted four seasons? Well, yeah, DaDesi does tend to be its fiercest and most informed critic, but given that I suffered through all of Seasons 2 and 3 just to say fuck it when Season 4 was maybe getting decent again, I don’t think I’m far beyond, personally.
I’ll try to keep this concise for once, but I doubt I’ll be able to be. Keep in mind this is ALL off the top of my head.
So, first, let’s talk about Season 1 problems:
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[]Too many characters. Or, rather, too many characters who were far apart and never did or amounted to much, even at the end of Season 1. This mainly applies to Nikki’s storyline and her supporting characters DL and Micah, though there are a few other offenders like Simone (who is basically only ever there to provide a vagina until she gets shot), Hannah (who isn’t even introduced in TV episodes, really) and Kaito (who contends with DL for the most bullshit death in season 2).
[]Related to the above, the end of season fight was…meh for all that it was built up to be. For everyone that was supposed to help, they mostly cower in the corner while Peter and Sylar fight out (read: Peter gets his ass beat until Sylar gets impaled by the slowest stab ever via Hiro).
[]Ted’s death was completely incoherent. Or, rather, there’s really no reason that he shouldn’t have exploded if he was on the verge of almost exploding just from getting non-fatally shot yet he only just screams when someone’s slowing slicing through his skull.
[]Outside of overall problems with the show, there’s all that’s problematic about Season 1 specifically for the most part.
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Moving on to Season 2, though, the problems that suddenly pop up are fucking ridiculous from the get-go:
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[]Even before the writer’s strike thing happened, a lot of storylines were doomed to peter out (heh), such as Hiro’s Kensei in Feudal Japan storyline, Nikki’s storyline about moving in with DL’s cousins, the whole thing with stupid Maya, her unfortunate brother Alejandro and Sylar’s road trip and Peter’s…idiotic amnesia storyline. Hell, arguably the only things decent about Season 2 storyline-wise are Matt and Mohinder randomly shacking-up to raise Molly and Nathan surviving the explosion due to random healing powers, neither of which are ever explained.
[]Peter’s amnesia is arguably the worst thing about Season 2 just because it allows him to basically become the Idiot Ball (as opposed to he and Mohinderance just handing it back and forth) while at the same time being like the worst possible way they could have handled his overpowered ass. Instead of just making him forget about his powers or having him being afraid to use them (after, you know, almost blowing up half of New York and almost killing his brother) or seek out Claude again (since Molly is right there), HRG for some reason has the Haitian totally mindwipe him and ship him to Ireland. What.
[]Due to the above and Hiro’s storyline, the new (weak) villain of the season, Adam (a British immortal who Hiro thought was Kensai before it turns out that Hiro screwed him over and was himself fated to be Kensai), gets to manipulate idiot boy into almost releasing a horrible virus that destroys like 90% of the Earth’s population in yet another “bad future”. Yeah, Peter is basically the bad guy for all of season 2 just because he’s too dumb to realize that Adam is basically (somewhat rightfully) horribly embittered and using him. The amnesia isn’t an excuse since he doesn’t question SO many questionable things, to the point where he probably would have followed along if Adam was radiating fucking darkness ala MvC3 Wesker.
[]Meanwhile, to further the stupidity of giving Peter amnesia (as if such a thing was possible), there’s also this random (different) virus that’s basically the Legacy Virus except it just makes people lose their powers instead of making them flare out of control and kill them; it’s called the “Shanti Virus” and is ultimately related to Mohinderance, but we’ll talk about that later (maybe). Equally important to later seasons, Sylar is one of the people that contracts it…yet he continues to kill people with reckless abandon with the most mundane of objects between The Brick (imagine Million’s TM here since I’m too lazy to open Word) and a knife and such.
[]Too many wasted characters: DL survives getting shot by Linderman only to get shot beyond season’s by some random club-going guy because Nikki had yet another slutty personality; Kaito gets killed by Adam before we even know who Adam is–he’s wearing a hoodie when he tackles Kaito off a roof–is and without ever knowing what the fuck Kaito can do; powerless Sylar kills Candice, one of the few interesting minor characters; Sylar also kills Alejandro, Maya’s brother who, unlike his sister, is NOT an idiot; Adam gets trapped in a grave by Hiro only die in the dumbest way to Season 3’s villain; Yeah, that Maya lives through season is its own unique tragedy…
[*]Even Nikki’s random death via exploding building isn’t doesn’t mitigate anything since she gets replaced and it causes two characters with potential, Micah and his cousin who basically has Taskmaster’s powers (I was calling her Taskmistress personally), to just disappear permanently like Zack.
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This is already getting rather long, so let’s keep Season 3 problems to single sentences so that you’re even more mystified before getting into overall problems. Actually, it’s more like Season 2.5 because of the writer’s strike, which arguably makes it even worse:
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[]They blame Sylar’s “hunger” for power on his powers…even though he was killing when his powers were turned off.
[]They also try to pretend that Sylar is a Petrelli for purposes of manipulation…after giving him a lie detection power that he hardly uses all season.
[]Mohinderance’s formula to give people powers because the main villain wants it for…some reason.
[]The main villain is Arthur Petrelli, Angela’s husband and Nathan & Peter’s father. His power: he can permanently absorb the power of anyone he physically touches. He does this to Peter. He manages to die, via Sylar, even though he’s basically GOD by that point. (In an example of godhood, he sneaks up on HIRO, the guy who can stop time AND STEALS HIS POWERS TOO EVEN THOUGH HE ALREADY HAS THEM.) Yeah…to say Arthur is hella broken is a vast understatement.
[]Speaking of Mohinder, he basically turns into evil Spider-man when he gives himself powers. Also, randomly they have him hook up with Maya (yes, she’s still around for…some reason) because I guess thought they needed to prove “hey, Mohinder is straight” even though he’s easily like the gayest person on the show–he’s gayer than Zack–for several reasons.
[]Arthur kills Adam instantly just by stealing his powers…despite the fact that it makes no sense at all.
[]Tying powers to the eclipse for…some reason.
[*]Literally the ONLY good thing about this is that Arthur steals–well, more like takes since she never wanted them–Maya’s powers and she gets put on a bus for good. Yes, Arthur, the same person who can already find out where anyone on the planet is, teleport anywhere, stop time, travel through time, heal from anything and various other stupidity also gained the power to causally murder entire areas of people just by thinking about it. …Yet he dies via a mere bullet through the head just because the Haitan is in the room…yeah…
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Season 3 manages to be even more clusterfuck somehow between all the future bullshit like Future Dark!Peter, Future Dark!Claire, Nikki and Jessica apparently have had a triplet sister with random ice-water powers, the destined love of Daphne and Matt Parkman that happens because…it’s destined (I guess because they need to reinforce his heterosexuality after the whole Mohinder* thing) and other bullshit like killing off Nathan at the end of the season’s not even onscreen “big fight” and mindraping Sylar into thinking he’s Nathan. Yeah… The only remotely decent thing about Season 3 is Daphne’s character and Hiro’s continued character development.
I stopped caring about two or three episodes into Season 4 when they introduced the “Claire is an idiot AND a lesbian” angle alongside the new circus villains that seemed bland as hell.
With that (not succinctly) done, let’s talk about the overall problems Heroes had:
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[]Perhaps the biggest offender was simply that not everything happened in the TV, but rather had those online supplements in between the comics and the video things. I mean, for all the flack I and others gave it, it’s a novel idea that merited some exploration eventually as part of some series, just not as containing vital parts of TV-based on-going. Seriously, there’s some things in the comics that never, ever get mentioned explicitly in the show, like who the fuck Hannah is and that she dies.
[]A lot of characters were just damn overpowered. Hiro, Peter, Sylar and Arthur Petrelli are the largest offenders, but they’re hardly the only ones–hey, Micah. The only one of them that gets any decent character development is Hiro and that’s because half of the time the plot force his powers to fuck up or just not work at all.
[]The love affair they had with Sylar was just ridiculous. After Arthur dies, he’s basically the closest thing to God the series has since Peter remains depowered and so they, after trying and failing to prove that he’s possibly a good guy (again, he’s the one who kills Arthur by the way and simply because Arthur lies to him), go back and forth with the idea that he can change in Season 3. He doesn’t. It would have been A LOT less aggravating to watch if he was at all repentant for anything and hadn’t basically continuing being a needy, murderous, whiny sociopath when he had no powers for half of Season 2, but he didn’t and was, so…
[]Similarly, they “solved” the problem of Peter being so damn powerful by having him constantly be too dumb to live and extremely naive to the point of literal retardation. How this guy ever qualified to become a nurse…
[]Too much focus on always having to “save the world” or else some “bad future” that we always got to see would happen.
[]Yet they can’t save the cheerleader. Not really. Because Zack’s actor was apparently afraid of being typecasted as gay before the Terminator Salvation show happened, Claire’s character never, ever develops. She remains a reckless idiot who keeps wanting to feel special…even though she chastises Sylar multiple times for the exact same thing (and sees what it’s done to him).
[]The bad futures that happened were ALWAYS shifting and never consistent…despite the fact that characters not only went forward to see them, but came back from them (except Peter’s random Irish girlfriend, Caitlin–stay non-existent, lass–who Peter accidentally left in the future and was never ever mentioned again) to interfere with the path. Yeah, that doesn’t…work. After a while, you got the impression that these people were doomed not because the world wasn’t/couldn’t be saved, but because most of them were so damn stupid. (See Mohinderance.)
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And so on and so on. I’m sure DaDesi could fill in more off the top of his head.
*Seriously, like so many of the characters Heroes are arguably gay that there’s a whole damn chart about it (that isn’t nearly as adult as it warns). Look it up if you want a laugh, though a lot of it is arguably supported by the show (or in the comic because it’s completely obvious that Peter is making out with Mohinder in that painting and not Simone).
I never said there weren’t bad episodes. I just said they weren’t as bad as Heroes (suddenly) got.
Season Two will hopefully be longer, and get us going where we all know it’s headed, and bring out some of the more ‘unique’ characters. Hell, Tyrone is already cast
Season Two will hopefully be longer, and get us going where we all know it’s headed, and bring out some of the more ‘unique’ characters. Hell, Tyrone is already cast