Heroes...what went wrong?

Supermax1988

Richard Dower wrote: »

the only thing i want from that show is one night with Angeline Lilly.

It's Evangeline.....I can't imagine her being too impressed when you call out the wrong name

I have to disagree with most of the posts here concerning lost. I'll admit that that it went seriously downhill in seasons 2 and 3 but it came back to form in season 4 and at the moment I think it's just as enjoyable as it was in the beginning. I can't wait to find out how it all ends.

But they better explain what that ****ing polar bear was doing on the island or i'll lose all respect for the show

Richard Dower

Supermax1988 wrote: »

But they better explain what that ****ing polar bear was doing on the island or i'll lose all respect for the show

Wait...they had a polar bear, on a tropical island? :rolleyes:

Otacon

Supermax1988 wrote: »

But they better explain what that ****ing polar bear was doing on the island or i'll lose all respect for the show

They did explain that. Ask on the Lost forum.

TBH as soon as they kept the same characters for season 2, I knew Kring was bending for the studio. The beginning of the end.

It pisses me off that a show like Heroes will get renewed, but shows like The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Serenity, Dollhouse etc will/have been cancelled! :mad:

jimbling

Nervous Wreck wrote: »

So why are you bothering to keep watching it? Why are you posting here?

Eh, hello? Did you read the title of this thread? That's why I'm posting here..... Get a grip ffs

And I don't really watch it any more anyway... haven't seen the last 4/5 episodes. But that is neither here nor there.

Nervous Wreck wrote: »

Lost is tripe btw. First season was good and then they turned over all writing duties to the mentally insane.

Richard Dower wrote: »

Lost is a complete joke!...at least with Heroes we ALL want to have superpowers, but Lost...the only thing i want from that show is one night with Angeline Lilly.

Lost is in a different league to Heroes.
Yes, it suffered pretty badly in Season two and three, but nothing compared to the tripe Heroes is spitting out to this day.

jimbling

Oh, and the Lost writers have seriously shown up Heroes with regards on how to handle Time Travel.

Different League
QFT

pyramuid man

Now before this descends into a Heroes Vs Lost thread.

Lets remember that Heroes is at the same stage as Lost was at toward the end of the third season.
Heroes is alot more sci-fi than Lost which is bordering on reality in fairness. We will not be able to judge which is better as that is a matter of personal opinion and therefore subjective. So no matter what anyone says, technically none of you are right.

Please stop comparing the both as they are totally different shows and instead look at each show for its individual qualities.

jimbling

pyramuid man wrote: »

Now before this descends into a Heroes Vs Lost thread.

Lets remember that Heroes is at the same stage as Lost was at toward the end of the third season.
Heroes is alot more sci-fi than Lost which is bordering on reality in fairness. We will not be able to judge which is better as that is a matter of personal opinion and therefore subjective. So no matter what anyone says, technically none of you are right.

Please stop comparing the both as they are totally different shows and instead look at each show for its individual qualities.

Lost is bordering on reality?? There's smoke monsters, time travel and people coming back from the dead....lol, hardly reality :P


Lost em.... lost its way a bit. This has actually been explained by the writers of the show. But it never ever got so cringe worthy. Heroes is a complete mess if you ask me.

I didn't start the lost comparison, all I said was they're in a different league with regards quality of production/writing and acting.

Right, I promise I'm done posting in heroes forum... or watching the show. I'll check back in a year or so and see if it has made any improvements. I gave it way more time than most, but if I hear "save the world" one more time it's suicide watch for my family and friends.

Mr.Nice Guy

Come on folks, how can anyone actually argue that Heroes is in the same league as Lost?

The argument could definitely be made after Heroes' brilliant first season, and in fact I recall me and a friend of mine debating the matter a few times, but those debates quickly stopped when Heroes' season 2 came along!

Lost is just great whereas Heroes is just lost.

Overheal

Mr.Nice Guy wrote: »

Lost is just great whereas Heroes is just lost.

That about sums it up.

I see from the hulu front page that Sylar is having another identity crisis. Shocker! I guess I havent been missing much. This show is canceled as fcuk.

goodolegill

My opinion of Heroes, is that you never get that craving to watch that new episode and im not getting involved in the lost v heroes debate - there is no build up of tension within the show, i find the structure of the show abysmal and i watch it now with a lot of apathy - In the first season the excitement of everyone realizing their abilities, the threat of the nuclear explosion, Linderman + Angela Petrilli's motives and the threat that Sylar possessed kept you enthralled!! I hope i speak for a few of you when I say that the best ever episode was the future episode with Peter and Sylar have a standoff as the door closes in Season One. That watered the mouth for the big finale when i was expecting firework and with all finale's there can be a bit too much build up of expectation but it was awful - it was disappointing but worse of all i felt it was rushed to a 5 minute segment and the end of the last episode the big standoff that we were promised was nothing short of pathetic.

In the second season we were given all the bad aspects of the first season - people still coming to terms with their powers and Claire trying to fit in again!! Seriously if i wanna watch a girl struggling to fit in high school -i can watch hundreds of crappy other shows. With the exception of Sylar there is no constant threat throughout the show - the company shouldn't of been Angela Petrilli and should have been someone more aggressive that wasn't only taken the heroes but exterminating them - the threat never seemed that scary as we knew Noah worked for them - my opinion was he should of been a terminator figure who would not stop at any costs to exterminate.

The back stories are rather ponderous and slow moving and have very rarely neither either interesting or exciting - some of the characters are pretty one dimensional and boring. The show wouldn't harm itself by killing off some of the main characters and introducing a more vicious element to it, all attempts made in the 2nd, 3rd and 4th season have been very deflating.
The show focuses on too many of the poorer characters and when i say poorer, i mean every character other than Sylar and Peter and that's why i think the 2nd season was so poor.

Richard Dower

It's The OC all over again...amazing first season then the producers and writers get cocky and lazy, it falls apart. The actors use the show for bigger and better things and just dial in performances waiting for the next movie deal to come in, the producers start on four other different projects and starting hiring muppets to fill in for them.

It's very much a victim of it's own success and blatant and misleading hype, spin and PR from Mr. Kring who basically lied to the fanbase about that rubbish season 1 finale....if only he had the courage to kill off most of the characters in Kirby plaza and start afreah.

Fysh

goodolegill wrote: »

My opinion of Heroes, is that you never get that craving to watch that new episode and im not getting involved in the lost v heroes debate - there is no build up of tension within the show, i find the structure of the show abysmal and i watch it now with a lot of apathy - In the first season the excitement of everyone realizing their abilities, the threat of the nuclear explosion, Linderman + Angela Petrilli's motives and the threat that Sylar possessed kept you enthralled!! I hope i speak for a few of you when I say that the best ever episode was the future episode with Peter and Sylar have a standoff as the door closes in Season One. That watered the mouth for the big finale when i was expecting firework and with all finale's there can be a bit too much build up of expectation but it was awful - it was disappointing but worse of all i felt it was rushed to a 5 minute segment and the end of the last episode the big standoff that we were promised was nothing short of pathetic.

It's funny you say that because I know a lot of people didn't like the finale of the first season, but I thought it fit perfectly. The "5 Years Gone" episode showed us a dystopian future with Sylar as a near-omnipotent ruler and Peter as the only person strong enough to confront him but unwilling to do so because of what he's already lost by that point. So while it could have been interesting to see Sylar & Peter fighting in the present, it never would have been as interesting as the future battle we were teased with, just because neither of them would have had that level of control over their powers. Turning the whole confrontation around and revealing that it's actually Peter who's a danger to the world was what made the whole thing tick for me, because it elevated the whole drama of the series beyond the typical action movie/superhero "two guys punching each other in the face" level of resolution.

Now, all of this was completely screwed by deciding to bring back the entire cast from that first series instead of killing them off, allowing them to fade to the background or coming up with genuinely new directions for them to move in. For instance, Peter Petrelli should've been dead at the end of that season; Nathan might have survived but shouldn't have been a core cast member (unless he was going to be a villain with the whole "haunted reflection" thing); the rest of them should have either faded to the background or banded together to form their own group, having realised that they all possessed special powers and might be able to work together to do something useful with them.

One of the many problems with season 2 and onwards of Heroes is the utter lack of consistency of character motivations. Change is good, but almost every character in the program at this point has had retarded changes of allegiance and/or instances of unmitigated stupidity such that you can't really take any of the more subtle character development seriously, since you don't know how long it will be until the next Attack Of The Stupid.

I stopped watching the show about half a dozen episodes ago, and I thought that reading through the threads about the episodes I haven't watched might revive my flagging interest in the show, but instead it's made me realise exactly what made me give up on the show - season one looked like a show that had a big overall plan, even if there was a lot of wiggle room built into its structure to allow for the vagaries of network television schedules. Season two and beyond junked this, and while I can understand the effect of having your season cut in half due to a writer's strike, I'm now looking at a show where two thirds of the episodes thus far have been middling-to-terrible. Even if the return of Bryan Fuller gets things back to the standards of season one, there's no way that the show has a bigger story to tell unless they just start over again in the next volume, and frankly at that stage I doubt it would be worth doing.

Nervous Wreck

^^Good post. I agree with a lot of it. I always found it very strange that people were so disappointed with "How To Stop An Exploding Man", when I always thought it was the perfect ending to the season.

I also always found it strange that people thought Peter should have died in the season finale, simply because I always looked at him as the 'main' character back then, being that he was the most powerful and the only one who could stand up to Sylar, the main villain. Always wanted Nathan to die as I knew his character was **** (this was proved true very early on in S2). At this point, I don't mind Nathan so much but he'd definitely fit in better as a villain.

I think the show needs to recapture the mystery of season one. Remember struggling and squinting to try get a glimpse at Sylar through all the shadows? Wondering if Isaac, having painted his own death, would be able to stop it? Wondering if Peter was the bomb or if it really would be Sylar? The unexpected twist of Ted Sprague's sudden death and Isaac's acceptance of his fate... They need to get back some of that!

Fysh

Nervous Wreck wrote: »

I also always found it strange that people thought Peter should have died in the season finale, simply because I always looked at him as the 'main' character back then, being that he was the most powerful and the only one who could stand up to Sylar, the main villain. Always wanted Nathan to die as I knew his character was **** (this was proved true very early on in S2). At this point, I don't mind Nathan so much but he'd definitely fit in better as a villain.

Peter was definitely the main character in the first series, but I think he should have been killed off because he suffers from the Superman problem - by the end of the season he has no edge to him. He's powerful, he's got some control over his powers, and he's coming to accept that the best way he can help people will probably involve using his powers.

At that point, it's difficult to have ongoing dramatic developments with the character unless you go for soap opera tactics. Realistically the next stage of development for Peter Petrelli after the first season should have been a combination of growing concerns about the level of power he has (and the risk of that power being manipulated) and the beginnings of an emotional isolation as he realises that his ability may as well make him a new species in terms of how different he is to most of the people around him.

Instead, we got a series of horribly executed excuses to revert him back to the way he was during series one. I understand the reasons for doing this, but it means that we're being asked to sit through the same story again, and I don't see the point in that.

Nervous Wreck wrote: »

I think the show needs to recapture the mystery of season one. Remember struggling and squinting to try get a glimpse at Sylar through all the shadows? Wondering if Isaac, having painted his own death, would be able to stop it? Wondering if Peter was the bomb or if it really would be Sylar? The unexpected twist of Ted Sprague's sudden death and Isaac's acceptance of his fate... They need to get back some of that!

The story development in series one was definitely to everything that's come since; there were some genuinely shocking cliffhangers and twists. The problem is that regaining that would require having a plan for an entire season and the confidence to stick with that plan even if the initial ratings don't do too well, whereas the show appears to have been desperately trying to do anything that might keep viewers watching in recent months.

All of which comes back to Tim Kring's statements about how he'd planned out five volumes before the series even started filming. Either he was telling porkies or the network insisted on changes because they thought they understood what people enjoyed about the show. It's a shame, though - I'd have loved to see five volumes of story with the narrative consistency and overall cohesion that the first volume had.

Nervous Wreck

I agree with everything there, yeah. I liked Future Peter from the start of the Villains arc. I really liked the way, with all of his powers, he still felt powerless from not knowing how to fix things. His desperation was really interesting. Or could have been. Coulda been something for present Peter to have to work through.... Hmm..... Provided he survives the next episode, I hope they give him some good stories next season.

Josey Wales

Has it ever been explained what Parkman did with Molly? Early in the season he just said that he put her somewhere safe.

The whole Parkman thing seems very weird. First he seems to have forgotten about Molly and now with his ex-wife back on the scene he has forgotten about Daphney all too quickly.

Nervous Wreck

Yeah he "sent her somewhere safe" and never mentioned her again..... Hmmm........

Richard Dower

Does his wife know he cheated on her?

Nervous Wreck

If you're talking about Daphne, he was separated from Janice for like a year so its not cheating.... If not... I dunno what you're on about!

Richard Dower

But does his wife know he was porkin' Daphne?

jor el

His wife was having an affair first though, so it's all good.

Just_Magic

Heroes is going down the drain these days. I've watched it all so far and enjoyed the first 3 seasons. Fugitives was shocking though imho , lost interest in it.
Hope things can turn around, else I won't be watching it.

Cupcake_Crisis

Am I the only one who quite enjoyed series 2 and 3....???

I thought they were really good! I was really hooked on both series, I found them really interesting! Especially Sylar, I thought his storylines were really good! Nothing was as good as the first few episodes of series 1, but that happens with a lot of tv series!

nix

Well half on your own, i liked season 2.

But 3 was just a mess, poorly acted rushed scenes with a disgraceful storyline. The amount of character changes and out of character reactions/actions, you would swear Nathan and Parkman visited the dollhouse frequently :P

If next seasons first episode doesnt grip me ill be shelving heroes forever.

Mac Masters

Well I think people are being too harsh on the new episodes. I thought the end of season 3 was amazing! With almost every t.v. series you watch you'll most likely like the first seaon the most (the simpsons, lost, prison break etc.), the main reason is that it's new and different in the beginning! But I thought that season 2 and 3 were awesome, I just think they've got a bad rep because they will always be compared to how great the first season was! So I don't think anything has went wrong really!!!

nix

I dont compare, i take each episode on its own merit. The characters were more interesting and story more engrossing in the first and even second season imo.

Season 3 was terrible, story all over the place, poor acting.. i swear Parkman was the worst case, he was so unbelieveable throughout its as if he had the script just handed to him and the director just said "ACTION, Roll the film" little to no emotion in the relationship between himself and Daph at all ! Replicating stories from previous sci fi genre's, Peter was just reading off a que card, mostly sad face in all his scenes.

And the pitiful excuse of a climactic ending. I started to get bored with Sylars story also as they had done it before, ok hes ****ed up in the head we get it, now go make him scheme something EPIC. but noooo The characters are ment to develop as the seasons progress not deteriorate to the level we witnessed.

Am I really being too harsh?

Fysh

For some reason I'm still subbed to this forum (something I will be changing shortly) but having bailed on Volume 4 at about episode 17/18 I recently started watching Series 1 again on DVD.

What went wrong, for me, was that Series 1 very obviously always had a plan. There was a sense of confidence in how the characters were going to develop and how the storyline was going to progress, and things fell together very neatly over the course of the series.

The next series lost all of that. Instead of expanding the scope of the series and building on the idea of this group of people who have just discovered that they have superpowers, they tried to put the lightning back in the bottle by having them "try to lead ordinary lives". They decided that people wouldn't like any new characters after having introduced a bunch of 1-dimensional people who were basically excuses for a "cool" power, rather than fleshing them out (something they only really managed to do in the third volume with the puppeteer guy). They kept trying to have the original cast members essentially go through the same character arcs over and over again; they abused things like time-travel and teleportation; but most of all, they didn't have a damn clue what bigger story they were trying to tell. The second volume was mostly the same story as the first volume, only less interestingly presented. The third volume could possibly have been interesting, if it hadn't had some god-awful nonsense going on with Sylar and a load of revisionist history crowbarred in there for good measure. By the fourth volume, I didn't recognise anything of the show that I enjoyed so much in the first season.

If people still enjoy what it is today, then good luck to them. I'm disappointed to see that a show which could've developed into something comparable to Babylon 5, Battlestar Galactica or The 4400 in terms of telling a great overall story has instead turned into Eastenders with Superpowers, and I'm not watching any more of it. The only things I'm interested in to do with Heroes at this point are the careers of Jack Coleman and Zachary Quinto, because I think they'll have very interesting futures.

Dman001

What bothered me (along with many other things) was during the first volume of Series 3, Nathan wanted to give everyone powers but then in the second volume of season 3 he wanted to lock everyone up who had powers.

I think the next series could be interesting though, with Nathan being the new Sylar.

FrostyJack

I stayed away from this forum for years as I only watched the 1st 3 episodes and reckoned it was another Mutant X clone with cheap effects and boring regurgated storylines. A majority of tv show fans convinced me to watch so I bought season 1 & 2 boxette for 65E (I could get both on bluray for less now) it sat on my shelf for months. I eventually got around to it and cleared both seasons back to back in a couple of weeks and was well impressed. There were holes the size of jupiter in most episodes but it was very enjoyable. I thought season 2 was good (well almost as good as 1) which gets stick from a lot of people here, season 3 part 1 was ok ish, but part 2 was absolute sh**e

bar the scene in the presidents limo

Noah, Claire Bear, and Mohinder should have been killed in S1 or start of 2, add nothing. The government stuff was kak, Sylar was by far the best character up until he befriended kids and killed only people that didn't serve the plot

(he let Nathan and the head agent live but took over them? T-1000 would be getting sick).

I watched season 1-3 in about a month so I wasn't as disappointed as most, but I will give season 4 only 2 episodes to right those wrongs or it will be another Mutant X in my eyes.

Dman001

Just re-watched a few Season 1 episodes the other day and I remembered how good the show was. What I think made the Season 1 good was:

Isaac-Remember the fella who could paint the future, and was then killed be Sylar. I really liked his character and his ability to paint a "catastrophe" and others would try and change the future.

Sylar: In Season 1 Sylar is a very mysterious and callous killer but as Season 2 and 3 went on we learnt more about him. I really liked not knowing much about him but I know this couldn't be the case in the following seasons.

Claire: She became very annoying in Season 3 by trying to become independent.

Hiro & Ando: I thought Hiro's and Ando's immaturity in Season 1 was very funny. But then in Season 2 Hiro went to the past and it became very boring. Then in Season 3 the whole immaturity thing became very annoying for me, with Hiro wanting to become some "superhero". I think the writers need to mature his character and make him a bit more serious in Season 4.

The only characters I really liked throughout all the seasons were Nathan, Peter and Matt (I don't know why everyone hates him, I really like this character and his ability). I'm not sure what they can do with Peter's character now that he cannot absorb people's abilities since his father took this from him.