Heroes / Heroes Reborn: Discussion Thread

[JackPeyton]

Elle

Kristen Bell

The rest of the episode? Ehhh...

But next week? Looks like it good be good.

[EricMontreal22]

I thought the changes suggested in the ent weekly cover story made a lot of sense...

[Sylph]

'Heroes': Five Ways to Fix a Series In Crisis

Ratings are down. Criticism is up. Two years after its ratings peak, ''Heroes'' has become a series under siege. Here's our five-point plan to give the supernatural drama its powers back

By Jeff Jensen 

The scene: a cozy New York apartment on the L.A. set of Heroes in August, where an ordinary man trying very hard not to become an extraordinary monster pops the cork on a champagne bottle. ''The ziti smells terrific!'' says Gabriel Gray (Zachary Quinto), calling out to the woman who's minutes away from damning him to his predestined future as a brain-mutilating serial killer. Her name is Elle (Kristen Bell), and not only does she emerge from the kitchen sporting a Betty Crocker smile and holding the aforementioned Italian casserole, she also promises him a tasty side dish — in the form of a scruffy dinner guest who possesses a secret power. ''He's special too,'' she coos.

It's all part of a pivotal Heroes flashback episode airing Nov. 10, which tells the origin stories of the series' key supervillains, including Gabriel/Sylar. Watching the cast and crew, it is clear they're laboring hard to make the fantasy feel real and unique. ''I want to do something different,'' Quinto tells director Allan Arkush as they refine a fight sequence. ''I think I want to rip my glasses off.'' The work seems to pay off: By afternoon's end, Quinto & Co. have concocted a clever, creepy scene, worthy of Heroes at its very best.

But how many of you will still be around to watch it? That's the urgent question facing Heroes and several other returning shows that have found themselves struggling to regain their audiences after being out of sight, out of mind for as long as nine months — a consequence of not coming back last spring following the writers' strike. The show is now averaging only 9.4 million viewers, down from last year's 11.6 million average. And the Oct. 6 episode notched its lowest number ever at 8.2 million viewers — a far cry from its peak performance of 16 million in season 1. But not all the news is bad: Season 3's first two episodes averaged 3.1 million DVR viewers over seven days, a jump of 5 percent from last fall. And while the drama has taken a tumble in overall viewers, it ranks eighth — same as last season — in the advertiser-coveted 18-49 demo. Heroes may no longer be a pop culture phenomenon, but it is still a good, though not great, performer for NBC.

Problem is, good might not be good enough. To hear series creator Tim Kring tell it, Heroes needs to be — or, at least, needs to be seen as — zeitgeist-tapping, blockbuster event television in order to remain viable. As Kring told EW in September: ''Looking at the state of serialized TV, the shows that succeed are rare. You wait months for [shows like Lost and The Sopranos] to come back, and when they do, there's a smaller amount [of episodes], which makes them feel special. It's hard to stay special if you're on all the time.'' To keep Heroes buzzy, Kring last season adopted a strategy of dividing each season into shorter ''volumes,'' which he hoped would ''build toward exciting finales and create excitement in between story lines.''

Yet has the third-volume Heroes met Kring's own criteria for vitality? Many critics and fans don't think so. ''Villains,'' now at its midpoint, has embroiled its core characters — including time-traveling Hiro Nakamura (Masi Oka), power sponge Peter Petrelli (Milo Ventimiglia), and quick-healing Claire Bennet (Hayden Panettiere) — in a comic-bookish yarn about a prison break of mutant baddies and a mystery menace aspiring to unleash superpowered anarchy upon the world. The episodes have certainly addressed many complaints about Heroes' poorly received second season: The pace is quicker, the premise has been clearly established, and most of the characters have been plugged into the central arc. Unfortunately, though, last year's bugs have been replaced by new ones. And they must be stopped. NBC's No. 2 drama won't ever reclaim its status as a ratings powerhouse, but it can regain its creative glory — provided producers start fixing things now. In order to speed things along, we present our five-point plan to save Heroes...from itself.



PROBLEM 1: TOO MANY HEROES 

SOLUTION: RETIRE SOME CAPES

With a sprawling cast, Heroes has many story lines to feed — and not enough time to nourish all of them. In the season 3 premiere, the show banished telepathic cop Matt Parkman (Greg Grunberg) to Africa for a multi-episode arc that had him wandering through the desert with a Noble Black Man (mystic Bushman edition), who gave him some magic paste and a Walkman that allowed him to view future events that had more to do with Peter than himself. Put another way, Heroes sent Parkman to Africa to...watch an episode of Heroes! Parkman, so meaningful to the Volume 1 narrative, seems tapped out. Ditto Suresh (Sendhil Ramamurthy), whose transformation into a mad, gooey human insect qualifies as blatant pop culture theft (see: The Fly). Yes, the character plays a role in the larger ''Villains'' story; the scientist will soon be forced to share his latest breakthrough (he's figured out the source of superpowers) with recently revealed überfiend Arthur Petrelli (Robert Forster). But that will make this the third straight season Suresh has ended up working for the bad guys as part of the story's endgame. Kring originally envisioned Heroes as a series that constantly refreshed itself by routinely phasing out characters, but he backed off after the show became a ratings hit — making the cast breakout stars — in season 1. Three seasons later, however, it's time to trim the fat by either killing some top-tier Heroes (hello, genuine life-and-death stakes!) or giving one or two a permanent happy ending. Then shore up the audience's emotional investment with the show's favorites by adding more single-character episodes like ''Company Man,'' the season 1 classic that focused almost exclusively on H.R.G. (Jack Coleman).

PROBLEM 2: ABSURD PLOT TWISTS

SOLUTION: MAKE THE HEROES SMARTER

Nothing undermines creative integrity like making characters act out of character just for the sake of advancing plot. Yet Heroes has recklessly committed this sin more than once this season. Included in the hard-to-swallow idiocy was a suddenly powers-hungry Suresh, as well as flying man Nathan Petrelli's (Adrian Pasdar) utterly unconvincing religious conversion and boneheaded choice to heed career advice from his dead nemesis Linderman (Malcolm McDowell). But the most egregious development has involved one of the show's best assets, Hiro. Having him blithely embark on a potentially world-destroying adventure simply because he was bored? That's just lazy writing. According to one insider, some of the actors were bothered by these leaps in character logic, but were told they were necessary evils as part of a larger reboot plan. Still, to crib the title from Oka's summer movie hit: Get Smart.


PROBLEM 3: OVERHEIGHTENED REALITY

SOLUTION: GET BACK TO THE HEROES' ROOTS

Kring once made a vow never to introduce characters with silly powers. That promise was officially obliterated on Oct. 13, when Heroes gave us a villain who could...create black holes? Maybe we're too nerdy for our own good, but that's jump-the-shark preposterous. Still, that's a quibble compared with the larger, more alarming paradigm shift that's taken place. Once, Heroes was a show that had at least one foot firmly on the ground. Claire was a high school cheerleader. Peter was a nurse struggling with finding his life's purpose. Niki/Jessica (Ali Larter) was a single mom making ends meet by webcam stripping. This quality always made Heroes relatable even when it got incredible. These days it seems everyone is working for some nefarious and shadowy agency, or stuck in a lab, or hanging with other freaks in exotic settings. Fortunately, Kring agrees that some sense of plausibility is essential to the series. ''There's a premise to the show that we are actually trying to get back to more and more — the idea that ordinary people have been chosen for something extraordinary,'' he told EW. ''It's what made the Harry Potter series so great, the idea that the most disenfranchised kid — the kid who lived under the crawl space of the stairs — could be chosen for greatness. That's an archetypal idea that has tremendous resonance.''

PROBLEM 4: STALE STORYTELLING

SOLUTION: GET A NEW BAG OF TRICKS

Heroes used to be the most surprising show on TV. Now it's become painfully predictable. Among the storytelling devices that the show uses far too much: time travel, prophetic paintings, apocalyptic scenarios that must be averted, secret formulas that give or take away powers, wrestling with new/out-of-control powers, be-careful-what-you-wish-for thematics, and absolute-power-corrupts-absolutely moralism. The elimination priority is time travel: The constant commuting of characters between past, present, and (alternate) futures has become confusing and is turning continuity into hole-ridden Swiss cheese. Also: Refresh the settings. The overreliance on Isaac's loft (now Suresh's lab), the Company's basement, and Claire's house has only accentuated the pervading dullness of the series.

PROBLEM 5: HEROES IS TOO DISPOSABLE

SOLUTION: FIND A BIG VISION — AND SET AN END DATE

After its own uneven third season, Lost staged a remarkable comeback due in large part to ABC's willingness to let the producers tell a long-term story through shorter seasons that would ultimately end the series itself. Heroes should seriously consider stealing a page from that script. Fewer episodes for each volume will translate into more meaningful episodes for each season. And with an expiration date, Heroes can instill an ongoing mythic arc that keeps viewers hooked for the long haul. In Kring's mind, the show already has that kind of meta-narrative: ''Heroes is, at its heart, a family drama that deals with two main families in particular, the Bennet family and the Petrelli family,'' he said. Sorry, but that's not compelling enough. Both The Sopranos and Lost found epic traction by embracing second chances and fate as grand themes. Heroes should do the same, and explore those ideas through a single central character. The best news about Volume 3 is that it has suggested a story line that can shoulder that weight: the redemption of Sylar. Can TV's most engrossing villain possibly become its most riveting hero? It's a question that upcoming episodes will continue to investigate and could be worthy of at least two more seasons.

Heroes once seemed poised to become a geek-era Law & Order franchise for the network, and a prestige property capable of generating big ratings, Emmy nominations, and even spin-offs. Now it seems the best the show can hope for is to be a solid genre series that satisfies a smaller group of rabid fans. Consistency will be key. Though ''Villains'' has recently shown some signs of improvement, Heroes shouldn't make a habit of ass-saving finishes; eventually, even fans will lose faith. The next volume, ''Fugitives,'' launching early next year, offers a fresh start. The story will again focus on core characters and enmesh them all in a plot that Kring says was inspired by current events pertaining to homeland security, invasion of privacy, and the war on terror. ''It's going to be an absolute blast,'' he told EW. ''There's nothing in it that resembles anything from 'Villains.' It's brand-new storytelling, and there's a wide-open road in front of us.'' Here's hoping it doesn't lead into another black hole.


http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20235213,00.html

[EricMontreal22]

Yes that's the article I assumed you had seen it

[Sylph]

Eric, I find this show the worst piece of cr*p to ever hit the TV screen. At this very moment. And that article is, of course, spot on.

[EricMontreal22]

I know you had a lot of hopes for the show this season--so it's too bad, though udnerstandable, you feel that way. I've only caught some eps this season but I have to say little made me wanna sit down and see what I miss, and even from what I have seen I think this episode makes a lot of sense Problem five in particular makes a lot of sense at this time

[JackPeyton]

'Heroes' duo get the ax

Alexander, Loeb fired in shakeup

By CYNTHIA LITTLETON

"Heroes," produced by Universal Media Studios, has struggled in the ratings its third season. It's understood that Alexander and Loeb were let go because of Peacock execs' frustration with the creative direction of the show. The show is also said to have been grappling with hefty budget overruns this season, that are going well beyond its already sizable $4 million per-seg pricetag.

Reps for NBC and UMS declined comment.

http://www.variety.com/article/VR111799515...yid=14&cs=1

[Toups]

Wow. I guess Jeph and Jesse are the scapegoats. Jeph has an extensive comic book background......it's Tim Kring who doesn't know anything about comic books.

I guess this shakeup could be good news......

I really think Heroes should start having short term arcs like "Save the cheerleader, save the world" and have the characters start a "group" like JLA or X-Men. The best episodes are when the characters are together.

[Sylph]

Crawling out of lurkdom to post this:

Flagging ‘Heroes’ Attempts Self-Rescue

By EDWARD WYATT

LOS ANGELES — When Ben Silverman, co-chairman of NBC Entertainment and its associated production studio, addressed a meeting of reporters in July, he confidently predicted that “Heroes,” the network’s biggest prime-time drama, was going to get even bigger.

Although the series had been off the air since the writers’ strike last year, Mr. Silverman said that Tim Kring, the creator of “Heroes,” had successfully addressed the problems that had plagued the show’s second season — confusing plotlines, scattered characters, questionable leaps in logic, all of which led to a shrinking audience from the critically acclaimed first season. 

“We’re really confident, and we’re excited to see the audience respond and come back,” Mr. Silverman said, “and we think it’s going to be its biggest year ever.”

That has not happened. With ratings for “Heroes” down 20 percent from those of a year ago and regular third-place finishes in total viewers for its time slot, NBC took action last week, midway into the show’s third season. Two co-executive producers were fired: Jeph Loeb and Jesse Alexander, who also served as senior writers and oversaw much of the script development. 

But questions remain about whether the series can be revived. Writers are already working on the 20th of a planned 25 episodes this season, meaning any changes produced by the firings are unlikely to be seen on the air before May. By that time viewership could well erode further from the estimated 8.3 million people who watched recent episodes at its regular time, Monday nights at 9. 

The impetus for the firings came from the top, according to two people close to the production who spoke on the condition of anonymity. (These and others close to the show were not authorized to speak on the record.) They said that Jeff Zucker, president and chief executive of NBC Universal and Mr. Silverman’s boss, was greatly upset by an Entertainment Weekly cover story two weeks ago that said some of this season’s developments were “jump-the-shark preposterous” and concluded that the series “may no longer be a pop-culture phenomenon.”

“Last year’s bugs have been replaced by new ones,” the usually upbeat magazine reported. “And they must be stopped.” 

An NBC spokeswoman denied that Mr. Zucker was directly involved in the decision to fire the executive producers. Mr. Zucker, Mr. Silverman and Mr. Kring would not comment on the series or on the firings, the network said.

The two people close to the show said that Mr. Zucker was part of discussions about the series’s progress since early in the season, when network executives began to fret that “Heroes” was not fully addressing the problems that became apparent in the second season. 

“He was well aware of what was going on behind the scenes,” one person involved in the show’s production said of Mr. Zucker.

Mr. Loeb, whose work on Batman and X-Men comic books is well known among serious “Heroes” fans, would not comment on the reason for his dismissal, although he said he was proud of his work on the series. “I’ve been friends with Tim Kring for 25 years, and I will continue to be friends with him,” he said. 

Mr. Alexander similarly declined to comment beyond a statement posted on his blog, at globalcouch.blogspot.com: “I could not be prouder of all the work I did on the show and wish all my Heroic Scribbler pals the very best.” 

In the writers’ room there were disagreements about how to resolve the drama’s problems. Mr. Kring felt that Mr. Loeb and Mr. Alexander did not follow through on his request to keep plots simple and to eliminate extraneous characters, according to a person familiar with his thinking. “This was a many-months-long issue,” the person said. “He needed the creative team around him to embrace his vision.”

Two people involved in the show’s production and another who is close to the program’s principals said that Mr. Kring was intimately involved in almost every aspect of “Heroes.” That raises the question of how anything that appears on “Heroes” could fail to reflect his vision.

This season Mr. Kring wrote three of the first nine episodes, according to the two people close to the production, making him responsible for a third of the content that had been produced when NBC executives began to worry once more about the show’s direction. (Episode 8 is scheduled for Monday night.) 

An NBC executive said that there was no immediate plan to replace the fired writers. Two experienced television writers were already added this season — Rob Fresco, who worked on “Crossing Jordan” with Mr. Kring, and Mark Verheiden, who most recently worked on the fan favorite “Battlestar Galactica.”

Yet on Friday, Entertainment Weekly also reported that Bryan Fuller, one of the lead writers in the first season of “Heroes” who left to create “Pushing Daisies” for ABC, is considering a return to “Heroes” if ABC fails to extend “Pushing Daisies” beyond the 13 episodes it has ordered for this season. 

Mr. Fuller is known to be close to Katherine Pope, president of NBC Universal’s television studio, who also counts Mr. Kring as a friend. Mr. Fuller’s agent, Ari Greenberg of the Endeavor agency, said on Friday that there had been no negotiations about Mr. Fuller returning to “Heroes.”

That a series with the ratings of “Heroes” could be perceived as being in trouble demonstrates the upheaval in the television business. Among the group that advertisers most covet, adults 18 to 49, “Heroes” ranks eighth over all, according to Nielsen Media Research. 

But that is down from sixth last year, an alarming sign because the series is among the most expensive to produce, costing more than $4 million an episode. NBC, like most television studios, has recently asked its producers to rein in costs. 

One bright spot, NBC executives say, is that while only about 8.3 million viewers have watched the show during its regular time slot, nearly 2 million more record and watch it within a week, according to Nielsen. That is one of the highest rates of DVR viewership gain among all shows on television. The show also is among the most-viewed online on NBC.com and Hulu.com, the site owned by NBC Universal and the News Corporation, parent company of the Fox network. 

The show might, in a sense, attract too many young viewers, those least likely to watch the series when it is broadcast and therefore more likely to skip the commercials that pay for the production. 

Even after the shake-up it appears that Mr. Kring’s job is safe, and perhaps it is the sprawling nature of “Heroes” that saved him. The show is a big hit overseas, and the Web is bursting with sites devoted to characters’ back stories, plot decoding and fan discussions. Mr. Kring is deeply involved in many of those pieces, and there is genuine fear at NBC that no other person could fill all those roles.

Given Mr. Kring’s value to the franchise, Mr. Zucker and Mr. Silverman apparently did what George Steinbrenner sometimes did when he found his Yankees in third place: fire the pitching coach. While that solution might not directly address the problems on the field, it warns those who remained that they are on thin ice.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/10/arts/television/10hero.html?_r=1&ref=television&oref=slogin

Back to lurking again.

[Toups]

I thought the latest episode was pretty interesting but I can see why viewers were confused. This whole "18 months ago" and "one year ago" flashbacks can be a bit confusing. I thought it was cool how they connected things to the pilot episode like Meredith causing the train fire. So MaPatrelli tried to kill PaPatrelli - I figured that happened.

Seeing the African dude's headless body and then the seperated head was pretty gruesome! I can't believe that made it past the censors.

[Toups]

Ah...so Elle is Sylar's baby's mommy? I think I like that.

The ending of episode 3.9 got my excited because the characters were together and in "groups" and I think the show is much better when that happens.

[Skin]

I knew that making Sylar "good" was going to be painful. Now that they have him as an "empath" it completely destroys everything that was interesting about his character. There is no need for the "hunger" or whatever garbage they were talking about not even two episodes ago. I guess Elle doesn't care that Sylar killed her father? That he was going to kill her and laugh about it? That he was mocking her old man and was going to kill her gleefully? Wow. That's all kinds of messed up and I no longer respect whatever progress Elle was building toward.

They need to do something better with Claire then have her jumping out of windows, getting shot at and continously victmized by these older men. Seriously. I wish they knew what they wanted to do with her. Cause as of now she is just the perpetual damsel in distress needing to be rescued by Peter, her mothers or her fathers. I wish she'd go Buffy and mature and straighten up.

[JackPeyton]

by far the best episode of the season.

elle/sylar was amazing. kristen bell just brought it, that girl is just... freakin awesome.

i love that they ahve moved claire out of the highschool/boyfriend/meangirls storylines. i like where they are taking her and that we are watching it happen, instead of being told about it and it happens in an episode.

[JackPeyton]

Elle & Sylar

[Ben]

This appeared in Media Guardian a couple of weeks back, and thought you guys might find it interesting. I've bolded the Heroes related stuff.