Hank McCoy (Before the Fur)

God, Heroes. I’m trying. I’m trying so hard to have faith in this show- actually, if you’ve been reading along with the weekly reviews, you’ll see that almost everybody at Omnicomic is trying to have faith in this show. It’s got such a great cast. It’s got great ideas. It’s got everything it needs. But what happens? I can’t quite explain it. It’s sort of like when your favorite comic gets moved from writer to writer in a very short span of time. Plot lines get lost, characters get depicted in inconsistent ways, and everything just seems…off. See, I think the concept of Heroes was originally something like this: let’s make a show that has everything about superhero comics that we love. Complex characters and mythology, interesting connections between events and characters in-universe, intrigue and questions about morality. But let's do the whole thing in a way that is essentially NOT comic-book-y. So let’s do everything we would do in a comic book series, but in a far more realistic, grounded way and give the show the flavor of an hour long primetime drama rather than goofy Saturday morning cartoon fare. And for the first season? They pulled it off. Yeah, there were one or two plotlines that wore a little thin, but for the most part they were on it- what I remember loving most was the character’s confusion about their ‘call’. So instead of having Peter Petrelli think “I’m a superhero now,” it had more of this “I feel the urge to do something…but can this really be happening? Can life really be like a comic book? But how can that be?” existential confusion. Or take Noah, for example. Okay, to begin with- yes, there’s always the obligatory Batman-ish superhero whose best asset is that they’re more like James Bond than a superhero. But what I loved about Noah in the context of the show was this: yes, having superpowers is a nice advantage. But a well trained paramilitary operative can kill you in two seconds flat, if he wants to, because he’s been trained to do it and won’t think twice if he needs to. So yeah, superpowers, great- but the concept on Heroes, I think, was supposed to be 'this is the real world, and in the real world, guns, and people trained to use them, can kill people, super-powers or not’. So what the hell happened? Well, the second season, for one. The writers strike. Don’t know why this hurt the show bad, but it did. Somehow, the show just picked up this far more surreal quality. It seemed less worried about how characters were maneuvered into one position or the other and whether that positioning made sense. They just did it. Matt and Mohinder had custody of Molly, D.L. was dead suddenly. It all just seemed a lot less plausible and less worried about whether it was plausible or not. I think one of the other things that has hurt the show is this. The producer, Tim Kring, originally envisoned the show as having a rotating cast of characters. So the show would have had more vignettes, than an ongoing, over-arching plot. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t be into the show if that was the case. The thing is, nowadays I feel like the show has become the bastard stepchild of these two different ideas: overarching plot vs. rotating cast. I feel like characters come and go like the wind. For example, what the hell ever happened to Noah’s old partner, Peter’s invisible trainer? What happened to the girl Peter took to that one future timeline and ended up leaving her, by mistake? What was the DEAL with phantom-painting-African man that Matt saw in season three, when he drew that stuff? Elle and Bob are dead, Daphne is dead, Knox is who knows where… I just don’t feel strong continuity season per season. I feel more of this kind of ‘THIS season, let’s have THESE characters doing THIS stuff'. So season three, Nathan reveals to the president the existence of paranormal abilities. Season four, he (or Sylar, or whatever) is a senator again and all is forgotten, apparently. It just seems a little chaotic to me lately. But this is still a great show. The damage isn’t irreparable here (yet). But someone needs to do something with it, fast. Someone needs to sit down, look at the whole thing front to start, and tie it all together. I want to see some continuity work. I’m not ruling out the introduction of new characters if they help fill in the story in this regard, but someone needs to slow down and figure out where this show is (or was) headed and get back there.