Tim Kring's Heroes Review
Were Super-Heroes and Super-Villains Undermined by WGA strike?
Jul 31, 2008
An American Tv series, the first season of Heroes received an impressive number of nominations and awards throughout the industry and was sure to find itself picked up for a second season. In fact, series’ creator Tim Kring and his writing team have stated that the show has been planned as far ahead as five seasons.
Some would say that they're getting ahead of themselves.
Heroes Season 2: Generations, Exodus & Villains
The second season was planned in three volumes, the first entitled ‘Generations’, the second ‘Exodus’ and the third ‘Villains’. As a result of the writers’ strike the ‘Villains’ volume was redirected into season three, while the ‘Exodus’ arc was wholly dropped, leaving season two a few layers short of the cake that was season one.
Gone in the second season is the stylistic noir that tinged the first and we the viewers were left dragging our heels through eleven episodes of poorly treated characters, plots, and the insubstantial threat of a virus (when will producers/writers realize that, with a few rare exceptions, viruses simply do not constitute great film or tv?).
The neatly-crafted character of Sylar is lazily placed in a holding pattern, while the amnesic Peter Petrelli would rather dedicate himself to a girl he’s known for a day or two, despite not knowing if he has a wife, children, friends and family back home, who all think he’s dead.
‘Jessica’ is replaced by another, extraordinarily weak, persona, while Claire continually spouts the same dialogue of wanting a normal life – to cite just a few examples of the seasons’ weaknesses, none of which lie with the capable cast.
Also, the quicker the series’ drops it’s heavy reliance on ‘the Company’ as a basis for storylines, the better. ‘The Company’ is doing to the series what companies do best – leaving us with a bland, predictable product, as opposed to the original production that Heroes promised to be.
Heroes Season 1: Genesis
There’s no question that the Writers’ strike played heavily on the second season’s short production and limited development and it’s a shame when external events interfere with the storytelling process (as in J. Michael Strazynski’s fourth and fifth seasons of Babylon 5).
Is it, therefore, unfair to judge the series on that basis? Well, no. The signs have been there from the beginning (after all, Kring could hardly be given credit for the basic idea, which originates with the X-men comics).
Putting aside such minor observations as the man who can telekinetically stop bullets being run through with a sword by a screaming asian fellow (and many other power-related plot-holes that occur throughout the first season) of much more concern were several crucial ‘backtracks’.
This is a nice way of saying that the writers of the show wanted to execute a scene, without following through on the consequences – a common insult in film and Tv. For example, Claire deliberately crashes a car, with the clear intent of killing it’s passenger, only to find that in the next episode the passenger has survived.
These are manipulations on the writers’ parts to avoid putting Claire on a ‘grey’ moral ground, which, one might venture, would have made her a far more interesting character than she has since become.
Again, while the first season was excellent for the majority, there was little delivery to the ‘apocalyptic’ finale, after which we discover that everyone is pretty much okay (even the character of D.L., thought to be dead, is briefly and pointlessly revived for the second season).
Could it be that we’ve already seen the best that Heroes has to offer? Maybe. Maybe not. Only time will tell. The real question is – by then will anyone really care?
