Heroes: Angels, Demons and Boredom

October 13 2008 22:28 Filed in: Television
heroeslog

Ratings for season 3 of Heroes continue their slide going into week 4. I think the sins of season 2 are not forgotten. Producer Tim Kring had to apologize for the mess that was last year. I have the bad feeling that nothing short of a spectacular launch for the new year could have prevented the loss of viewership. Season 3 has not been spectacular and though last week’s outing was the best in a while, we returned back to a dry, slow, aimless hour of television with tonight’s Angels and Demons.


Drastic, seemingly inexplicably sudden changes in characters are rather irritating. First, with Mohinder. I just don’t get it. The voice if reason and the key driver of the season 1 story arc, now in a brief run of episodes he’s the new Sylar.

As far back as season 1 we also see what a long hard four year journey could theoretically do to Peter in the future. Now, Peter, moral base of season 1, suddenly makes one choice to take Sylar’s powers and is a psycho that kills both his brother Nathan in the future and then tries to kill Sylar and his mother. No four-year journey required. What happened to character development? Heck, why waste all that time mucking about with any sort understanding and just cut to the chase, eh? Well, when the chase ain’t that good, either, it puts the show in a pretty sad state.

It’s a long season, if we’re going to turn many of our heroes into villains, try to have it make some sort of sense. There’s plenty of time to develop the plot. It seems like Kring and the writing crew seem to have forgotten what makes shows like Lost and Battlestar Galactica so intriguing: interesting characters. The science fiction and fantasy elements of these programs are transcended by true well-written character drama and it’s just not there right now with Heroes. There’s not many characters left to like and those that we’re not sure about are just going trough the motions. Claire’s decisions and motivations don’t seem to make any sense. Hiro and Ando are painfully dull. Again, virtually no urgency in any element of the plot. By the time Hiro stabs Ando through heart, I was busy checking my watch.
What a waste of a pretty good core ensemble and a stellar guest cast.
And so, here we are. Even in my house, Hereoes was an addiction for a period of time. Asses were planted on the couch for it minutes before it would start, we pounded through season 1 DVD like crack addicts. Now, my son is too involved in a video game to watch (he’ll pick it up later on the DVR) and my wife is getting up in the middle of the show to put another load of laundry in. Meanwhile, I forced myself through another week where the preview for the next week was the best part—and probably still will be once next week’s episode airs.

Tags: