fallen heroes

For lack of anything better to post — and I don’t even feel motivated enough to talk about my three favorite shows (Chuck, Fringe, Sarah Connor) — I’m bringing over the recent EW cover story of the downward spiral Heroes is experiencing.

I’m glad I bailed right after I posted about wanting to punch myself in the face while watching. For anyone who complains about the complications of Lost and yet champions Heroes? Um, yeah. At least Lost has been planned out from Day 1 and has a precise end game. The Heroes writers seem to be making things up as they go along.

And I’m not the only one who thinks so.

Not even the always-awesome Kristen Bell can convince me to come back.

Heroes: Five Ways to Fix It
By Jeff Jensen, Entertainment Weekly

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.