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Season 3 of NBC's wundershow Heroes starts tonight with its premiere episode, which I've seen in advance, and though the anticipation among its fans is huge, the show that suffered a total drop in momentum during its second season run has its work cut out for it in the weeks to come.

For its second season, creator Tim Kring and his team had to follow the enormous response it received in its debut season. They took it lightly and paid the price, with many fans I've talked to noting their drop in interest. For the third season, they might have found a way to get fans excited again, but will they be able to deliver the goods?

The Good That Was

Let's be candid: Heroes was never a great show. It was a fun distraction, a cavalcade of Sci-Fi and comic book references and homages that made Monday nights worth looking forward to. Though it has top-notch production value, the writing and the acting had never been very strong, even for crappy network TV standards (the dialogue, especially, was always a chore to listen to). What made me a fan of Heroes' first season, despite the obviously weak nerves and joints, is the solid skeleton at the core of the show. Its catchphrase/tagline was not just an annoying marketing slogan, but a great through line: "Save the Cheerleader, Save the World." That's exactly what Heroes was in a nutshell. It had an easy to follow plot, a specific goal, and a cast of characters that allows you to relate to their disorienting superpower discovery. Its most blatant parroting is, of course, the mutants in X-Men, a comparison they proudly welcomed by having their geek-of-the-bunch Hiro Nakamura mention a revered X-Men story in the pilot. Week after week, Heroes was an enjoyable spectacle show that knows what it's good at and excels at it.

It all changed with Season Two. Tim Kring blames the show's decline on the show misinterpreting what the fans want. Last November, during the last throes of the season, Kring issued a formal apology on the pages of Entertainment Weekly to fans for making the season "too slow" for them.

”We assumed the audience wanted season 1 — a buildup of intrigue about these characters and the discovery of their powers. We taught [them] to expect a certain kind of storytelling. They wanted adrenaline. We made a mistake.”

When I heard this, all I could perceive was how terribly condescending the comment was. It's not as if the fans can't handle a slow build and some character development. The problem was not the slow pace, but the story being told.

Going South

Kring pointed out Hiro's Japan journey as a fault, saying it should have lasted three episodes at most. Personally, I thought it was the highlight of the season. It was a fun story, it provided some history to the show's universe, and it introduced a perfect big bad villain that could have been a great twist had they handled the reveal differently. Who else felt the flashback episode revealing Kensei/Adam as Hiro's father's murderer was anticlimactic and predictable because he went Evil Nemesis Forever on Hiro two episodes prior?

Listen, if Claire has to fall in love with a flying emo-stalker wimp they should have just had her hook up with Brandon Routh that's fine, there's nothing wrong with romance on the show. The problem was with the groan-inducing execution, not the premise of the subplot. ”In retrospect, I don’t think romance is a natural fit for us,” said Kring. Well, no, not with the thick layer of cheese you guys slather on it.

Season Two's problem was actually quite simple, and the writers knew it: we wanted to know what the hell was going on. What was the big plot of the season? Who are the characters and how are they going to contribute to the larger plot? How are they going to define themselves as "heroes"? Season One unified a large cast with multiple storylines by allowing them to connect to one another, a big theme of the show in the first place. Season Two had various subplots that didn't go anywhere, nor were they interesting in the first place. Sylar going on an extended road trip with two new and dumb characters playing the same cat-and-mouse game over and over... Riveting television, right there. Peter had a vision of a viral apocalypse that could have made for a good, albeit redundant, season-long arc. Instead, they introduced the threat 7 episodes in, and it ended 4 episodes later with minimal effort and involvement on the other characters' part.

The Second Coming

The Season 3 premiere that airs tonight is aptly titled "The Second Coming". Maybe it could have been called "The Resurrection" also. From what I've seen, Season 3 is shaping to be what Kring promised it to be: a fast-paced, action-packed adrenaline ride. From the get-go, Season 3 rushes into laying out all of its foundations for the coming year. It's cool, it's exciting, it will energize fans who got bored with the show last year... but like the second coming of Christ heralding judgement day, I fear that this fireworks approach signals Heroes' depleting resource of ideas.

Let's take a look at the storyline being presented. Without giving too much away, the first episode has Hiro jumping forward in time and witnessing a catastrophic disaster that he must prevent. Sylar is up to no good again, going after Claire. Future versions of our beloved heroes are ambiguously up to no good. Then there's a mystery villain, secrets revealed, conspiracies, the usual. In other words, stuff we've seen before. So to repeat the first season's glory, they've opted to literally repeat the first season, more or less. The big twist that's going to drive the season this time, though, is instead of a cure, we find Mohinder with the ability to give superpowers to normal humans. Allow me to be sarcastic again, but wow, what an original idea that is. Because what fans thought was really missing from the show was Ando and Mohinder having superpowers.

And yet, that's not even the biggest problem I see.

What's the buzzword of this season? Villains! Yes, supervillains. When all else fails, introduce evil versions of your characters. Predictably, for time-controller Hiro, we're getting a speedster villain that can move faster than Hiro can stop time. Yawn.

The Heroes formula that worked had them portraying gifted people as normal folks, trying to live their lives with the blessing/curse that they suddenly find themselves possessing. It's not realistic by any means, but it is a down-to-earth approach with shades of grey. This villains concept might throw a wrench into the fold. A set of villains to battle our set of heroes? It might be fun for a while in that Legion of Doom kind of way, but it sounds too much like a last resort for the show, a last ditch effort to bring more action and CG battles so as to satisfy us drones who apparently can't stick around when there ain't fancy shit a-happenin'.

I don't know about the rest of you, but that's not what kept me coming back for more Heroes. It was Hiro's quest to be a hero. It was Peter Petrelli finding a purpose. It was HRG's love for his daughter overcoming his loyalty to his bosses. It was the threat Sylar could be if he had won. It was the mystery of The Company. All of these are intriguing to anticipate what would happen next. Who gives a crap if Parkman's going to fight some mook who can morph into a ferret, or whatever. What they need is to bring back the unpredictability and the fun of the twists in the heroes' journeys, not rehash and compromise. They need a fresh but strong objective for the season.

Or, you know, just bring back Claude the Invisible Man. That'll do, too.

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Comments (1)

September 25, 2008, Tyler Barlass said:

	I generally agree with everything you're saying here. The second season kept building up without any payoff, the new characters were one dimensional and boring and the plot lines were lackluster in every way. The first two episodes of season 3 were promising, but I'm still far from interested. I think 'Worst Week' is the better bet on the Monday night time slot.
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