Heroes - Season Four ("Redemption")

After sitting in on the preliminary planning for season four, Bryan Fuller has again left "Heroes." From AICN:

"Development was really starting to heat up, And it appears like I may be writing multiple pilots for NBC so that wasn't leaving a ton of room for 'Heroes,' unfortunately," the star writer-producer tells AICN exclusively. "We crafted some really great arcs for the season that I'm excited to see come to fruition. I love that cast dearly and am sad to go, but the plate -- she was over-flowing."

He'll be missed, since things started to spark again once he came back at the end of last season. It'll be interesting to see what he comes up with for pilots.

Re: Heroes - Season Four ("Redemption")

I wonder if the title of the season is about redeeming the show from the utter crap it's become, or if it's about something else

They really need to bring in some people with comic book sensibilities to try and bring back the zeal to it. Also, they have to cut back on how many super-people there are. Part of what makes a show fun is that people are so different from the peers around them. Last season, outside of Claire's mother, who did we see who -didn't- have super powers.. it works well when the people around them react in awe of how different they are.

Re: Heroes - Season Four ("Redemption")

HRG, Lyle Bennett, Janice Parkman, the whole military team, including Danko. None of which undermines your point. I know giving Ando powers seems pointless and takes away from the story. It was nice to have a human tag-along.

I'm not sure that's all there is to the Fuller story, but oh well.

Re: Heroes - Season Four ("Redemption")

The military team doesn't really count because a big part of the early story was about the effort to GIVE them superpowers. Etc. I'm just saying, a completely outside viewpoint helps.

I just think the problem is that without some people to go "wow!" or to be amazed by the feats of Heroes, they aren't so heroic..

Re: Heroes - Season Four ("Redemption")

I have to agree that there are too many people with superpowers making it hard to care.

That seems to be a bad sign if Fuller is leaving. I agree that one person in a writer's room doesn't always make a huge difference, but at the same time things did start to look up after his return last year.

More importantly though, even if he isn't saying so, it makes me wonder if there was some sort of internal turmoil behind the scenes.

Re: Heroes - Season Four ("Redemption")

I think he's just aching to get back to running his own series, instead of just contributing to someone else's.

I'm not sure bringing in another person with comic book sensibilities is the answer, since the show already has quite a few people involved with either a background in comics themselves or a background on working on other shows based on comic books. The right solution might be to bring in someone with no comics background whatsoever and see if they can come at the genre from a different angle.

The biggest problem is the sheer mass of plot the last two seasons have piled on. There's no easy way to get back to a square one where a new creative team could start fresh.

Re: Heroes - Season Four ("Redemption")

I follow, but with a fresh mind this morning, I find myself thinking... if you're driving on vacation and find yourself on the wrong road going in the wrong direction, what do you do? The only sensible thing to do is bite the bullet, swallow the fact that you made a wrong turn in the past, and do what you have to do to get back on track. What you wouldn't do is say, "Well, I've already gone in this direction, so I may as well keep going."

I doubt most would eternally bemoan adjustments necessary to get the series back on track even if they don't completely adhere to what has happened before. Just tie it in as best as possible and get back on track.

It seems they tried to go back to square one having Papa Petrelli steal powers, but I didn't like that. Nor did I like the whole giving people powers with a formula. And finally, I didn't like the whole "round 'em all up" storyline spearheaded by a person with no sympathy at all for those with abilities.

I'd rather it just be some people mutated into having a gene that gives them special powers, and their kids are likely to have the same gene and also develop special powers. Some of these people aren't nice, and the ones that are get caught up in society's fear of the baddies. Thus, the good guys try to keep their abilities hidden while also taking on the baddies both solo and sometimes in partnership with the company or other civilian organizations.

Peter and Hiro should always be front and center, and Hiro should be made to act naive, not stupid. Hiro's a comic book geek and a generally smart guy. He's the one most likely to come up with creative "comic" solutions, understand ramifications, etc. (other than Mohinder). Peter should continue to be the moral compass of the show.

I know some folks are tired of Sylar, but it's difficult for me to see past the fact that without him, the show would have bordered on unwatchable for me. At this point, it's difficult for me to see a more interesting bad guy, though Papa Petrelli had his moments (the scene with Adam was definitly a "Yikes!" moment).

To me, I don't care where the writers come from. What I care about is that they have a true passion for the subject matter. I just think you get a better legal thriller from John Grisham than you'd get from Stephen King, regardless of which is the better writer.

Re: Heroes - Season Four ("Redemption")

I think they could or rather should re-boot the show, but it's too little too late for some. Alias did basically this to a degree as season one could be a stand alone in how it gets resolved. Heroes could do a total re-boot but many no longer care.

Re: Heroes - Season Four ("Redemption")

Hiro's the only character I really enjoy watching at this point. Maybe they should just give him a spinoff.

Re: Heroes - Season Four ("Redemption")

Like when watching Gilligan's Island, you couldn't really care about them because they never showed people who weren't on an island.

Re: Heroes - Season Four ("Redemption")

Hey, they already did that....

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1018723/

Re: Heroes - Season Four ("Redemption")

It's a little different. Heroes is a drama, and Gilligan's Island is a comedy, for one. But in Heroes, 99% of them don't die no matter what happens to them. Therefore, the only reason it even matters if they save the world or not is for everyone else. What kind of drama is it where you throw all this conflict at people (who act as stupidly as Gilligan, for that matter) and then none of what they do really matters?

Honestly, while Sylar has been the only real redeeming character for a while now, having him slink away and survive in S1 (along with Nathan surviving as well) was the start of it all unraveling. Now, someone turns to ice and gets shattered to pieces and she doesn't die, and a few other instances that I can't remember off the top of my head where it's like nothing has a point. I know that comic books do similarly, but while this is based in comics, it's still a TV show. Besides that, they need to do something to mix things up and fast.

Their actions have to have some sort of consequences, which pretty much hasn't been the case at all for the past two years.

If it was me, I'd kill off most of the characters for real. Mohinder is dead weight now, as is Niki/Jessica/whatever her new name was, Parkman (because he's just so stupid), and a ton of others. Last season, they had the perfect opportunity for slimming things down, and they should've taken advantage instead of only getting rid of Nathan... sort of.

If it was me, I think the only ones I'd keep at this point would be Micah, Claire, Sylar, and Hiro, while at the meantime having a couple more origin stories (not told as poorly as the two new people in S2). Of course, Claire would need to grow up and get over her daddy issues for her to be interesting to watch, and I think having Ando die in front of Hiro, something that pushes him from bumbling idiot to more what future Hiro in S1 was, would make him interesting to watch as well. And how about some stories that aren't related to the Petrelli family?

...But that's just me. I just think there's too many characters with no real consequences and it's dragging the show down. That being said, I'll still probably watch, it's just not going to be very high priority for me to get around to the recordings, based on past history.

Re: Heroes - Season Four ("Redemption")

I still think this show has rebounded from S2 but I completely agree with that. When Nathan died at the end of this season, my initial thought wasn't "Holy crap!", it was "How are they going to bring him back next season?" and it didn't even take that long for him to return. Having no consequences tends to rob the show of suspense for me. While I know that Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, etc. do the same exact thing, the lack of long term consequences is also a big reason why I have little interest in superhero comics too.

Re: Heroes - Season Four ("Redemption")

Ahem... They did kill off Niki/Jessica. Way back in season 2. Another character played by the same actress is not the same thing as her death not being "real".

Re: Heroes - Season Four ("Redemption")

The problem is that Larter is a pretty weak actress and they should have just allowed her to exit the series. She certainly doesn't know how to make another character unique.

Either that, or the writers just don't know how to write for her. I criticize her, but there's not much she could have done with Niki in the first season. All of that exposition about the mirror self was just killing the whole thing.

Re: Heroes - Season Four ("Redemption")

I know this isn't exactly new news, but I hadn't seen it discussed here yet... Greg Beeman (one of the producer/directors on the show) is also leaving, his last episode was the season 3 finale. I'm going to miss his insightful and often funny blogs about producing the show. (It was also pretty cool that he acknowledged in it that he had no idea why an eclipse would have any effect on superpowers and that it's a pretty dumb idea.)

Re: Heroes - Season Four ("Redemption")

Oh, no argument there. If they feel the need to kill someone off, I say please let her be the first to go.

Re: Heroes - Season Four ("Redemption")

While I think he was one of the strongest actors and characters. I think Sylar's time has past. He is just too powerful and they need to move past him to some new villains.

Re: Heroes - Season Four ("Redemption")

Uhmm, that would be X-Men.

What they did with Sylar at the end of the season did essentially write Sylar out as long as they want.  As long as they keep him in that state we can move on.

Yeah, but the cracks were already showing five minutes after the plot development developed.  They don't know how to quit Sylar.

But the interesting thing is that even when Sylar inevitably reemerges, he'll still have a lifetime of being Nathan inside him too. Once he overcomes Parkman's block he'll still be, to a significant degree, Nathan Petrelli.

The 4th season of Heroes gets started tonight with a 2-hour premiere at 8 p.m. EDT.

Robert Knepper (T-Bag on Prison Break) is part of this season's cast.

I have decided to skip the show after too many moments of frustration in the last two seasons. I will be monitoring the situation with this fine thread, however, and if things seem better I will likely watch after the season has ended.

It's a shorter season, I think Cristina Rose mentioned that the budget was curtailed and the episode count was only 19 for this season.  They are powering through the season, already got 8-9 episodes in the can. 

Since Mondays are very crowded for me this season, I'm giving it 3-4 episodes to keep my interest.  Otherwise, I'm bailing as well.

I've got nothing to watch on Monday until 24 starts up in January and if Heroes remains at 8 PM, it won't even be conflict then either.

I'll have to tape this, since House is up against it and House is a better show these days that ended on a much better cliffhanger.

I enjoyed the season opener better than anything from the past 2 seasons.
Teddy Teabag is a welcome addition. Will he be more evil than Sylar?
I hope so.

I wanted to see more of the carnival characters but, obviously, that'll happen with time.

I'm always happy to see Robert Knepper in something so it's good to see that he has what I assume is a fairly large role as the head of the carnival.

I liked much what I saw in the season 2-hour premiere. 

I'm glad Larter is back. As one of the few heroes who is solidly in the shades-of-grey category, she's one of the few heroes I find interesting (insofar as she is not as predictable as everyone else). Plus, beautiful. I hope the writers don't attempt a romance between her and HRG though, because he is not in her league -- he's too dorky. And older than her.

I did not like that they cast Robert Knepper to be a bad guy. He's always a bad guy. A real lack of imagination, casting him. (And I remember there's a traditional song called "Lydia the Tattooed Lady", so I suppose there was also a lack of imagination in naming Lydia, the tattooed lady, as Lydia).

Claire looks like she's doing the Veronica-Mars-in-college bit, but that's alright -- Buffy went to college too. It's always fertile ground for wanna-be crimestoppers. I hope this plot line will be wholly original, since frankly the whole family-and-company storyline that plagues most every season is boring as heck to me.

The "when will Sylar turn back into Sylar" plotline has always risked being boring, because everyone is just waiting for that moment to happen. But they've made it interesting with Parkman developing a psychosis over the situation.

Ok, this doesn't sound as if I liked the premiere too much, but in fact I did. I guess I am just really afraid that the writers might not be capable of coming up with much that is new and fresh.

I am wary. But I'll watch and see.