Variety's Brian Lowry on Heroes S3: "The Path Ahead Remains Perilous"
Beyond the "Terminator" franchise, "Heroes" owes an obvious debt to "X-Men" -- including its preoccupation, thanks to the character of Maya (Dania Ramirez), with whether it's possible to "cure" these extraordinary powers. Series creator Tim Kring and his writing staff have also exhibited considerable courage by moving the plot along in leaps and bounds -- killing off characters and toying with the space-time continuum.
At a certain point, however, as these flourishes mount upon each other they begin to yield diminishing returns and demand more from the audience -- one reason a series like "Lost" experienced a decline as casual viewers drifted away. By comparison, "Heroes" is more sloppily plotted, at times slipping into a "We're making this up as we go along" quality as opposed to the rigid arcs upon which "Lost" relies. That can be thrilling for awhile, but there's always the danger of a near-fatal misstep.
In terms of balancing storylines for its sprawling cast (and keeping them within the same century), this season feels as if its back on track, but the path ahead remains perilous. The most ardent fans probably wouldn't have it any other way, but given that success hinges in part on retaining those who didn't camp out at Comic-Con, staying in contact with the rails seems highly advisable.
Click the link above to read his whole review.
Making it up as they go along was the feeling I had toward the end of last year's strike shortened season. And I'm willing to give the show a chance to redeem itself.
Killing off characters? I never believe that anyone on this show is really dead. I'm still waiting for Isaac from season one to show up somewhere with a new painting.
But I'm still a bit pissy about Mohinder's syringe and how much it looks like Promicin (image left), which of course was the substance inside the bodies of The 4400 that gave them abilities that had been extracted to attempt to create an army, among other things.
And that was my problem with Heroes from the get go, that it took a premise from a show from another studio (CBS Paramount) that aired on an NBC-Uni property (USA Network) and with some changes presented an "new" network show.
(Go ahead read all my posts on the show, you'll see. If you were on of the creators of The 4400, you probably wouldn't be so happy.)
But I got into the show first season because it was so well done, and I thought I'd leave the theft issue alone and just enjoy it.
But as Heroes progresses, it continues to dip into what I call the 4400 Pool for more plot points. At what point do the creators of that other show get angry enough to do something?
Maybe they don't. Maybe there are so few media outlets anymore that are in the market for TV shows that these guys just can't do battle for their intellectual property.
And maybe that's why people who have already been screwed by a network (again NBC, this time the Bionic Woman reboot last year) just have to suck it up and go back to that well if they want to make TV shows for a living.
And that is why deregulation and mergers are bad for TV, not to mention capital markets.
Sure, I'll be watching, but critically, very critically.
After the jump, the final Heroes Going Postal webisode (featuring Kiko Ellsworth) which came online during my vacay last month.
