NY Magazine on Heroes' Arthur Petrelli: "Turns Out He Was Behind the Whole Shebang All Along!"

Will Leitch at the Vulture blog:

Remember the episode of Lost that gave the backstories of Nikki and Paulo, two random background characters? To integrate them into the ongoing story, the producers actually reshot iconic scenes with the duo in the foreground. There’s Nikki screaming as the plane burns behind her! There’s Paulo talking to Arst like they knew each other all along! They were always here — you just didn’t see them! For about the 450th time, Heroes borrows a Lost trick, with a “One Year Ago” episode — told through the eyes of a hallucinating Hiro, for no apparent reason — where Robert Forster’s Arthur Petrelli shows up in scenes from Heroes past.

(snip)

The “shock” ending of having Arthur pop up behind Hiro doesn’t make any sense either, though it’s difficult to argue with another peripheral character (Usutu) being beheaded.

This is what happens when someone is tasked with saving a TV show. They pull rabbits out of hats.

How many hats? How many rabbits? I dunno. Apparently an infinite amount. And every time they pull on a pair of rabbit ears, more audience goes away.

Maybe next year, instead of creator Tim Kring doing a victory lap across every international TV festival and literary festival that invites him, he could actually sit for a while with the show's bible and give us something plausible for the future.

Seriously, how many TV galas did Kring show up at to do what was called a "master class" on TV writing?

Maybe he should have attended one.

And one other thing that I'm pissy about. Remember last year how they ran that promotion with Sprint where we were to choose the characteristics of a new Hero, a new character for the show? Well, it turned out not to be for the show, it turned out to be for a Sprint-branded webisode that has no connection to the actual series.

And that's a bait and switch that I don't care for.

Frankly, I don't care for branded content at all. It's just another take on product placement, and product placement was invented by Satan.