Heroes

This show started with an incredible premise. Everyday people starts to have superpowers. Each one discover their power and try to deal with it. There is also serial killer Sylar who discovers a way to kill these special people and take their powers.

Like the brightest of stars, they burn hottest but don't last. This show fizzled as the story got more and more complicated. The vast number of characters with unique superpowers gets out of hand. There are too many to maintain. Like a truck overloaded, it just couldn't continue and rolled over. By the 2nd or 3rd season, this show gets increasingly convoluted and becoming almost unwatchable. They try to reboot the 4th season by adding a whole new set of people and a circus. Of course, it didn't work and the show was canceled. The first season is a 9 or even 10 but it's a long slide into 4 territory at the end.

I am writing after a mere 4 episodes in season one and I probably have nothing to say that has not been said by others in terms of praise and admiration. Still, writing this review 13 or so years after it ended, I am aware of the various doom and gloom disappointments in the show as it progressed. And I am here to either defend this or to heap additional blame. For years if not decades, the Hollywood habit has been to destroy beauty. I am not talking about sucking franchises dry with woke agendae, although that certainly is one of the symptoms. I am talking about the deliberate or accidental process of adding needless complexity, darkness, conflict, and unhappiness of all kinds. This even happens, remarkably, with sitcoms. It happens in every genre. But Heroes was destined for this destruction from its inception, because Hollywood hates virtue. What is most interesting about this process is that Hollywood will actually break its own craftsmanship rules, ie, continuity, in order to pursue the goal. Whether this is laziness, stupidity, or contempt for the consumer probably doesn't matter. From Young Sheldon to Game of Thrones, from New Girl to House to House of Cards to Cheers to Friends, this mechanism runs from fairly subtle to brutally obvious. I don't know when this started but I don't think, for instance, that Bonanza pulled this crap. In more recent times, Big Bang may have actually reversed the formula, moving from sad selfish characters to radically improved versions of themselves.

Anyway, most say that Heroes started well and couldn't maintain. Some say it pulled out of the nosedive in later seasons.

I shall see.

Heroes was a superhero show before all the Marvel and DC shows took over. While it's not as good as the shows we get now (at least most of them that is), it was still a solid series...especially the first 2 seasons. After that the quality went down drastically but was still watchable. It was about ordinary people all over the world discovering they developed super powers. There are a bunch of separate stories that all come together to prevent a catastrophic future. The show was really popular when it first came out, so much so they tried to bring it back years after it went off the air with Heroes: Reborn. Do yourself a favor and avoid the reboot at all costs because it was awful. This original Heroes though is absolutely watchable.

Heroes is one of the most controversial shows of the decade, but not for the reasons you may think. When Heroes premiered, it was one of the most popular shows on television. Fanboys were created around the world, but disaster struck: Heroes, for reasons unknown, started to suck after a wonderful first volume. Fanboys were in denial everywhere: Was their precious Heroes really going down the drain, or was it just a hiccup? People expected old Heroes to come back when volume three came to us, and.... Heroes was awful. People stopped watching, but as they stopped, the old Heroes we loved slowly came back in volume four. Now the show is in volume five, and did the show returned to form? Read on...

VOLUME ONE: GENESIS - Here's the thing about Heroes: Instead of having "seasons" like normal TV shows, it has "volumes" to be more like comic books. Volume One is where everything starts. In it the Heroes must stop a nuclear bomb from exploding in NYC, but all of the Heroes are scattered around the world and none of them except one knows about it. We're introduced to the main cast that has remained with us up until recently. The best part about superhero stories has often been said to be the "discovery" phase, and the whole first season is devoted to that. As the volume progressed, the characters become more accustomed to their powers, showing the natural stages of average Joe to superman. The magic of real people having superpowers captivated the world. The only major downside to this volume was the average finale. People expected a grand finish for the volume, but one wasn't delivered. Maybe I wasn't disappointed because I watched this volume after the fact, but fans were just plain angry. Despite the sub par finale, expectations still soared for volume two...

VOLUME TWO: GENERATIONS - Volume Two dealt with heroes from the past, and the heroes also had to stop a virus from being released. Sounds exciting... at least on paper. In execution however, this volume was horrible. Nothing happened in the first 4 episodes. It was BORING. These people have superpowers, but they aren't doing anything. Things started to pick up, but none of it seemed to be planned out. As the volume started to be interesting, the volume was cut short due to the writer's strike. What we're left with is a boring mess that made fans want to tare their hair out. Tim Kring apologized for the show's 180 degree turn in quality. Fans laid the blame on the writer's strike, so expectations soared yet again for volume three...

VOLUME THREE: VILLAINS - Volume three had the heroes trying to stop a formula which gives normal people superpowers from being mass produced, and would therefore destroy the world. This season started out by introducing new characters to us and created exciting new twists that should have been awesome. After the premier though, things started to suck. Instead of things being too slow now, they were too fast. Random things were happening left and right, the plot was spinning out of control, and fans everywhere gave up on the show. Thankfully, this volume was only half the season, and Heroes then segued into volume four...

VOLUME FOUR: FUGITIVES - After the events in volume three, the show rightfully decided to ignore most of volumes two and three. This volume had the heroes on the run from the US government. After the madness of the last two volumes, people had given up on the show. Something happened which I started calling the "Heroes effect". The Heroes effect is this logic: The last two volumes of Heroes were so awful that Heroes is bad forever no matter what. This of course is not true. With this volume, the plot slowed down and the heroes started doing rational things. We started to actually care for them again, and they did things logically again. The magic of the show started to return, but by this point there were only about 10 people left who cared enough to notice. The volume also slowly drifted away from most of the show's usual tropes, and fans started to actually look forward to next week's episode. With Heroes starting to get back on track, we now have the current volume...

VOLUME FIVE: REDEMPTION - This volume, aptly titled "Redemption", shows how the writers have learned from their mistakes. The cast aren't bouncing off the walls like in Volume Three, but they aren't sleeping like in Volume Two. The heroes did things we can relate to again, the new villains this round were the most interesting since the first volume, and most of the stuff they did was logical. It started off a bit slow, but takes off with episode 4. After that most of the episodes were awesome up until episode 12; then the volume became really boring. Almost Volume 2 boring. It kills all of the momentum it built up. It's like this for a while, but then the last 4 episodes are fantastic. This volume, unlike all of the others, actually has a satisfying ending. If it didn't have those really slow episodes in the middle, Volume Five would be just as good as Volume One. It's certainly more entertaining than the previous three volumes.

Looking back, it's a miracle how the show got back on track. Heroes promised so much in volume one, but didn't deliver any of it. Heroes had fallen so far that the turn around in quality doesn't even matter now. Most people who watched the show are now biased against it, and the ratings are so low that the show's future is in doubt. Luckily NBC's ratings suck this season, and Heroes is still one of its better performing shows, so Heroes might get lucky.

If you plan to watch Heroes for the first time, skip volumes two and three. They'll make your brain hurt.

I was awestruck watching the way it took off. One character at a time, it kept developing. The fantasy was top-notch, plot like never before. It gave the traditional save-the-world genre, a new look. Season 1 was magnificent. Few characters, mostly Hiro, were impeccable. It did look stretched in the second half. The first 4-5 episodes of season 1 were exceptional. Soon, it started slowing down. Episode 10 was the greatest of them. However, yet again, it started slowing the pace and awesomeness. Only the last couple of them were magnificent after the 10th. The climax was stunning. I enjoyed the complete season 1 and it was a package full of fantasy, emotions, creativity and wonderful characters.

Season 2 never looked the same. It couldn, even for once, keep up to the level of the first.

I eneded in the middle of season 2 until things started making no sense whatsoever. Hiro wasn't hiro either.