From the sounds of “this review”:http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/005682.html (Warning! Spoilers!) of the _Heroes_ season premier, I’m not at all sorry I’m ignoring the show this year. Sounds as though Kring is still writing flimsy plotlines, and I think I’d find myself ranting on and on about that. I had (very) small hopes that the writing might improve this season, but it sounds like the show is already off to a shaky start. Nope, not sorry at all. I’ll wait for another show with writers who actually know what they’re doing.
Good luck with that. Please be sure to post once you find such a show. Maybe the rest of us can watch it before some network suit comes in and
(a) cancels it,
(b) moves it to Thursday nights at 2:00 a.m. and shows all the episodes out of order
(c) brings in a new team of writers to add 20 more characters and a mysterious plotline that wont be fully revealed for another 4 seasons.
Try The 4400.
@Eric
I was a big fan of the 4400 until the middle of last season through the one that just ended. While its still sort of entertaining to watch, I think the first 2 seasons were SO much better.
It seems to have fallen prey to “writer’s thrash” as far as plotlines and character arcs go.
Michael
The 4400 looked interesting to me in previews, but I’m pretty sure I don’t get the channel it plays on (which one is it, anyway?) on my little rabbit ears.
And writer’s thrash seems to be all too common in TV shows nowadays. I’ve tried writing a series of TV scripts, but it seems like too many TV writers end up falling back on bad or overly used clichés, much to the detriment of those shows. Honestly, I’d love to see Joss Whedon get back into another TV project. One of the things he always did best was taking shows in unexpected directions. I wonder if the fans could push hard enough to force a resurrection of _Firefly_.
Michael,
Agreed the mid 4th season lagged a little, but what did you think of the finale? Season 5 should be pretty interesting, although it’s hard for me to tell whether I’m genuinely interested or more just curious from a writing perspective — the premise has kind of come full circle and blown out all the way now. I’m just not sure what more they can do with it.
But I have to admit, they’ve managed to sustain it well up to this point. The other thing I love about the show is that seasons are no more than 13 episodes long. That was a wonderful relief, especially since just prior to 4400 I watched all 10 seasons of Stargate and 3 of Atlantis.
Short = good.
Not counting spinoffs, I think when a show has come full circle with its premise they need to work in some planned obsolesence and just let it end. I’m glad they’re going that route with Battlestar, and hope other shows take cues from that.
@Jim: Unfortunately as I’m sure you are aware of, fans have been trying to get Firefly resurrected in *any* form with no success. Having Joss back writing for TV would be a dream come true. I don’t know if you follow comic books or not but when he was tapped to write Astonishing X-Men, the die-hard X-Men community was like “What!? The guy who wrote BUFFY is gonna do the X-Men…no way!” It wasn’t too long before they were comparing his run to the Chris Claremont days and saying he rebooted the X-men characters, changing them forever. I think he’s writing Runaways now, I have yet to check that out.
@Eric: I thought the 4400 was at its best when they were trying to be the X-Files. The whole ‘mythology’ plotline was on the side somewhere, and each week was a new episode about a new 4400 with strange and unusual powers. Every now and then we got an episode that focused entirely on the backstory, hinting at a larger plan. To be honest, I was fine with that.
If you consider the premise of the show, they had pretty much a limitless (4,400) character well to draw from; they could have really done some cool things if they just stuck with that.
It wasn’t until they abandoned the previous formula and focused on the main ensemble characters exclusively that things got dull for me. In small doses all the characters are well drawn, but there’s just too many of them that are BLAH to have them visit for the entire show every week….IMHO. Don’t you just want to choke Isabelle – not because her character is so EVIL (or not) but just because she’s annoying? And what about Richard – the guy has one of the best powers to have and he always looks like he’s about to cry.
I like Tom Baldwin (but HATE Kyle) and I like Kevin and Tess, and I think both Sean and Jordan need a smack. Not to mention Maya – jeez the girl can see the frikkin future. Someone PLEASE take advantage of that ONCE.
Okay, sorry. End of rant.
Well, I guess as usual with the Heroes stuff, I’m the minority opinion here . . . I really liked the premiere. There are still lots of questions being raised about what’s really going on vs. what seems to be going on. Besides the general question-raising of all the plot lines, Hiro’s story showed pretty clearly that nothing – even what we think we know – can be taken for granted. Which was what drew me in to season one, anyway. I’m still intrigued.
The only “negative” I saw in the first season was that the fight scenes were a little lame, but that was never the interesting part of the show to me, anyway – just an annoying side-effect of the “comic book” genre.
Of course, I don’t watch tons of TV (my last regular show was like 10 years ago), and Heroes has been my first exposure to super-hero/comic book stuff, so maybe I’m not bothered by the “cliches” just because I didn’t realize that’s what they were.
Michael, I think I know what you’re talking about specifically. There were a bunch of episodes in a row featuring Isabelle, and it started to seem like the show was about her. Although it didn’t bother me that bad, I understand perfectly what you’re talking about.
I seem to remember reading an interview with the SG-1 creators where they mentioned that originally there was a debate between having 4 or 5 members of SG-1, and they stuck to 4 because they felt that was the only way they could give each one adequate screen time.
4400 does suffer from that in season 4 a little, although they seem to be mixing it up pretty well again? They should probably just have a 2 episode limit for focus on a single character, to give more coverage.
It’s wild that Joss manages to have rather sizable casts in all his shows and manages to develop all the characters so well. A lot of TV writers seem to have trouble working with more than a small handful of characters.
I watched Heroes religiously last season. I was excited about the new season, until I realized what night they were showing their premier. Who planned that? If I miss the first episode of a series, I typically don’t get caught up. Guess I’ll pass for now.
I’m basically going to wait – I’ll read reviews of _Heroes_ episodes, and if by some miracle the writing actually starts to improve, I’ll consider going back and catching up. I don’t really have high hopes that it’ll get better, though.