I found this on MSN this morning.
Given that we all have different preferences as to which characters we could easily see less of (and that I only half agree with the choices in the article), I thought overall it’s a reasonable bunch of suggestions for improving “Heroes.”
Anyone have other suggestions?
Ugh. I hate those people who claim that they love their S.O., except that they think their S.O. needs to change a laundry-list of things they find unappealing.
I would suggest that this attitude is no more attractive when applied to a tv show.
A better comparison would be a situation where a guy first goes out with a girl. She is great in many ways, maybe a bit young or immature for her age but it’s not really a big factor considering she is full of zest, appeal on different levels, and is pretty good in the sack. Then, after the first few months of going out, she starts behaving erratically. She starts taking all kinds of drugs and becomes violent. At different times you think she is getting over the drugs and withdrawal symptoms after several interventions and visits to rehab. Over time you keep telling yourself, “Dammit, get better! Stop hanging out with that drug pusher, Peacock Jones!” but she seems to slip further away from you. Finally, after three years of sleepless nights and wildly inconsistent episodes of fits of rage, you tell her, “Baby, it’s over. I tried but you are just too hooked on that smack and I’m going to move on.”
Yeah, something like that.
Or you could take the more reasonable approach that HEROES is a creative work and not a person, and so can be changed to suit the needs of the creator, or the viewing public. Many of the ideas seem solid, and have been expressed on this very board.
The needs of the creator are “more people watching Heroes”. Random critics and internet posters are not a terribly good method of figuring out how to get more people watching Heroes.
As a matter of fact, I’d say they’re probably a pretty poor method of doing so. Random critics and internet posters are already a self-selected group. Catering to them is already moving away from the mainstream audience that is Heroes real target audience.
Heroes viewership numbers are down. I find nerd-rage laundry lists of things that need to be changed an extremely uncompelling argument as to the cause of lower viewership numbers – particularly after the extended hiatus from the writers’ strike debacle.
So, you disagree. How boring. Come up with your own way to fix the dropping ratings and tell us about it. Add some zest to the discussion.
Amusing, but the “discussion” has mainly been in response to me. And I think the dropoff is from (1) the writers’ strike stuff, and (2) it is no longer the shiny new first season of the show. Although there is stuff I don’t like about the show, I don’t think it needs fixing.
But since I appear to be raining on this thread’s parade here, I’ll bow out now. 
Apologies if my reply sounded rude. It’s only because it was
I’m somewhat surprised that you don’t wish to fix something. Also, I’m amused that after so many ppl saying, “Why don’t you form your own thread and complain about Heroes” in the weekly discussion thread, when someone does, immediately someone delivers payback by NOT complaining. That tickles me a bit.
The whole “Heroes is broken” thing reminds me of something a comedian said about Star Wars. I’m paraphrasing from memory, but the gist of it was this: “If you LIKE Star Wars, you’re not a fan. REAL Star Wars fans whine and complain and nit-pick the hell out of it. Jar-Jar? Han shot first? WTF!”
I still think the show would’ve been better with the original premise of each season having a completely different set of characters. The fun of season 1 was having a bunch of character’s normal lives suddenly interrupted by these superpowers. Now, none of these established characters have normal lives anymore, so we can’t really relate to them.
There’s also a disturbing lack of unpowered characters. In season 1, early on at least, each of the mains interacted with unpowered people. It made the show seem more grounded and real. Now everyone on the show has superpowers so the world doesn’t seem real anymore.
Ironically, I understand Season 4 will feature a drug pusher named Smith who can transform himself into a peacock.
Looking at their list:
1. Neuter Hiro, Sylar and Peter
I disagree that they need to nerf Sylar. He’s a villain, he can get away with being overpowered, just as long as he doesn’t get Hiro’s power.
The other two, though… they’re shaping up to be portable Deus Ex Machinas only held back by the creators turning them into idiots.
3. Idiot-Proof All Plots
I agree 100% with this. The liberal use of the Stupid Bat is a big problem, in my opinion.
Too late. I pulled the plug last week.
This. There’s no exploration of how the powers fit in to the real world anymore… nothing any of the characters are doing seems to serve any purpose. Maybe there will be a Eureka! moment later in the season, but if it keeps persisting in being the current mix of fanatastic-but-predictable and unexpected-but-uninteresting I don’t know who is going to be watching.
The high points of the last few episodes have been Hayden Panettiere as a brunette and Sylar/Gabriel’s atavistic parental rage scene. Neither is particularly important to the story they’re telling, but those are the only two things that come to mind.
At least Sylar was intelligent in the first and mumble series… but now it seems that NOONE has any brains any more. I mean seriously. Even Noah. ESPECIALLY Noah. I expected more from that guy…