Heroes - a bit of an odd thread.

[Ysmalari]

Not really...it's season contained arcs, and they're boring, it's always end of the world and you always know everything is going to be alright. It's the same poor storytelling ST:TNG suffered from, you always knew everything would be ok by the end of the episode.

I'm talking about having an all encompassing arc for the whole series, similar to the shows mentioned above.

Actually I disagree, I've always preferred episodic television to extended story arcs. As someone said earlier in the thread, American drama is suffering from the 'we must be able to wrap this up in one series in case we get cancelled' syndrome, and the 'I've had a cool idea for one series that now has to be stretched out because it's popular' syndrome.

I realise there was always the problem with TNG that you knew all would be well by the end of the show, but that is part of the charm - it's actually about writing a 45 minute episode which is well constructed and is a story in it's own right.

Extended story arcs wouldn't be such a problem in the states if they didn't insist on doing 20 to 25 episode series which means the writers have to include an awful lot of filler material around the main storyline.
For me this is where Heroes has gone wrong, it never felt like the idea was intended to last past one or two series so if they had stuck to twelve episode series I don't think it would have lost its way as badly as it did in series three.

 

[Weebull]

Extended story arcs are fantastic, but only when the shows in question aren't at the mercy of fickle networks and wholesale writing changes, as Heroes has been. Any number of HBO series (The Wire, Deadwood, Sopranos) are the perfect examples of this.

 

[JAzz]

The problem I have with it is that they gave Peter "super" super powers way too early, and it was a mistake to take them away from him. All i wanted to see was baddass Peter from the future, along with samurai sword weilding Hiro...

Spot on there, I always hoped to see those guys slowly transform into them but then you could argue maybe those versions were just to show what they could have become. They made Peter really powerful but like you say then had to take his powers away which has made him kind of weak. Why not have restrictions in place like in Season 1 where having so many powers makes him a bit unstable and he isn't able to use them at an advanced level until later seasons. They allowed Sylar to take powers without needing to kill which makes him almost like the old Peter. Why introduce time travelling and then take it away from Hiro, they should have put some restrictions in place like him trying to change the future but failing. How in that Five years gone episode that future Hiro had to work out the exact moment using those strings and how it took him a long time to figure out the exact moment and how changing the course of things is a lot more harder and takes a lot more thought. They even touched on that topic when Peter went to the future to get Sylar's power so he could understand how to change the past. I'm just making theories up here but they could have got around having to strip his powers.

They have ruined too many characters on this show. Hiro/Ando went from being hilarious to being all serious and now they are trying to make them funny again. Nathan kept on going from good to bad, what they did with Sylar was just appalling as well. Claire is just getting as boring as hell as well. They also kill off perfectly good characters too easily, like Matt's father and Adam Monroe who were both very interesting characters just killed off for the sake of things. Same goes for that electric girl who seemed to be bought back just to be killed off, why not leave them written off?

Such an awesome concept but the writers really do come across as being amateurs at times when it comes to story telling. They really don't have a clue at times.

 

[SixTwoSix]

Extended story arcs wouldn't be such a problem in the states if they didn't insist on doing 20 to 25 episode series which means the writers have to include an awful lot of filler material around the main storyline.

With the exception of season 2 which dragged immensely due to much filler, Lost has managed this with no real problem. Nothing in seasons 1,3,4 or 5 has ever felt like filler material, it all feels integral to the story.

My TV glory days were when B5 first aired around 1993 onwards and followed shortly by The X-Files, i was 14. Both shows had massive arcs, so this has shaped my viewing preferences. I cannot watch episodic TV these days without becoming very bored, I hate knowing that within 45 minutes, everything will be back to normal

 

[Jabbs]

I love heroes but i am having trouble getting into the start of S4, just not grabbing my attention like it used to, its a shame as it was a great show i hope it picks up.

 

[G|mp]

It's gone through similar metamorphosis to Lost - in order to simplify things for wider audience while maintaining "wrappability" on cue in case of sudden cancellation, they dropped most of the unanswered and open ended elements from different writer teams from original, first season which made the series big. And because the original audience wowed by the whole "WTF" vibe started pulling out, they basically added the immediate "did I miss something" elements on per episode basis, which might make no sense in light of everything else in previous seasons, but hey - as long as audience find it weird and has something to speculate about over the net, right?

But of course there is only that many "I already had like 6 names" Nikis or positive turned negative turned positive turned negative, flying, non flying, loving son, hating son, good brother, bad brother, alive, blown up, alive again, from now, from future, from now again, cloned, himself, not himself Petrellis you can impose on viewers in five or six years before everyone goes "screw this, at least CSI:Saskatchewan or NCIS:Little Ponds, Mississippi makes sense from beginning to the end".

That is the best summary of Heroes I have ever heard in my life

The last part made me a do a little wee I was laughing so much :/

 

[drunkenmaster]

Its pretty simple, you can't have 38 different characters all change sides EVERY DAMN episode, and have good TV.

NO matter how bad Sylar is, he's only 3 sentences from persuading someone not to put a bullet through his head and helping him get more powers.

Nathan constantly has a new idea to be a genocidal, self hating moron that is constantly forgiving for being , well, a mass murderer basically.

THen you have the multiple characters who will happily kill any number of people, but when it comes down to it, won't kill character X for some utterly retarded reason.

Hard to say without spoilers, but theres someone whose wanted by the police at the end of series 3, whose completely scot free with everything forgotten 30 seconds later in season 4, which makes no sense at all.

Almost everything about the show could have been fantastic and realistically, in every single possible way the show could have screwed up it has, and every single time theres a choice, one which improves the show, one which makes it worse, they make the wrong choice.

WHo the hell is writing that crap.

 

[Weebull]

WHo the hell is writing that crap.

Seems like anyone that walks past Tim Kring's office, which is pretty much where all these problems arise from.