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Heroes: Looking Back on Season 1 |
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Thursday, 31 May 2007 |
By John Keegan
Visit Critical Myth for an archive of John's TV Review archives, with more than 1100 entries.
 “Heroes” emerged on the scene as the most unlikely of successes: a show based on the idea of everyday superheroes, men and women with unusual abilities and unexpected connections. Many critical dismissed the series as quick fodder for cancellation. They didn’t bank on a nation hungry for heroes and a fresh perspective.
Comic book writers have explored the realm of the “powered everyman” on several occasions, but it’s rarely been explored in the visual medium. Most of the time, it doesn’t catch on, so one might wonder why “Heroes” was such a success, especially during a season where several serialized shows quickly fell to the wayside.
The first answer, quite simply, is “Lost”, though some fans might balk at the comparison. It’s no secret that Tim Kring, the mastermind behind “Heroes”, is a good friend of Damon Lindelof and Cartlon Cuse, the showrunners of “Lost”. Kring must have recognized what made “Lost” such an immediate hit with the masses: compelling characters, overlapping mysteries, unexpected connections between characters. Adapting the “Lost” formula to a new concept was an important step towards success.
The second answer is “24” (and to a lesser extent, “Alias”). While many of the new serialized shows had adopted the “24” model, few of them managed to learn the lessons of “24”. “24” had long since fallen into the trap of ending every episode on a shocking moment, without considering where the shocking moments should take the story next. The first season of “Alias” was more adept at the practice, but eventually that series lost the narrative urgency of “24”.
So the structural pieces were all there on the board, suggested by other successful serialized dramas. The trick was putting them together in the right combination, and the answer was largely suggested by the comic book format itself. The most successful comic books typically adopt a long-form arc, consisting of several issues, telling a massive and multi-layered tale. The first season of “Heroes” is structured in the same fashion, with largely the same results.
The season itself was thus structured to near-perfection. The “24” model gave them the blueprint for juggling tons of characters and building to exciting cliffhangers towards the conclusion of a single season arc. The “Alias” model gave them the blueprint for doing so through logical plot progressions. The “Lost” model gave them the emphasis on memorable characters and character relationships.
By focusing on a largely unknown cast, the show was able to capitalize on the idea that the characters were like everyday people. Their problems were our problems, just rendered in terms of superpowers. Saving the world meant dealing with an increasingly bizarre set of circumstances, but having started in a relatively mundane fashion, the audience found it easy enough to take each new step forward.
Unfortunately, every series struggles in its first season (making the exceptions like “Lost” even more impressive), and that was certainly true for “Heroes”. While some of the plot and character threads were well-written (Hiro’s journey, for the most part, and Mr. Bennett’s arc as a whole), other elements never came together well. Nearly everything related to Niki/Jessica was a low point, and the early love triangle between Peter, Isaac, and Simone was a momentum-killer.
 As noted earlier, the superhero comic book arc structure has its positive and negative aspects, and the season finale fell into one of the most prevalent traps: the “non-ending” The second half of the season in particular was a master-class in tension escalation, with several plot threads driving towards the promise of a powerful and intense confrontation between good and evil. That’s not how the season ended. Instead, too many plot and character threads ended with a whimper, with most of the material designed to catapult the story into the next volume in the second season. That creative decision, more than audience expectation, was the cause of much dissatisfaction.
It should be interesting to see how the fans of “Heroes”, many of which declared it immediately superior to “Lost”, will handle future seasons. Like “Lost”, “Heroes” benefited from a season of solid character and plot introduction, trading psychological and thematic depth for a detailed plot with quick revelation to similar success. Many found the quick resolution of mysteries to be preferable, sometimes to the point of making extreme and unfair comparisons.
Like “Lost”, however, the series must evolve, and new characters will need to be introduced for the next story arc to work. This, as well as the sense that long-term mysteries might never be resolved, has been the source of much criticism against “Lost”, season to season. Kring has already bowed to network and fan pressure to preserve much of the first season cast into the second season, but to keep the story fresh and exciting, new characters will be needed and they will need to be as interesting and vital as the exciting cast. Juggling old and new cast members is never an easy feat.
More than that, it’s relatively easy to structure a single season arc and satisfy the audience; developing long-term plot and character arcs, while keeping the short-term plot and character arcs satisfying, can be a difficult task. It’s quite possible that “Heroes”, at the end of the second season, will find itself the victim of the same criticism leveled at “Lost”. Then again, given how successful “Lost” has been of late, despite the criticism, the shows may be good company for each other.
 The fan reaction is important, because “Heroes” has garnered one of the more intense fan communities in recent memory. In fact, this fan community may become something of a liability, as it is also one of the more hostile fan communities. Disagreements over interpretation can often be extreme and judgmental, and some casual fans have felt shunned by hardcore online fans unwilling to entertain different points of view. That hostility could quickly be turned against the creators of the show if the potential pitfalls are not avoided.
Based on the disappointing ending and some of the less impressive character arcs, the first season of “Heroes” resulted in a Critical Myth average rating of 7.7. This is well above average and marks “Heroes” as one of the best shows of the season. With NBC pushing for a successful sophomore effort, the series should have plenty of opportunity to grow.
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