Not necessarily. It depends on the show. Watching Heroes live, you had a whole week to ponder all the inconsistencies, plot holes, inane writing and missed opportunities. I can see where it *might* be easier to take in bulk viewings, but I certainly wouldn't want to take that challenge.

While seasons 2-4 weren't as good, I didn't mind watching each week to see what would happen. Season 4 had better potential then 2 or 3, but the way it ended was meh... I would be curious to find out what was planned after since it just kind of ended and I got the feeling that another season or two was planned.

If anything... it kind of took the whole super heroes and the constant rebooting them schtick from comic books and put it in a tv show.

Agreed. I haven't seen the 1st season since watching it live, but I remember the turning point for me was (without giving too much away) a particular scene with Claire and HRG on a bridge. I believe it was a November sweeps episode.

One of the problems with that was they couldn't take a character and shelve them for a while.

I think a lot of the issues with the show simply revolved around having a cast that they had to use for an enitire season, or the entire run of the show.

This show also should have skipped forward in time several years and gone all "Days of Future Past" and STAYED THERE, no time travel! We never did get as a regular character.

I can agree with that completely. It was like they had a core group of characters and were determined to use them in every episode no matter what.

The introduction of new characters in, season 2 I think, was unnecessary and complicated things more.

I will say that even though many hated Hiro after the first season or part of season one, I did like the bit about his powers causing

^ I agree with all of those things. But like I said earlier, it might have made more sense to keep the big cast if they ever really brought them together.

I would think marathoning these episodes would make the plot inconsistencies stand out more. I know I usually saved up a few episodes at a time, and I was always left scratching my head at the sudden plot changes. I still can't believe


Josh-da-man is right, the constant change of directions made it hard to trust that the writers were building up to anything meaningful, or even working together... characters would join or drop or change motivation or become absolutely useless (or in the case of Mohinder, remain perpetually useless). It's like the more you learned about some of the characters, especially the bad guys, the less interesting they were. They changed characters that people thought were great, or interesting, and made them mundane or annoying through overuse.

Vryce is also right in that it (probably unintentionally) mirrored the work-for-hire, constantly changing and retconning nature of American superhero comics. How long did Claremont string us along about the Twelve or Wolverine's origin in X-men, only to have it end anticlimactically years later? Some characters should remain mysterious, or in the background and not overexposed.

For budgetary reasons, didn't they kinda pick and choose which members of the cast would be on certain groups of episodes? So they did try to address the large cast thing (albeit out of necessity).

I still liked it way better than that Fantastic Four ripoff show.

/\ What was the Fantastic Four ripoff show?

No Ordinary Family?

Here's an interview Kring did last year that explains some of why the show turned to crap. It has some mild spoilers, but they mostly talk about the general problems and themes that reoccurred during the show and the creative process.

Well guys, I just watched the final episode of Season 1. Wow....quite disappointing. The way was just....ugh. Everything felt extremely rushed and it left me feeling quite frustrated.

Anyway I decided to check out the first episode of S2 because my curiosity got the best of me. Yeah, nothing too spectacular but it wasn't THAT bad!

I gave up on the show about one episode into the third season, but I'm curious, did they ever revisit that particular hanging plotline?

As far as the "people with superpowers" genre goes, I'm finding that Alphas is surprisingly good.

/\ They never addressed that character or that storyline afterwards.

Agreed on Alphas

Well, I agree that I've seen worse shows on TV. The problem is, EVERY season there was no real payoff at the end. So you watch 20 hours of mediocre TV and get nothing at the end of it. EVERY season. I just found myself more and more disgusted with the show as time went on. That's why I recommend stopping while it is still good.

This... I know of at least two points where they said, "We're taking it back to what made season one so great, focusing on regular people with extraordinary abilities" (I'm paraphrasing), only to entirely abandon that idea almost right away each time.

Finish the remaining seasons so you can:

1. See the formation of a "Clusterfuck" on TV.

2. Develop ridiculous theories regarding the mindset of writers and how they managed to stay employed.

3. Come up with a conclusion on why the rest of us dumbasses continued to watch (after S1) have faith in this show week after week and even during a long hiatus.

Thanks for that article! Very informative. This explains a lot:

I'm familiar with agile, but you'd think you'd still have some kind of character bible and overarcing trajectory to the main plots to keep things coherent.

Also, the whole "multiple writers doing their own storylines" thing was due to budgetary reasons, even in the very beginning.

It gets worse. And then worse still.

No shit.

Kring's explanations in that article are a very weak defense for how bad Heroes got after season one. Every serialized network show is written and produced in that manner, on even smaller budgets than what Heroes had after the early success.

Basically you can translate Kring as saying in that piece that Heroes was managed as a standard television procedural, where continuity does not mean much because each episode is self-contained. But of course Heroes wasn't a procedural at all, so Kring's handling of the show was completely wrong and proved disastrous in the long run.

Funny you mentioned that because some folks on another forum mentioned Alphas and said a show called Misfits outdoes them both.

Misfits is fantastic! The 3rd series is just about to start this weekend and I'm very much looking forward to it.

Agree

It had its flaws especially in season 2 and season 3 (The season with Robert Forester?) but I liked the season where the Heroes were being hunted down by the government and don't laugh but the final season with the Carnival and the cult leader was ok.


I watched season 1 again last summer and I wish they would have had another season and maybe have the heroes band together as a team and end the series after that.

You might as well keep watching it if you're enjoying the series. Just keep in mind that it gets worse and worse and never gets any better. I think that's what upset most fans. We stuck with it hoping that it would eventually turn around. Maybe going in with low expectations will help you enjoy it.