Heroes: Our Father - has someone been praying for this show?

Posted by ScuzzBuster

December 9, 2008

A couple of weeks ago I wrote that I could no longer muster the effort continue to pound on this poor, misguided mess that the television show Heroes had become. There’s only so many different ways you could describe a weekly recurring train wreck. Since then, there have been some developments. First and most interesting is that Bryan Fuller, the writer behind some the strongest episodes of Heroes season 1 was contracted to script the final few episodes of season 3 since his other project Pushing Daisies was unceremoniously canned.
This in itself is not that promising.
Even the most skilled surgeon can’t bandage a gaping head wound with a box of band-aids.
However, this news is in addition to the fact that with tonight’s episode, Our Father, we have had the two best back to back episodes of the series since the first season.

Now, that’s not saying a whole helluva lot. There’s still a cloud of methane emissions hanging over this show the same way that it hangs over the Lambo field parking lot during tail-gating before a play-off game. But tonight showed that there may be just enough of a spark left in the concepts and characters that there may be hope of saving it. The question is, with the entire Heroes universe being a massive cluster intercourse is it even remotely possible to get us to emotionally invest in these characters again? Our Father is a decent sign. Spoilers ahead if it’s still sitting on your DVR and you’re toying if you should delete it before watching it [my advice is don't delete it, give it a chance].

The Good
Arthur Petrelli had to die. Please keep him dead. I am so sick of death being meaningless in this show. In any case, Robert Forster was inspired casting. However, Arthur was a poorly written, cardboard villain and character. What a waste of talent. In addition, the continued movement of the show towards characters like Arthur Petrelli, that were for all intents of purposes omnipotent or damned near was completely destroying the ability of the show to generate any real drama. We’ve been stuck in either a state of God-like powers making all events meaningless, or the writers sloppily and too often having to ignore these omnipotent characters in order to generate forced drama, and it never worked.

Time travel, which has been the root of such poor plot mismanagement even as far back as late season 1 has finally been used as a device to advance character development rather than just a tool to continue to fuck up the universe and create more plot holes. There were a few brief moments in Our Father where I actually had a momentary emotional reengagement with Hiro, Claire and even Noah Bennett.

The Super Soldiers Twist Hmmm, could be interesting, could be the path to even more ridiculous plotting. However, at this point I have to say that anything we can do to kill this whole “secret formula” plot line and get rid of this contrived, simplistic story idea the better. I have a feeling that it’s not dead yet, it seems with Arthur’s death maybe we can start to close out and patch up the stuff that’s not working and start fresh. Having some para-military out of control super soldier story line might be what the show needs to shake it out of idiocy. It’s not necessarily fresh or new, but at least it’s different.

Peter Petrelli killing his father. Hmmm again. This is part of the good and part of the bad. For those of you that saw it, you know that this is subject for debate. Who really killed Arthur Petrelli? Peter pulled the trigger, but Sylar put the bullet in his head.
Okay, those are just some random thoughts on things that might be good signs. Unfortunately we still have the bad.

The Bad
Back to Peter killing his father. In my opinion, it would have been a lot more dramatic to have had Peter just simply pull the trigger and put the bullet between Arthur’s eyes without the intervention of Sylar.

Don’t any these people have fucking jobs? Did I miss the episode where Matt Parkman and Ando hit the lottery? Part of what makes super heroes interesting is the duality of their identities. Trying to maintain some semblance of a normal life while wrestling with a world where they are forced or compelled to utilize their powers for a purpose is part of the drama that’s missing right now from this show. Without this duality, the characters become two-dimensional bores. Ultimately, Parkman was interesting because he was wrestling with his job as a cop and coming to terms with his powers while his marriage was breaking up. The show just suffers when their lives revolve completely around their powers and not much else. What made Claire interesting? She was an average high school kid trying to balance her new found abilities with living a normal life. So we have a high school cheerleader that now trots the globe and does everything but go to school and lead cheers.

They are still ignoring common sense. As much as I thought Eclipse Part 2 last week was a huge step up in quality, there is still so much basic common sense and science they ignore that it’s maddening. We have a solar eclipse that happens over the course of two episodes. Now two things, solar eclipses are phenomenon that can only be seen in very small strips across the globe when they occur, yet we jump back and forth all over the world with all the characters falling under the shadow of the eclipse. Second, solar eclipses last a few minutes, at least the full eclipse portion. Now, it was never clear how long this magical worldwide eclipse lasted, but it was long enough that a ton of significant plot events happen. I know, it’s fiction, the writers do whatever they want, but don’t insult common sense. I’ve adusted to the fact that we are taking part in a universe where some people have genetically or artificially developed super-human powers. Don’t ask me to swallow that in addition to swallowing boneheaded science errors that any freshman in high school should know is wrong. Quit insulting the intelligence of the audience and breaking fundamental physical laws just because it’s convenient to the plot.

Still little consistency with the characters, though much better these last two weeks. I don’t know how writers meetings go for Heroes, but they need to focus on the show character by character. Right now, watching the program you just still get the feeling that they have 2, maybe 3 characters in their head for the course of the season, but 85% of the writing is simply based on a bunch of things they want to happen regardless of how much they will have to bend, break or utterly overhaul characters week to week to facilitate their vision.

The show needs to decide what it’s going to be. Not to sound like a broken record (for those under 30, that’s fairly bulky flat piece of black vinyl with a hole in the middle that us old people used to listen to music on), but if you look at other hour-long story-arcing dramas like Lost, it’s a program about characters and the relationships between the characters with a sci-fantasy wild card element surrounding them. Heroes right now is about events and actions. You could change the characters in and out amongst themselves and still come up with the same basic plotlines. There’s nothing that’s holding this thing together.

Okay, one last little nit-pick. It’s been three stinking years, isn’t about time that you actually give one of the coolest characters on the show a name? Have I missed it? I mean, the first few times he’s hanging around the characters, certainly it’s understandable that he’s referred to as “The Haitian.” For krissakes, though, it’s been three years, he’s been a key person in these people’s lives in one way or another for most of this time. Two of our “Heroes” watched him kill his own brother in a dramatic fashion. I mean, what if for three years all the other characters just referred to Hiro as “The Jap”? What if there was a character that three straight years just continually was referred to as “The Jew”? I mean, a little racially insensitive isn’t it? This brings the other point up that’s been bugging me since season 1, WHY is he immediately recognized as a Haitian by everyone that sees him? I mean, is there some Haitian body or facial feature that’s obvious to everyone on the planet but me? Didn’t Parkman just get a glance of this guy across a crowded bar in season 1 and immediately identify him as “Haitian” without so much as even hearing him speak? Hell, they even refer to him as the “The Haitian” when he’s around them. Just a nitpick. Certainly the poor guy must be getting some kind of complex.

Alright, really these were just some random thoughts. As much as the last two weeks have actually been something that bares some resemblance to things I would generally call entertainment, the show is still stained by long term all-pervasive, hap-hazard, mis-guided plot development.
The show needs to move on. I have this really bad feeling that the only courses that this show can now take are going to create even more conflicts with all these messed up story lines, especially involving time travel. It almost begs for a do-over. Is there some way to completely erase the last season and a half?

Bah, it’s just two episodes, it could be just a brief lucky streak. If not, put up, shut up or cancel this hot mess.

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