By Ryan Broderick
The third season of “Heroes” wrapped. It’s hard to say much else about it besides just that. It’s over and it’s hard to imagine another season after next year. The show’s become bloated and its narrative is at this point illegible.
“Heroes” started quickly and garnered one of the strongest, fastest growing audiences out there, and pulled a lot of viewers from “Lost” during their weaker middle seasons. It became a must have for advertisers looking for a “hot new market.” As it’s first monumental season ended things looked pretty darn good. The cliffhanger was strong, the characters were well contained, and it looked like any writer’s room full of monkeys could have made it a smash hit after the first season’s groundwork.
And then the writer’s strike happened. And while it’s far too long and boring to explain how, after season three’s end, the show strayed that far from their promising start, it doesn’t look like its going anywhere but further away. Trying to explain to a first time viewer what’s happened so far is impossible. Plus, by principle, I refuse to get behind a show where a major plot point is: The Japanese guy got his time-traveling abilities back from the psychic baby.
What needs to happen is some sort of huge plot device that wipes the whole plot back to square one. They attempted it on Monday night with the finale, but its still completely intelligible. The characters are strained and warped and mean nothing anymore.
Plus the newest plot lines that they’ve thrown in are so focus grouped and cheap that it’s despressingly clear that the show’s only purpose anymore is to sell Pepsi and cellphones.
It’s a bloated soap opera that everyone stopped watching a year ago. Some shows can survive a writing team switch on the strength of their actors. The problem with “Heroes” is their actors can’t even act like normal human begins let alone superheroes.