Saving Heroes

In the November 16th issue of Entertainment Weekly, show creator Tim Kring fesses* up to the problems with Heroes that have made Season 2 abysmal. He seems to have turned around a bit from when he was interviewed at the end of October, if one can believe journalism at all.

The problem is that, in EW, he sometimes fingers the wrong reasons for the show’s problems. He cites the romances as dragging down the story, but fails to note the numerous plot holes that crater each episode like a lunarscape. The romances are not bad: in fact, those of us who love Hiro get squishy inside thinking of our Favorite Co-Dependent Time Shifter getting a girl. The time Hiro spends in Japan is worth every moment — unlike the time we spend with the dopey Tar-Eyed Twins. (This week’s episode has a case in point: How could any reasonable human being assume they’re responsible for the sudden death of an entire wedding party? So many things about those characters just don’t add up at all.) I’m even a fan of Claire’s teen romance, despite its Electra Complex overtones and highly suspect beginnings, because it gets into the idea of whether or not the future is changeable. I love that Claire’s father is trying to avoid the future shown in Isaac’s paintings while everyone around him is trying to change it for entirely different reasons. How many Heroes does it take to change the future of a light bulb? I’d like to get more into the physics and philosophy.

(My love of X-Men is peeking under my hem, eh?)

So, if I had his ear, I’d say, Tim, please fix the goddamn plot holes. Your Pulp Fiction approach didn’t pan out as you noted. We spent weeks of WTF? waiting for what should have been the beginning of the season. And introducing Adam to Peter before the trip back to medieval Japan would have been infinitely more powerful. This week’s episode (which was also riddled with plot holes) proved that it’s so much stronger to build the story line linearly for this show.

And there you have it. A rant.

*Just thought I’d mention that “fesses” in French means spankings. And they are deserved here!

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.