53: Heroes

You don't see all that many breakout hits on TV every year. If you're lucky as a network maybe you get one or two and you find a couple of new shows that did just well enough you can keep them around another year and develop a following. At least as often as not, the one hit is one of a couple shows you could have guessed it would come from. And maybe that was the case for Heroes, and I just didn't realize it - but when Heroes garnered ridiculous ratings right from the get go in the fall of 2006, it came out of nowhere to me. Heroes became no less than a phenomenon, becoming the highest ranked new NBC drama in five years, and sparking the minds of serial TV fans everywhere with the possibility for a whole world of theories based on Heroes' mythology.

The Heroes were a bunch of normal people who discovered they had some crazy powers, from the ability to fly, to the ability to read minds, to stop time, to be pretty much invincible, and lots of others. These Heroes were faced with a few intriguing villains, from Sylar, a sociopath who had the power to steal other Heroes' powers after killing them, a mysterious organization in which the man with the Horn Rimmed Glasses who turned out later on to be the not evil and the best character Mr. Bennett and a mysterious organized crime leader known as Linderman who turned out to be later played by Malcolm McDowell. Along with all this, were suggestions of webs of intrigue that the show had in-store - the parents of several of the Heroes had been involved in some type of organization in the past, and each of the mysterious organizations good and evil seemed to have lots of secrets which would slowly spill out as the seasons went on. And it was good.

And then, well, it wasn't. Heroes basically said fuck you to all the promise it had, and started doing stupid things with all the characters, and ruining any intrigue and mystery it had built up - anything that was revealed was anticlimactic - what seemed like a giant mysterious organization for which Mr. Benett worked turned out to be basically run by Stephen Tobolowsky and maybe three others people. Linderman, who could have been a mysterious character carried on through a couple of seasons, was revealed, thoroughly boring, and killed off in a boring manner, while Sylar, who was a great temporary villain, in that, while he was intriguing, there was a limit to the amount he could do without either getting boring and repetitive and/or overpowered, was allowed to keep going, even when he, sensically appeared to be dead. Then of course, there was time travel, which at least as often as not is a sign a show is going downhill (look out, Lost). Every time a character decision was made, you wish it had gone the other way. The second season was terrible, and while sometimes I'm alone on thoughts like this, it was pretty universal in this case - the ratings went down, and fans and critics alike trashed the new direction.

There are very, very few shows I start watching, watch at least a season, and then stop watching the show entirely. I'm a completist and I hate watching something halfway and not finishing it. That said, it was not lightly that I made the decision to stop watching Heroes, starting with the third season. I'm not saying I need to agree with every creative decision made on a show - but if I hate every single one made, it's probably a good idea not to watch anymore. Apparently fans again agreed with me, as the ratings continued to slip further. Heroes was still renewed on the basis of its decent 18-49 numbers, but without an uptick next year, its time may be fading and with good reason.

It's just a sad episode in what could have been, but during that first season alone it earned its place.