The Rise and Fall of Heroes

Posted on 10 April 2009 by Mitch Higgins

heroeslogoBack in 2006 I was a busy man with lots of projects and working on a book when Heroes premiered on September 25 2006, so I didn’t catch it from the start.  But in early 2007 a friend started talking about a new show that sounded a lot like X-men… Since The X-men kick all kinds of ass I decided to check it out.

After watching all the episodes in the series thus far I got addicted.  I couldn’t stop watching the first season.  I watched the first six episodes 3 times each.  It was awesome, and had a formula of sucking you in like Id never seen.  With a bonanza of ads and marketers hitting up every message board on the internet, haydenswimmerthey hit the nerds first.  That’s always a good move, and with nerds aware of a new Sci-Fi show they had a great base. Then to attract the every day viewers and morons of pop culture they recruited pretty people to star in the show, and incorporated award winning special effects.  BAM! Ratings gold.  The first season’s 23 episodes hit an average of 14.3 million viewers in the U.S., receiving the highest rating for any NBC drama premiere in five years.  The American Film Institute, Writers Guild of America, Hollywood foreign Press association and more all licked the balls of Heroes calling it the best show, and series of the year.  It had great writing, good acting, and looked awesome in HD so I thought it was the best drama series I had seen on TV in a long time.

NOW COMES ALL THE BULLSHIT.  When season one ended I felt like I wanted to punch my TV.  It was like the whole season I was getting the most awesome blow job ever and then when I was about to finish up the lips were removed and I was punched in the face.  Very upsetting.  Everyone was waiting for a huge super power battle between Sylar and Peter, and anyone who wasn’t is a homo… That’s right I SAID IT.  That battle didn’t have to happen to appease me, but Jesus Christ, 22 and three quarters of awesome episodes just to have a minute and a half of one sword stab and two guys flying away in each others arms.  Fuck you Heroes.  Maybe having Peters brother sweep him away to blow up in the sky, and Hiro doing a quick stab through Sylar’s chest was done to save money on all the special effects they would have needed to do. Why the hell did I say maybe!? I’m positive it was done to save money because I sure as hell know it could have been exponentially better.  I wasn’t looking for an ending or one final battle of good conquering evil, because it’s a TV show, I understand it needs to keep going… but COME ON.

sylar-in-cell

Once I got into Heroes it happened to be one of the very few shows I watched when it first premiered on TV as opposed to watching it online or otherwise.  So when season one ended with a shank I was left with blue balls, I didn’t really feel like watching any more and when it came back from its hiatus, I didn’t watch. Apparently other people felt this way too, because ratings dropped 15 %. Yet some how the marketing genius’ sucked me back in and I was back on Monday nights watching Heroes.  Other people didn’t quite feel the same and by episode seven Heroes dropped to 9.87 million viewers.  Damn near cutting ratings by 40 %.  This would be a death blow for any other show, but Heroes is one of NBC’s best in the 18-49 demographic, as well as having strong international appeal so they keep it alive.  When the big twist hit just after episode 7 it slightly came back up but still ended at 11 million which was still 3 million lower than the average of season 1.  Then to make everything worse the writers strike happens and cuts the 24 episode second season down to 11.  So I can’t directly slam Heroes for the downfall of the story here, but it hurt ratings and viewers again.

heroes-season-3-promo

So now Season 3 begins, A YEAR LATER, and its with a 3 hour bullshit “meet the fans” and “catch up on the red carpet” pre-show.  God damn man, fluff me a bit more why don’t ya.  The ratings die again, and of course the producers chalk it up to the writers strike, but give me a break your showing an hour of pre-show that’s 50 % commercials and 50 % actors trying to be hosts… this blows.  Yet finally after 2 hours of garbage the premiere pops on and its pretty slow but like the Heroes of old it set up tons of promising story lines and crazy twists to what we know.  Then the first few episodes are actually pretty good and have all kinds of questions bubbling, then Peters dad is shot and the entire thing starts to crumble and we lose interest all over again…

petereyesdeadSo this brings us to the present and there are only 3 episodes left before it goes on break until September and without some of the most amazing shit ever, this show may be dead to me.  Its constantly filled with more commercials than any show I can think of, the writing has fizzled out like a bad fart and I’ve been left disappointed.  A man can only take so much…  Somebody fix Heroes…

Message to the Producers:::  I will write for this show and make it fuck-your-face awesome.  Just give me a chance.

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This post was written by:

Mitch Higgins - who has written 52 posts on This Hot Fire.

Mitch Higgins is a published author with National Lampoon press and has over a decade of writing experience. And he has a super big penis

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10 Comments For This Post

  1. kevin says:

    i challange your views on hereos hitchell miggins.

    i think it has one of the best characters on TV right now in Noah Bennett, or as us nerds like to refer to him, Horned Rim Glasses Guy.

    i challange you to name one better, with the exception of Clark Kent on Smallville.

  2. mikey W says:

    Damn, thats pretty harsh on the heroes. Ill admit it lost a lot of pizzazz, but theres pure hatred in these words. But a lot of love in that Hayden Panettierre picture. I dont like heroes as much any more but Ill still check up randomly.

  3. Mitch Higgins says:

    Curse you ROGERS!!

    you are correct in assuming Noah Bennett is bad ass.. but one character in a series with about 12 main characters isnt going to save it. The story is dying, they have shit happen and then give no real reason behind it… thats not TV, thats real life. And fuck real life.

  4. kevin says:

    valid point mitch. it ceritanly has lost a lot of what made it great. personally i find it idiotic that peter can only have one power, and that Hiro can’t even use his FULL powers..

    it’s bullshit that they made these guys with super powers, then decided .. hmmm you know what, they are TOO powerfull and we dont’ like that anymore. and they take it all away. THAT is the bullshit of the show. they need to stick to a idea and go with it.

  5. Jay says:

    Season 2 sucked!

  6. Joekings says:

    hey found your website on technorati. wicked site. pretty simple but i dig it

  7. Joekings says:

    by the way Heroes has sucked it up pretty bad but i’ll still be watchin tonight/ catn help it man. might stop when the season ends tho

  8. bobby says:

    Found your site when I was looking to see if heroes would have another season, and had to say bad ass site mine…

    I agree with what you were saying. Heroes has become a weak ass version of its former self. I remember every week used to be a cool ass episode with cool ass writing then the writers strike happened and it went crappy, but the writers strike cant be there excuse forever on why it sucks so much now. The season ender was pretty good, but sad to watch your favorite show deteriorate like this.

    Nice post man.

  9. Rachael says:

    First off, nice article. I like what you wrote.

    I have to give my own piece though. I saw the season 3 finale a few days ago and it was really just a compacted version of crap that the whole season was. Characters actions make no sense, the rules created in the world are never followed and instead of abiding by the rules created in the writing they just forget what had happened previously in the series. Its the worst downfall of writing Ive ever seen after such an incredible first season.

    Examples.. the last scene before the final episode showed Denko “kill” Sylar and it doesnt work. I assumed this would get Denko killed. But noooooooooo. Sylar takes Denkos form, kills some of his own men, and frames him, but not before blabbering on about his diabolical plan like an 80′s saturday morning cartoon or a bond villain… pathetic.

    So now Denko is framed and they drag him back to Building 26 and stick him in a cell with Noah Bennett, for no apparent reason… so fucking stupid, neither one has powers but oh boy, I bet it would “look like” a crazy twist of a relationship.

    So skip along… they find Nathan murdered by Sylar. So instead of using Claires blood to regenerate his neck, like they did previously in the series… but thats too simple, realistic, and intelligent.

    They put together the retarded set up with Sylar getting his memory erased of his past and only keep the memories he took to help become Nathan.

    Now we get the incredibly obvious scene where Nathan shows a smidge of Sylars personality when he notices a clock is slow.

    God what happened to this show??

  10. Nicholas Cage says:

    I love heroes, I really hope they will release season 5 very soon. Been watching it on http://manypakyaw96.blog.com/2010/04/23/free-to-watch-heroes-season-3-online/

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