Reboot Me Please: Heroes on NBC
Hopefully this comes as no surprise to anyone as portly, pale and fond of comic books as I am. And I wouldn’t exactly call what I’m doing breaking from the pack. I’m no maverick on this: If ever there was a TV series that needed a serious reboot, it’s NBC’s Heroes. The shaky but well intentioned first season was a solid exploration of what it would be like having a superpower in the modern day, an outcast, a god amongst men. Surely, it was an area well trodden by comics like X-men, Spider-man, and in more recent decades, Rising Stars, and Alan Moore’s Top Ten series. And Heroes was never anything more than a comic book premise. You know, an invincible cheerleader, a guy that could travel through time, that kind of thing.
But somewhere along the way, maybe it was halfway through the second season, already complex plots became inhumanely more complex. Plot holes opened up like the blooming of flowers after a cool spring rain. Characters died and came to life through some loophole in the rules that were set forth earlier. Essentially, we as viewers felt screwed.
It’s made all the more frustrating because the cast is truly stellar for the most part, with only a modicum of soap opera acting which with to be distracted. Though something like that is expected for a show about people that can fly.
This season is easily the show’s worst. More than once, I was minutes away from switching the channel and canceling my season pass, yet I still hold on. I pay attention. I’m no idiot. Yet I still cannot divine the complex plot machinations, double crosses and motivations doing what they do.
So that’s a long winded way of saying: just start over and forget the past. Wipe everyone’s memories. Make people act like human beings, or at least somewhat rational superhero. I don’t know, this all sounds like a terrible way to fix a complex problem and this is more of a complaint than a solution. A meandering treatise on TV that I don’t really care that much about.
Heroes, make me care again.