Heroes: Connections

Across the entire internet, all I see are news stories that summarize to “NBC tries to fix Heroes’ writing!”.
Problem is: I don’t buy it.

Let’s look at the actual chain of events:
Jeph Loeb is a long time comic book writer with limited TV management experience.
Loeb & Alexander were basically in charge of day-to-day operations at the show.
The show was having recurring cost overruns beyond their already huge per-episode budget.
When the pair were fired, only a handful of season 3 episodes had been aired – and half of those were “necessary evil” episodes that had plot leaps out of left-field to account for the scheduling changes that had occurred since their pre-strike episodes.

So no, IMO, Loeb & Alexander were fired to try and rein in production issues – any show direction issues were minimal to the decision or retconned in afterward (appropriate, given the show in question). This change was also done as a warning shot across Kring’s bow to get his house in order.

Besides, this is NBC: with shows like Knight Rider and Bionic Woman, you really think they are going to start complaining about questionable writing now?

The way I see it, the primary problem with the plot, writing, and direction of Heroes would have been way easy to fix at any point over the last 2 seasons. I’ve enjoyed season 2 and what’s been on so far this season, but I can definitely see room for substantial improvement. With just a little forethought, focus, and common sense, it could easily have been high quality escapism, it didn’t have to be this mindless – it was a pretty smart and edgy show back in the day. At this point, with ratings sinking and everyone hating on them, they are starting to look pretty desperate. I’m along for the ride whatever happens, but there are just so many missed opportunities that its really a shame.
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@Tom Shaw: Not that I’ve actually ever seen Knight Rider, and not to disagree with your very sound point, but it does sound like there is some shaking-up going on over there as well:
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http://syfyportal.com/news425551.html
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I don’t watch Knight Rider, but Mr. Shara Says has been keeping up (out of boredom more than interest). He agrees that its a crap show, but indicated that the most recent coupla episodes had been an improvement on the earlier ones, but still followed a very predictable, lame formula. Well why do you watch it then, I asked? “Well, there’s cool cars and pretty ladies in bikinis.”

Heroes is on again? They lost me when they didn’t have the balls to kill Sylar at the end of season 1. Not that I don’t think Sylar is great. It’s just that if you set something like that up, you better follow through. Instead, it was as though Season 1 never happened. Unfortunately, I am a weak willed person. So I came back and endured more Heroes in the form of Season 2. I was going to list the plots I didn’t like in Season 2, then I realized that it was all of them. So here’s where I am. I like one Heroes character. H.G.R. That’s it. This was no easy feat. I was all over the Hiro character in Season 1. He was supercool and future Hiro was a total BadAss. Unfortunately, it turns out that super powers in the hands of lazy/bad writers are a very dangerous thing. I have neither seen nor read anything to convince me that my decision to ignore Heroes Season 3 was a mistake.

I sometimes wonder what the writers are thinking and if they’ve ever read comic books – especially this season. It’s like a bunch of people who have no familiarity with the genre going, “DUDE! How cool would it be if we did ?!” Must they revisit every ounce of bad comic book writing ever churned out? (Maybe that’s Tim Kring’s superpower.)

Another thing that I think when I see the ‘fix Heroes’ articles is that they’re just going to ratchet up the flash and bang. The problem is that the show is all flash and bang. The characters don’t exist as anything other than moving constructs to hold each superpower. You’ve got superhero archetypes that are utterly without personality, and thus it’s impossible to feel anything for them. They’ve done so many ‘shocking turns of events’ for every character, that they’ve got from unpredictable through nonsensical and right on into stupid.

If I hear “You won’t BELIEVE what happens next” one more time about this show, I’m gonna smack somebody at NBC. Not only do I not believe it, I just don’t care. The sad thing is that I really did care in season 1, darn it. It makes me mad that they screwed it all up.