It's official: NBC canceled Heroes. I'm fuzzy on the details. Something to do with the show hemorrhaging two-thirds of its viewers over the last couple of seasons? Not sure.I was briefly tempted to start this off with, "I come to bury Heroes, not to praise it," but I'm not a huge fan of public gloating. Granted, the severe dip in the show's quality made me lose all enthusiasm for it by early fall last year, and I never did get around to watching the back half of the final season, but for a good run there, this site devoted significant time and energy to covering and analyzing the show. Thus, it seems only right to have one final wrap-up post.
Here's a handy master list of the Heroes-themed posts on this site:
Volume One recaps
Volume Two recaps
Volume Three recaps
Volume Four recaps
Volume Five recaps
Ten Common-Sense Ways to Fix Heroes
My pre-Volume Five Heroes spoof press release
My Volume Five speculative script
My account of meeting all those talented and charming cast members during the WGA strike.
Post-Volume Two character analyses
...and, for good measure, all those Volume Five recaps where I Photoshopped the inexplicably-absent Mohinder into the publicity stills, just out of spite. Ah, good times.
In all those words above, I've probably already said far more than needs to be said on the subject. Thank you for one damn good season, Heroes, and here's hoping all the cast members soon find their respective ways onto better projects.
Edited to add: the great Dan Liebke's awesome visual representation of the ideal end for the series:
Total missed opportunity there, Dan.
Comments
(Note: of course, I'd still want the Haitian to somehow allow me to keep my memories of Skulky the Turtle Wonder. No point throwing the baby out with the bath water. Not unless you want to be prosecuted for reckless child endangerment.)
Yes. While it sounds lofty to declare that I only want to remember Volume One and forget all the nonsense that came afterwards, I'd hate to lose the memories of Skulky the Turtle Wonder and how, for a brief shining moment there, he hijacked Volume Three and elevated it into something much greater than the sum of its parts.
Also, I'd like to keep the part where Mohinder writhes around mightily while chained to a chair, and Nathan throws a bucket of water on him. Yeah. That was good, too.
Whatever anyone's opinion of the quality of the show, it's very difficult to argue that NBC made a poor business decision in deciding to scrap it. TV is still a ratings-driven industry. Ratings decide the advertising rate, and advertising is the way networks make their money; DVD sales and online ads are gravy, not meat. Heroes was a very expensive show with very, very poor ratings. Hence, NBC couldn't charge much for commercial time and thus couldn't recoup their production costs through advertising. Factor in the way it'd been critically panned for the last few seasons, and factor in the rumors of disorganization and production discord, and... yeah, it was doomed.
My first reaction to the news (thanks for the email, Morgan...I had no access to a home computer for a couple of days so I missed this) was a rather ho-hum, "okay then." I'm still bitter about all the wasted potential on this show. The first season was fun and interesting...and then the show slowly imploded until it was unrecognizable.
I blame Kring and the hacks show made shitty decisions and then tried to force feed them to the viewers, only to get annoyed with the viewers for not swallowing whole.
Happiness for me is remembering season 1, the awesome fandom I discovered, finding this blog and knowing Sendhil is off to (hopefully) better things. I hope all the actors move on to better projects.
Morgan - your recaps, ideas, photoshopping were second to none. You made watching this show more bearable than it deserved.
I second this. Hope your recaps of Covert Affairs will be just as great (and, of course, that the show itself will be good).
I'm not sad about the cancellation of Heroes. My only wish is for the cast & crew to find new jobs, and for the channel to stop teasing with that "possible movie" nonsense. They should let people move on.
only to get annoyed with the viewers for not swallowing whole
And there we get to the crux of why cancelation seems like the best possible outcome. I don't wish misfortune upon anyone or anything. If, say, FlashForward, which I have grown to sort of loathe, had been renewed for another season, I would have thought to myself, "Wow, dumb move by ABC," shrugged, and gone on with my life without thinking about it again. But with Heroes, the contempt and condescension some of the creative staff have displayed toward the fans makes me feel like they've earned themselves a little comeuppance. We've seen them be overly-defensive and inclined towards blame-shifting about legitimate viewer concerns, and we've seen them be outright hostile and abusive about legitimate viewer concerns. Heroes did a bang-up job of alienating its fan base, which I think is why the news has brought some Schadenfreude. I hope the cast and crew all land safely on their feet, but... this is for the best.
Precisely. Here is (was?) a show that seemed to go out of its way to lay blame on everyone else's shoulders except their own. There were people involved with the show who were rude, obnoxious, dismissive -- absolutely unacceptable behaviour by any professional standards. It's because of those people I take a certain pleasure in this news.
Oh, I totally third this. Not only were the recaps timely, a tough enough feat in itself (says the man who is about eight episodes and one season behind on his Smallville recaps), but they were also invariably a perfect blend of detailed and funny. At the end, I can honestly say I was watching the show solely so I could read and understand the recaps and contribute to the comments section here.
So, thank you.
Ditto. Of course, there were people working behind the scenes who were just delightful: Greg Beeman, man, they never should have fired him. Jeph Loeb was another nice guy (who also got fired. I'm detecting a trend). Mark Verheiden always appeared to be smart and insightful, and Oliver Grigsby seemed like a pleasant chap. I'm sure there are others, probably many others, who are worthy of praise. But snakes alive, there were some toxic personalities on that staff (or, as I like to think of them, Human Resources complaints waiting to happen). And the show simply wasn't good enough to warrant the outsized egos and the unpleasantness toward viewers.
At the end, I can honestly say I was watching the show solely so I could read and understand the recaps and contribute to the comments section here.
Aw, thank you, Dan. It was fun while it lasted. Heroes used to be the perfect show to recap -- a nice balance of genuinely cool stuff, loopy plot ideas, terrible science, veiled homoeroticism, and hilariously exposition-heavy dialogue (Angela to Peter re: Nathan in the pilot: "You hero-worshipped him, and those feelings were never returned." Come on! It's so unnatural, it's hysterical!). And even when everything else let me down, at least I could babble on about Mohinder's hair and eyelashes and those long, long legs, to say nothing of his blindingly awful wardrobe. Ah, those were the days.
Hah, it's still the exact thing that goes through my head when I read comments by the last remaining, faithful Heroes fans. They worshipped Tim Kring, but those feelings were never returned.
I am looking forward to the day, some months in the future, when I'll be able to watch Heroes Season 1, maybe even Season 2, without this bitterness that's currently still infesting my mind. But two days ago, I suddenly remembered Company Man - not the black/white flashbacks, but the storyline where Matt and Ted took HRG's family hostage, and it was such a turning point. I had totally forgotten that Heroes had had such great moments. :(
I feel like I should start a betting pool as to which cast member will be the first to run his or her mouth off about how bad things got behind the scenes. It may take a while -- it'll certainly be after these rumors of wrap-up movies or miniseries have faded away, because nobody is going to want to burn any bridges while they're still somewhat hitched to the show -- but I bet some awesome stories will leak out at some point.
They sure don't seem heartbroken about it - nostalgic, maybe.
Greg Grunberg has been promoted to series regular on Love Bites. Not a show I'm interested in, but good for him, and I wonder who else is going to snatch up a regular role in the coming weeks.
I'm sort of thinking Hayden might be a good source of behind-the-scenes gossip in upcoming weeks. On the surface, she would seem to have the least to complain about, since that final season was pretty much all-Claire, all the time. But I doubt the working environment was much fun for any of the actors, and she's both young enough and outspoken enough that she might be less cautious and reserved about what she says than the others. If an interviewer asks her directly about it, she might just dish.
But every actor is definitely going to get asked about the show, and something, anything, will get through eventually.
Have you read Tim Kring's hilarious statement about the show's cancellation?
http://livefeed.hollywoodreporter.com/2010/05/tim-kring-makes-statement-on-heroes-cancellation.html
Oh, I see! The ratings weren't bad at all! People just weren't counting the other forms of digital media.
Sigh. I'm kind of grumpy today. My apologies.
He knows that people were not getting "hope" out of his story at all... to say the least.
I'm still hung up on Heroes' important message of "global consciousness." The hell?
Okay, Ingrid. You get one of my very rare "LOL"s for that.
Kring reminds me of a restaurateur who lost his Michelin star long ago -- after it's gone, he's no longer allowed to refer to his establishment as a Michelin-starred restaurant, but he's clinging tight to the dream anyway.