Lower Decks

The following contains spoilers through the episode “Brave New World,” originally broadcast 2/8/10.

Last week ‘Smallville’ aired the two hour episode “Absolute Justice,” which featured Clark Kent and his budding superhero friends meeting the previous generation Justice Society of America, a team that had systematically been hounded, imprisoned, and institutionalized into retirement, so that no one even knew who or what they were. The comic book and film ‘Watchmen’ likewise featured heroes who’d been forced out of the spotlight for no other reason than the world deciding they didn’t need them anymore. For four years, ‘Heroes’ has featured a set a characters who have been denied a semblance of this existence, partly because that’s the way creator Tim Kring wanted it, and partly because, the way he designed it, those characters could never imagine it being any different. Time after time, it seemed that hiding was the best and only way to maintain an idea of a normal life.

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The following contains spoilers through the episode “The Wall,” originally broadcast 2/1/10.

Okay, so NBC made a few things clear last night: this season is going to be eighteen episodes long (one less than originally suggested), and that, for all intents and purposes, ‘Heroes’ isn’t quite done yet. The fans, meanwhile, have still been having their say as well: whatever this season has done, it hasn’t exactly accomplished its goal of redeeming the series. If anything, it seems to have only cemented the fact that ‘Heroes’ has quite thoroughly lost the zeitgeist. At this point, a lot of the original fans have decided more of what they want than what they’re willing to accept from the creators, which is something that has killed genre shows in the past (ironically, for instance, ‘Star Trek: Enterprise,’ which attempted a similar fan-appeasing fourth season, also managed to fail quite spectacularly, though NBC is still apparently willing to suggest ‘Heroes’ isn’t quite done yet). “The Wall,” for better or worse, demonstrates an unerring confidence on the part of the creators in their own storytelling instincts.

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The following contains spoilers through the episode “The Art of Deception,” originally broadcast 1/25/10.

‘Defying Gravity’ (now on DVD, by the way) creator James Parriott, in a recent interview, recently divulged an anecdote when explaining what the series arc for his show would have been had ABC not cancelled his show. He related how, during the first season of ‘Lost,’ when he was working press for ‘Grey’s Anatomy,’ that its creators admitted they didn’t know where their show was headed. He said he couldn’t imagine how ‘Lost’ could operate that way. As much as I admire and miss ‘Defying Gravity’ and what Parriott had intended to do, I can’t say that I agree that the best and only way to tell a rich and engrossing story is to know exactly how it’s going to end from the moment you begin it. Maybe that makes me a bad storyteller in my own regard, I don’t know. A lot of folks have been wondering the same sort of thing about ‘Heroes’ for a long time now, whether or not its creators know what they’re doing. I can’t say what Tim Kring and company’s approach has been, either from the start of the series or even during this fourth season, but what I can say is that “The Art of Deception” does go a long way in justifying a particular course of action that wasn’t followed earlier in the season, when it was decided Matt Parkman wasn’t going to be responsible, at least then, for the destruction of Sylar.

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The following contains spoilers through the episode “Pass/Fail,” originally broadcast 1/18/10.

The whole season has been called ‘Redemption,’ of course, but this would sort of be the money episode if you were looking for a single one to define it by. The fans who’ve stuck around, curious to see if there really was some redemption to be found, despite all their doubts, which’ve only continued throughout the season, might at the very least sit up and pay attention to this one.

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The following contains spoilers through the episode “Close to You,” originally broadcast 1/11/10.

NBC was up to some schedule maneuvering this week, and the topic of ‘Heroes’ came up. Everyone’s sort of been expecting that the series is going to be cancelled pretty soon, but at least for the moment, the network is still standing by it. Maybe, like someone suggested, it’s only to maintain the small audience that’s still hanging in there, or maybe NBC still sees real worth and/or potent ional in it. It was only last season the “Villains” arc prompted a significant promotion from the network, and “Redemption” may still prove, in some way, to serve as the storyline that gets everything back to where the fans are happy. There’s a chance the fans might come around again. This was a night that saw the arc progress back in a forward direction, after the mini-climax several episodes ago when the Sylar/Nathan situation was finally resolved.

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The following contains spoilers through the episode “Let It Bleed,” originally broadcast 1/4/2010.

Somewhere in the two hours broadcast last night was uttered the sentiment that burnt bridges can be rebuilt. No doubt, that’s the sentiment the creators are hoping for, because at this point, ‘Heroes’ has lost virtually all its good will. Certainly all its buzz, anyway. Retail stores are still convinced that it’s a hot seller, and no doubt it is, and maybe that’s the best the series can hope for at this point, that it’ll be rediscovered after its original broadcasts. It’s not like now isn’t a good time for something like that to happen, whether you consider the Internet age (which might be considered the method by which it became popular in the first place) or ordinary word of mouth (by which the show can sustain the storm of withered expectations from those same fans), which have mingled so thoroughly in this case that it’s just as possible to find someone still trying to find out what all the fuss was about without having to worry too much about the disappointment that set in when things stopped going the way those original fans expected. I’m a DVD fan who was lucky enough to convert to TV fan in what may be the show’s final days. At this point, I don’t really care. Next week will mark the longest continuous arc since the first season, and the slow build has been paying off exceptionally for the past few episodes.

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The following contains spoilers through the episode “The Fifth Stage,” originally broadcast 11/30/09.

It may be time for fans of ‘Heroes’ to reach the fifth stage of grief themselves, because it’s not very likely that the show will be returning for a fifth season. Then again, at this point, you either really want to be watching the show, or you just plain aren’t, and it’s funny, because even with so few viewers, it still outclasses the number of fans some of the cult classics of recent years have managed to lure throughout their runs. With a show like ‘Heroes,’ they’re vocal when they’re at their biggest, when they’re building the hype, not necessarily when they’re trying to be constant cheerleaders. You might say the best fans aren’t the ones who’ve stopped watching, but rather the ones who still are, who don’t need constant reassurance that they’ve caught on to something. In that way, even as a declining failure, ‘Heroes’ is still a greater success than you might have been led to believe, fully three seasons past its apparent peak. “The Fifth Stage,” meanwhile, continues to prove that it has far from given up the fight.

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The following contains spoilers through the episode “Thanksgiving,” originally broadcast 11/23/09.

Back during the first half of ‘Lost’s’ second season, even Terry O’Quinn was getting antsy. He didn’t understand why Locke had reverted to the angry individual flashbacks showed him as being in the past, but in the present, at least until recently, he’d long since overcome. The actor’s vocal frustrations closely mirrored the reactions of fans who had grown accustomed to thinking of the series as one of the most innovative, thrilling, and constantly rewarding experiences on television, but had found this perhaps to no longer be the case after the first year. I offer the anecdote not as proof, now that we’re approaching that show’s final year with everyone happy once again, that things were never as grim as they appeared, but that there is always time for reflection, no matter what the results are, and Thanksgiving is a perfect time. ‘Heroes’ spent this week’s episode doing exactly that, and it was certainly an appropriate gesture.

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The following contains spoilers through the episode “Brother’s Keeper,” originally broadcast 11/16/09.

Whether you love it or haven’t been convinced, the ‘Redemption’ arc reached a high point this week. At this point, the season is no longer accepting new viewers, or even those curious if it’s gotten back to first year goodness, but rather is now firmly back in the cumulative effect a serialized show ought to work best in, counting on awareness of developments from last season and hoping you care enough about Samuel Sullivan as a foil to register that “Brother’s Keeper” just spelled out his threat once and for all.

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The following contains spoilers through the episode “Shadowboxing,” originally broadcast 11/9/09.

I’ve been saying this since I started finally reviewing ‘Heroes’ a mere three episodes ago, during a season that seems like it’s going to be the show’s final year, but I think things are really getting good. The creators will tell you that they started working on winning back the hearts of their fans last season, specifically during the “Fugitives” second half arc, but it’s been evident that they really started pushing the effort with the new season, with new characters, less cluttered storytelling, and more individual arcs for characters that were introduced in the first season, which has been referenced numerous times over the last eight episodes, from subtle references to revisiting a character more directly last episode. Some of this might be seen by regular viewers as an extension of the work the show has done from the start, and perhaps it might best be appreciated by them. No matter what it did, there’s little chance the show might have enjoyed a similar level of renewed enthusiasm that ‘Lost’ did when it made a similar effort at the same stage. Much has been made since ‘Lost’ premiered about the merits of a serialized drama’s chances for popular success, where more answers sooner are appreciated more than a long-term impact waiting to be unraveled (with ‘Lost’ the exception that proves the rule; even ‘Babylon Five,’ the series that arguably began the phenomenon, couldn’t sustain interest past the fourth year of a five-year run). ‘Flashforward,’ for example, a show that seems destined to run for a single season, has lately been on a roll, developing to a remarkable degree its intricate plot, and the critics, dutifully, have noticed. ‘Heroes’ got that kind of buzz first, but once it started spreading a story into multiple seasons and further complications, it lost that kind of support overnight. “Shadowboxing” is an episode that rewards those who continue to stick around.

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