Bitterness, Thy Name is Heroes

I was at Half Priced Books last weekend and was browsing the used DVD section when I found the first season of Heroes on sell for less than twenty bucks. I'm not stupid. I know a deal when I see one. The problem is, it was only a few months ago that Heroes was canceled, and I'm still pretty bitter. I'm not delusional in thinking that there was much left to salvage of the show after its fourth season, but still. I've seen kinder treatment of worse shows upon their finales. If this was really going to be the last season of a once extremely popular show, a little respect was due. I thought maybe watching the first season again would increase my anger.

However, I did buy the DVDs. I had a long weekend at home and my dad & I spent it watching marathons. After staring at the Heroes box set for a few days, I finally asked my dad if he would be interested in watching them with me. He's never seen Heroes, and I thought of him as a test subject. He's a pretty good judge of good television, like myself. Was the first season of Heroes really as good as I remembered, as everyone always insisted, in awe of how crappy the show became? I was going to use my dad to find out.

Science went out the window as soon as the scene in the pilot where all of the characters look up into the same sky and see the eclipse from different angles all around the world as the song "Eyes" played. I got the same goosebumps that I did the first time I watched. Instead of worrying about what my dad thought about the show, I became recommitted to the plot as if I didn't already know how it all ended.

You can say a lot about Heroes. In the longrun I worry but accept that it will be remembered as gorgeous failure. If nothing else, it should be a lesson in two things: in being bold, and in knowing when to quit. As an American viewer I am trained to believe that a television show is supposed to be 22 episodes over fall and spring, season after season until the show is on for 12 years or is run into the ground, whichever happens first. There's a selfishness involved in television that insists on quantity over quality, everyone involved desperate to keep a show on as long as they can so they can make bank.

With Heroes, people often ask, "what the fuck happened?" The answer is pretty simple. Truth is, there wasn't any story leftover after the first season. Unlike most programs that need two or three years to show some boldness and feel comfortable with themselves enough to really impress us, Heroes did everything it needed to do its first time out. Now that I think about it, and all they achieved with their first season, I get a little angry thinking about all the shit the show got towards the end.

Heroes is the first piece of evidence I have in an argument about rethinking the way we do television in the States. There should be more experimenting with formats and length on networks. How positively would we talk about Heroes today if it had been a mini-series? How many shows on television right now  are hogging the airwaves, spitting out redundant episode after episode, scraping the bottom of the idea barrel just to keep themselves on the air longer?

Heroes did something only good television can do--it laid all its cards out on the table in one season. It knew who it was and carried the message that we are all special and all connected in one way or another. Heroes, in its first season, knew exactly who it was and what it wanted to put out into the world.  Tragically, the system demanded more from it and eventually wore it down into nothing. Not every book needs a sequel, not every album needs a followup.

When I took the DVD out, my dad mumbled, "Well, that was pretty good."

It is important to always give credit where it is due, and even if it earned all of the negative critiques, it also earned every word of praise it ever received. Heroes wasn't a fluke. Everything that made the first season good is still good. Choices were made, creativity was stretched thin, and when push came to shove it couldn't last. It died off and could not survive in Television's battle of the fittest, poetic for a show that at its core played with the concept of evolution. However, maybe, if we're lucky, there's a mutation waiting in the wings, ready to learn and be what Heroes could not.

Besides, there is nothing quite like seeing the Petrellis fly for the first time.

Pilot Episode: About This Blog

Since entering college, I have found myself with large but random pockets of time on my hands in between classes and work. I've developed a habit of using this time host my own television "marathons", watching entire series in a matter of day. Last spring, in one week I was wrapping up David Tennant's run on Doctor Who, then immediately started Lost so that I could have it completed in time to view the series finale. I don't think this is particularly unusual of many people. There's something wonderful about sitting down and watching several episodes of a show, one after another, especially after a long day of stressful work.

However, a lot of the times watching shows in bulk means the viewer is watching them on DVD or maybe Netflix Instant, and that usually means watching a show that is at least one season if not more behind what's current. Indeed, being  fan of marathon viewing like I am makes it so that I watch a lot of television that is either no longer on TV or at the least pretty dated.

I love watching current television live, of course. There's a good argument to be made that television is best   watched on its first run. Certainly, those who care about ratings would prefer the audience watched a program live. There's an anticipation to live television that can't be replicated, an instantaneous rush in knowing you're viewing something at the same time as everyone else around the country. As soon as the credits roll, you can call up a friend and ask them did you see that? It's also possible that half the fun of some shows is the buildup of watching it week after week, tuning in to be given another piece of a plot puzzle.

The problem is, if people only watched what was on television now, many gems would be lost amongst the chaos. International hits may never be imported. Great TV from decades past that have just come onto DVD may be forgotten. Even worse, sometimes a show that you once loved loses most if not all of the elements that made you enjoy it in the first place, which makes it hard to remember the good times. Being a longtime fan of a program can be a bitch sometimes.

Thankfully, there's something about watching a show you've already viewed before long after it was ever on television that can give a wonderful sense of nostalgia, and more importantly, watching a program that you have been distanced from for some time adds a deeper level of consideration and allows for retrospection.

It is retrospection that this blog will discuss. With all the television that I watch, I find myself needing an outlet to discuss my thoughts and discoveries, which can be hard to do in a day and age where people focus more on the now and less on "then". This will not be a blog about only "old" shows. The programs discussed may only be one season behind what's current. It is in this way that I hope to make the process of viewing just as enjoyable as that feeling being completely in the dark about a show and wondering what will happen next. There are some truly gorgeous scenes that can be only be enjoyed once time has passed. It's amazing what you can learn about a show when you view television with retrospective goggles.

Fun Fact: I Love Lucy was the first show to have re-broadcasts. At the time, the network couldn't fathom the idea that people would even care seeing a show a second time around, giving up their rights to "re-runs" to show creators & stars, Desi Arnaz & Lucille Ball.