mysitenotyours.com

Dear Heroes writers, producers, etc:

The show stinks. I am sure you have heard this before. And perhaps you have even been told it is because of specific plot-lines or characters. But I am here to tell you the problem isn’t always with the story-line or even the characters: It is because you use the same plot device over and over again. I call this plot device “I must do this alone”.

See how they are all standing there - together? Yeah, this never actually happens in the show.

Let’s look at some quick examples from this season. Peter Patrelli won’t join forces with Noah or anyone else, because he feels that he alone must atone for the “sins” that they all committed.

Matt Parkman sees Sylar in his head (which is actually a cool plot-line that has been dropped the last 2 episodes). He knows he needs help, but he is going to do this alone.

Tracy Sanders also turned down Noah, because she wanted to go it alone. Now, in her case, she changed her mind. Decided to take Noah up on his offer. But by this time the “I must do this alone” syndrome had hit Noah too, so he turned her down.

Claire Bennet has almost always, to some degree, wanted to do it alone. That certainly hasn’t changed this season.

Even the new, rather lame, “hero” that can see sound as color wanted to just deal with everything alone.

The result is that the villains, this year in the form of carnies, are able to mess with each hero rather easily since they don’t even compare notes, let alone work together. This is lame. It is boring. I just keep wondering why NONE of these people have learned, in four years, that working together is what works best.

Toward the end of season 3 I even had a small hope that this would happen, as a lot of them sat down in a diner and discussed recreating The Company, but for good purposes. This could have been very cool. Heroes working together, finding other heroes and fighting villains - this would have made for some solid story-lines and episodes. So of course this didn’t happen - because everyone felt they needed to, you got it, do this alone.

Look - the lone hero thing can be awesome. Batman pulls it off. So does Spider-Man. Superman too. On your own show it is perfectly fine when Sylar is on his own. Because he is evil (and, when you give him a good story, awesome). But this is an ensemble cast - not a show about one hero. So having everyone just stay apart and act like snotty, overly dramatic teenagers is boring. It also leads to story-lines being dropped, since you have so many running around (like the Matt Parkman/Sylar story-line and the Tracy story-line, which have just gone away) I am not asking for the Justice League, or corny costumes - just a group that even loosely works together would be nice.

Please - I want to like this show. I love most of the characters - you have a top-notch cast. But you need to change things up a bit and make a new rule around the writing table: No more “I have to do this alone” story-lines.

Sincerely,

Me.

Matthew TV Shows Heroes