Heroes

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Why some shows fizzle out in their second seasons

Putting names to the now-recognizable faces

Get ready for the next Marvel movie with a review of comic book heroes from the Great White North.

Speaking of showrunners, I’ve made a point in the past about the tendency of shows to fill out their staffs with writers who usually create their own shows, who spend time working for someone else until they can get another new show off the ground. This helps a production company because they get more for their money (by putting their contracted writers to work between projects) but can also be a sign of a show that has too many cooks, since some of the writers are arguably more qualified to run the show than their boss.

Serialized shows are being phased out in favour of old-fashioned stand-alone episodes

I don’t really know what to say about the season premiere of Heroes. Nothing about it — not the episode, not the ratings, certainly not the “countdown” thing — indicated that the show has been redeemed, but nothing about it was that bad, either; it’s just that the novelty has worn off, and it’s hard to watch the show with any confidence that it’s going to take us somewhere interesting. This is the big hazard of a heavily serialized show: since most of the individual episodes aren’t meant to be evaluated on their own, we have to look at them as down payments on the big climax to come. But once a show has proven that it doesn’t know how to deliver a decent climax, it’s hard for the audience to really believe that this is going anywhere. In that sense, Heroes sealed its fate not in season 2 but at the end of season 1, when Tim Kring proved that he wasn’t kidding when he said he didn’t know how to end the season.