FIRST POST! SOOGANS…

This is Bullshit

They should cancel it and concentrate on improving the main show and its crappy, slow, boring story…weeks with very little done to move the plot along.

I’m not sure what show everyone was watching last season but it was exactly the same through the first six weeks or so. Maybe a little worse.

I wasn’t convinced that a spinoff of a show that already had too many characters, too much plot and too little movement was a good idea to begin with, but I was encouraged by the people they had lined up to work on it. Maybe we’ll get lucky and see those concepts rolled into season three or something.

Too bad. It would have been neat to see especially the episode Kevin Smith was going to do. If scripts are done for some of the episodes maybe the producers can turn them into comics and post them on the website.

Gotta admit, I’m not really disappointed in this news. They need to concentrate all their effort into reviving the main show before diluting things with a spinoff. Wasn’t looking forward to Kevin Smith’s episode anyway. His comments that he thought Hiro and Ando were gay cast his perceptive abilities into serious doubt (as if his movies hadn’t already done that for me). The man obviously can’t differentiate between brotherly cameraderie and homoeroticism, and that’s baffling to me.

I never read Smith’s thoughts on Ando and Hiro; that would be interesting to read. Any take on those characters has to be more interesting than the horrible steretypes they represent. With Zachary Quinto leaving this season and Kristen Bell only signed for 13 episodes, I may not have stuck around for Origins anyway. Regardless, it will be interesting to see if Heroes can pull itself up and what it does when it is an underdog, instead of a steamroller of a hit.

I gave up on the show for reasons well documented in the last few weeks. I know this has to do with the fact that the original show is losing viewers, and NBC as a whole has been tanking in weekely ratings compared to the other major networks. I read a story yesterday on CNN.com about the weekly Nielsens, and NBC on one night finished behind Univision!!!

The pinnacle of this season’s poor episodes was watching Micah laughing like a retard while watching his cousin jump rope. I think Micah would have won by a landslide if NBC put up a poll on the Heroes website asking “who’s your least favorite recuring character?” They need to minimalize Micah, his cousin (cool power wasted on a really uninteresting character), and the Mexican wonder twins and center on the main characters from last year if they want to pull out of their ratings nosedive.

Awww man, this sucks, Kevin Smith was goign to direct one of them!!

I have no problem with the pacing. Unfolds like a good novel. The cancelling of Origins is a bit disappointing but hopefully the main show can withstand the break. American audiences have a short attention spen it seems.
They really should just run it straight through like 24.

Is…is that the comeback to viewer response to it being slow and boring? That Americans have short attentions spans? At least our seasons (yeah, it’s called a season, not a “series”) don’t consist of 6 to 8 episodes. Ha!

It’s just a boring show which has kind of been in denial about what it’s doing wrong. It drank too much of the media kool-aid saying it was a new breed of show that would save NBC.

Maybe they need more Nissan product placement. Really, the only thing I remember about the episodes I watched last year was Hiro screaming at the car rental lady for a “Nissan Versa! Nissan Versa!”

Back in July at San Diego, Tim Kring announced that Origins was no longer on for mid-season but was being prepared to air “sometime after the 2nd season.” So a) this is old, old news and b) Origins is no more cancelled now than it was then. Doesn’t mean it will get made, of course…just that this is not news.

“The man obviously can’t differentiate between brotherly cameraderie and homoeroticism, and that’s baffling to me.”

What’s baffling to me is that you can’t tell when a guy who has made his entire living off of being making jokes…not to mention the guy who created the Dante/Randall, Holden/Banky and Jay/Silent Bob relationships…is JOKING.

Grant, in the past, the remedy for the “22-24 episodes/39 weeks” was accomplished by reruns, not a “mid-season break”. It should be noted that until the late 1970s, most series regularly ran 25-27 episodes per season. (Until the mid-1960s, many shows would run 30-35 episodes per year. That’s why, for example, “Gilligan’s Island” only ran 3 seasons yet still made enough episodes to make the syndication package threshhold–it didn’t quite get the usual 100 but it was close enough so that it could run 20 weeks in the 5-time a week syndication plan.) “Dallas”, in its 1982-83 season actually ran 28 episodes. I mention that one as it, as a prime-time soap, functioned in the same way as “Heroes”, where reruns could “disrupt the flow” of the series. (With 28 episodes, there was no way to rerun the whole season in its regular time slot but it allowed the network to give the cast a full 12-weeks off for “the summer”, allowed the network to free up December for the holiday events, and still have 8-9 weeks for scheduling “hiccups” without causing the series’ flow to be too seriously disrupted.)

Wow, Garth easy man- no need to be so defensive…..(uhm, you’re not an Idaho senator are you)…nobody’s tapping your foot from under a bathroom stall door. Whether or not we can tell if Sith is “JOKING” - just realize that A) some people are joking too , B) that other’s are just little sensitive about character’s and C)not everyone pays that much attention to Kevin Smith movies! Call me…!

Om, you are so off with your little diatribe that it’s barely worth the time to counter your “points”.
First off, you cannot get work in Hollywood without being part of a Union. That’s not because of any “greed” on the Unions’ part, but rather because of the outrageous behaviors in the past on the part of the Studios. The Studios–like every other corporation–don’t want to pay their employees any more than they have to. If they could get a writer to produce a script for a flat $20, regardless of how many hours it took that writer to produce it, they’d do it in a heartbeat. If they could get an actor to work a 15-hour day for $50, they’d do it in a heartbeat. If they could get child actors to work year-round, at ANY hours, and not be required to provide for their education, they’d do it in a heartbeat. The Unions are there to PROTECT the interests of the people who WORK, not the people/leeches who benefit from that work.
The real bottom line is that Unions exist to ensure that the workers aren’t exploited by greedy employers. If you don’t believe that, then go move to Mexico where you can get paid a couple of dollars for working a 12-hour day. (There IS a reason why so many illegal immigrants come to this country; they may have to work 10-12 hours a day but even for intense physical labor, they can frequently make more in a single day here than a whole week–if not a whole month–back home doing the same job.)
I’d also point out that if it weren’t for the Unions, you wouldn’t have ANY benefits. You’d work 60 hours a week (or more), no overtime pay, no guaranteed days off, no guaranteed paid vacations, no paid sick leave, no FMLA, no on-the-job safety protections. NOTHING. The Unions continue to protect YOUR rights even if you don’t belong to a union. (In fact, you might be surprised to learn that, when a job site has a labor union, ALL employees benefit from any gains the Union wins–not just union members. All the worthless good-for-nothing, non-union members get to benefit even though they contribute ZERO to the union’s efforts. THAT is a FEDERAL mandate, not something the Unions offer out of graciousness.)
You just take a look at how hard corporations fight to avoid paying their HARD-WORKING employees any more than they absolutely have to, yet offer worthless executives outrageous salaries and benefits and even provide multi-million dollar payments when those execs are terminated for poor performance. Hell, man, look at the minimum wage. How hard was it to get Big Business to agree to the recent increase? Despite years of stories of executive greed and BILLIONS of dollars going to executives who were fired for poor job performance, and the Business Community couldn’t afford to direct that money to the millions of minimum wage workers.
How much of that new car’s sticker price is going to pay for the stockholders and the recently-fired CEO who got a multi-million dollar payoff to get him to leave? It’s easy for you to engage in union-bashing, but take a GOOD hard look at the other side of the table. Management shares a great deal of the responsibility as well. (Don’t forget that in the 1960s, a car company CEO typically made roughly 10 times the salary of an assembly-line worker. Now, however, the CEO can easily make more than 50 times the line worker, not even counting benefits on either side. Yet, the cost of the average car–not counting luxury models or specially-equipped models–is only about 10 times as much now as it was 30-40 years ago. Part of that is obviously due to inflation, but if the worker-CEO salary difference is so much greater now, it’s pretty apparent that much of the remainder–if not all–is from corporate greed.)

What are the odds that Kevin Smith doesn’t even have the script for the first episode ( the one he was directing) completed yet?

This was completely expected for me because as soon as I saw the ratings were dropping I knew there was no way they’d go along with the Origins spin-off. People have compared the first season’s slow start with this season, well I have to disagree with the comparison because for one thing Heroes is now an established show wherein last year it was not and many did not know what to expect. This year there are expectations and it simply hasn’t lived up to it. It might be a case of being over-hyped, and the fact that the show is slow due too many characters along with unnecessary new characters.

I want to comment on the subject of Unions. As much as Unions have been greedy, they have helped more than they’ve hurt, because whatever the benefits they reap that also effects the non-union workers. You can thank the Unions for making this is a federal mandate. All those benefits (however small) you get as non-union member are not solely from your CEO’s generousity, but by the powerful hand of the unions.

Yeah they are greedy. :>

dwf,

This news is wholly and completely unrelated to Kring’s announcement in July. A quick read of the news would show you that.

And yes, I know this is Newsarama. Not a place known for the highest poster IQs around. But at least try to keep up.

I think it’s a measure of awesome to see a thread bitching about the cancellation of a superhero show turn into a rumination on the need for unions in America today.

And we DO need them, make no mistake. More than ever, we’re living in a new Gilded Age where employers can lay you off at will no matter the years you’ve put in, hold you hostage with crappy health insurance plans, and outsource your entire company to a Third World nation just to increase the profit margin. Unions–and the power of collective bargaining–helped make many of the very things we take for granted today a reality.

The five-day, 40-hour workweek? Thank a union for that. Laws barring children from being turned into workers? Union. JosephW’s post above explains this better than I can.

If it’s a choice between losing television shows I like and supporting writers (of which I am one) in their fight to get the pay they’ve earned and residuals they deserve, well, there’re always things like DVDs, books, or maybe–gasp–going out and interacting with real people.

Now, as far as “Heroes” itself, this is what the show needs to get back on track:

1) More “WTF” twists like the identity of Matt’s father. NO ONE saw that coming, and if they claim to, they lie.

2) Quicker pacing. We didn’t need three episodes of Maya killing people and her brother healing them. We get it.

3) A tighter-knit core of characters we can follow. Cut loose the dead wood and stick with the characters who have the most potential to grow–Mohinder, HRG, Monica, Matt, Nathan, and Hiro are my votes. Oh, and Sylar, of course.

4) More writers and directors who understand comic books. Tim Kring doesn’t, and the show is suffering for that.

Writer’s guild? More like Crime Society! First I find out I’m getting a rushed GI Joe movie in 09! Now this?! I hate this!

i absolutely love turtles

Back to Origins:

I thought it was going to show some of the parents like Angela and/or Dallas Petrelli, Kaito Nakamura, Linderman, etc.? Not new characters, but established ones at a younger age? It’s very clear that they were active 30+ years ago, and there are all types of inter-connections. It should be very interesting.

As for Maya, et al, it seems slow but her development is progressing at a decent pace. For example, in last ep she seems to have consciously used her power, or at least she didn’t fight it leading her down a Sylar-like path. It remains to be seen where they go with it. Obviously Micah’s cousin is the St Joan “superhero” but more interesting was Bob’s reversal in last ep. Also Niki is back (though I’m pretty sure it’s Jessica). I’m digging it so far.

Yep, the Writer’s Guild sure did a horrible job of screwing up the auto industry.

What on earth are you people talking about?

A premonition from Isaac Mendez:
There will be no season 3 of Heroes.
Heroes is finished.
Right now Tim Kring is an un-employed hack writer.
As it should be….
I did a painting about it, I keep the painting in the trunk of my used car along with my old paycheck stubs from Heroes.
I hope to play Marc Anthony the husband of j-Lo in my next tv project. now, if my agent would just call me with some work….