Best. Show. EVER!

http://www.superhiro.org

Great premise. Piss-poor execution. It was BORING.

I made it through about halfway too. Reminds me of a shoddy 4400 show. (And I know a Hiro too)

Okay, there is a few rants about Heroes but you are talking about someone who is so critical that I have to see 6 and 1/2 seasons of ST:DS9, in the proper order, on DVD, just to see 1 episode I missed in Season 7. There are other points I could bring up to support my quirkiness but that's for another time Highlander.

Hiro was in a karaoke club where he was talking to his co-worker about time. He said that time was not linear and his co-worker was asking how he knew this. Hiro referred to Kitty Pryde, X-Men 143 for the answer. While I loved the reference, it is incorrect. This issue of the Uncanny X-Men had Kitty alone in the Mansion over the holidays and was chased by an alien. While I own this issue, I don't remember there being any reference to time or time being linear. I love the geekness of Hiro - I will forgive. The Gods know how much I can get my facts wrong.

The other rant was the show was only 1 hour long and ended on a cliffhanger with Peter taking his leap of faith to fly. While his brother Nathan surprisingly flew up to save Peter, his younger brother lost his grip. To be continued...

To make matters worse, as I watched the previews for next week's show I saw Peter in the hospital being okay - damn it! I know he is part of the cast but sometimes I need to know that lives are in jeopardy and that there is a possibility of not surviving. If you are a fan of Firefly and watched Serenity, you know exactly what I mean. Alternatively, having a main character like Buffy die and then come back to life give the audience at least something to chew on. In any case, I know I'm being overly critical but it's important to me as a fan and as a writer to use cheap tricks whereas someone else would say, "Get a life."

However, this show has a great deal of potential and waiting for a show to blosom will be worth the trip.

Read more on my blog.

YATAI!!!

Brian -- Yeah, it was a knee-jerk reaction to your comment. I guess you now know what kind of thing gets to me: when it's even hinted that I'm considered elitist. :)

Look, I'm probably going to be all wrong about this and it'll be a huge hit. I wish I could join everyone on that trip.

Keith, regarding your comment, "I'm not sure where you get the idea that I have an elitist attitude toward TV.", it's clear you took my reaction personally. And even though this is not the case in my original post, I'd like to give a word of unsolicited advice here: when you include in the title of an article, "... prepare to hate me.", don't be surprised when someone appears to follow though.

Now, if you re-read what I said, you'd see it was, "... and if I wasn't a long time reader here... I'd ALMOST consider the OVERALL TVS OPINION towards Heroes as elitist." I speculate the reason for this possible belief is the absence of Heroes from everyone's "top 5" lists. Hopefully that answers your question of where I got that "idea".

Now, please notice the words "almost", "overall", "TVS" and "opinion" in my post. I fail to see how that translates into what you read the first time, which seems to be, based on your reaction, "... Keith is elitist in his TV viewing."

The fact of the matter is that you gave your opinion on the show. As a fellow viewer, I respect your opinion. But I am within my rights to react to your opinion based on what I'm hearing from the majority of people I know that saw the pilot. Because I haven't actually seen it myself, I'm still trying to remain objective and have no opinion of my own.

Anyway. I apologize if you took my comments personally. They were not intended as a personal insult.

BTW, I'm a big fan of Veronica Mars also.

I liked it well enough... but it's not (yet) this season's new "Lost". It wants to be, but it's not there yet. I'll give it about five or six episodes before I decide if the show's problems were just a result of this being the pilot episode.

My main gripe with the show was that it took too long to get going, and I wasn't interested in all the exposition shovelled onto the screen. I don't care about the brother's mother. I don't care about the cheerleader's family. There was too much crap TELLING us why we needed to care about these characters.

While comparing "Heroes" to "Lost" is about as tired as can be right now, I do have to make one prime contrast between the two (and between "Lost" and vitually every other Lost-wannabe that's come out in the past two years)-- "Lost" started with a massive BANG. twenty seconds after the show started, we were in the midst of a chaotic plane crash scene. No explanation of who anyone was, no explanation of what happened or how it happened or where they were (besides it being an island). We met these characters for the first time in the midst of one of the most incredible crises they likely had ever experienced. We learned their character through their reactions to this event.

Once that settled down, THEN we started to get some personality and character development, which was (and still is, two seasons later) colored and guided by what they did those first few moments of the show.

For many of the characters, we didn't get any sort of history or origin or signficant background until many episodes into the show, sometimes months into the show.

And it was OKAY. We didn't need that kind of hand-holding when meeting these new characters. "Heroes" didn't trust us enough to jump more firmly right into the show.

What I would have done had I produced the show, is that I would have started the show farther down the timeline, perhaps on the cusp of some massive battle with whoever the primary villain of this season turns out to be. Have all our Heroes gathering, hurriedly discussing their plan of attack and the dangers involved. I might even show one or two of them already fallen, with no clear indication if they are injured or dead. I'd have a few characters we haven't even met yet. Then right as they are about to leap into the battle, I'd go to black and then fade up this text on the screen:

"Nine Months Earlier"

And then I'd do the show pretty much like they already have it.

To me, this way, you IMMEDIATELY set the stakes the show is shooting for, and gives a sense of where this journey is going to take us, the viewers.

Yes, the kinda sorta set that up with the text prologue at the beginning declaring this 'volume one', and the armageddon painting, but it was a bit anti-climactic and didn't set in the SCOPE and stakes of the show.

"Lost" had the great crash opening, and then at the end of the episode, a great line by Charlie that set the tone for all the remaining episodes through the current ones.. "Where ARE we..?"

Heroes needs to more firmly establish the stakes involved, which would ramp up the "epic" quality the show is going for.

Right now, it's just a bunch of whiny people who have figured out they can do piddly things with some powers.

All that said, I'm very much looking forward to the next episodes.

And all that said, I really liked both Mohinder and Hiro. The pilot should have focused on those two only and then slowly added in all the others.

Actually stigmata I think that the average viewer will only tune in just to see the "cool" powers. The show has pretty much been marketed as these people that suddenly get powers and have to save the world. However, the viewer that watches the show with a critical eye will find that the powers are gimmicky and if you get rid of them, you end up with underdeveloped and weak characters. I had trouble keeping up with all the characters and caring who they were. With more people discovering their powers this week theres going to be way too many characters.

Just goes to show you critics are up their ass.

The premise is great, some aspects are really good such as the whole cover-up conspiracy about the genetecists work, i think that has great potential, cause its very Lost like. It appeals to the more intelligent, curious viewer, cause we all want to believe that there are more to us than what we see. I mean, if we only use about 20% of our brain, whats the other 80% for???

However, the superhero aspect of the show FAILS miserably, the characters are un-interesting, badly acted, badly written, ESPECIALLY the flying politician, JEEEEEEEEEZ that was LAME.
These superheroes are 1 dimensional, unlike spiderman, superman, and the batman on batman begins.

If the show is to succeed, fire most of the actors, and re-write, re-write, re-write, cause the average TV viewer is a lot smarter and demands better!