tim kring

Interesting story over at The Hollywood Reporter: should NBC give an end date for Heroes like ABC gave an end date for Lost?

It's an intriguing idea. If they were to say that Heroes was going to end, let's say, after the 6th season, then the writers and producers could actually start planning the story in a certain way and give it a real ending. I also think that if the show were to have a definite end date, fans and former fans would watch the show, knowing that it is actually going somewhere. James Hibberd makes a good case, saying that scarcity increases demand, that it will probably increase ratings, and the show is, well, a goner anyway.

Of course, this could probably be said about a lot of shows on TV, that giving them an end date would make the stories better and get fans interested. Except for According To Jim of course. ABC just renewed that the sitcom through the 2021-22 season.

As Bob wrote the other day, NBC has assured fans that Heroes will be back next season. Isn't that great? Well, no, not to me. I would like to assure NBC that I have had it with Heroes. I'm exhausted and fed up. Do you feel like me? Do you have Heroes fatigue?

The changes have been detrimental to the original premise, ruining what was once the most exciting new TV show on the air since Lost. Quite simply, I don't like the new "book"; I don't like the characters that have been mangled beyond recognition; I don't like all the story lines that were dropped in favor of this new paradigm that has the government hunting down Matt and Peter and the other familiar heroes and treating them like terrorists. At the end of the last episode, I just felt bad about Heroes. What have they done to my show?

(S01E18) Now that's how you do it. Heroes was founded on the idea of this multifarious cast running all over the place and getting into trouble. We skipped all around, checking in on everyone and the hours just seemed to fly by. After what was a slower outing last week, the adrenaline kicked back into high gear. Rebel made a return appearance, if by appearance I mean more text on various computer screens ... and that is what I mean? Is it Ma Petrelli? Nathan asked her that point blank tonight.

And poor Nathan. You kind of knew the Hunter was going to be a bit much for Nathan to control. After all, Nathan is wanting to round up those with abilities for their own good as well as for the good of mankind. He wants to protect them and the world at large. In a sense, he's doing a "good" thing, if only from his perspective. The Hunter, on the other hand, sees them as a threat that needs to be eliminated. They're dangerous, and after his close encounter last week he's gone and made it personal.

(S03E15) The second chapter of the newest volume of Heroes wasn't quite as strong as the first one, but it kept things moving in a positive direction. I guess the writers were wanting to keep the fugitive heroes as weak in power base as possible, based on the casualty we experienced in this episode. In a way, I can say I knew it was coming, but was hopeful that it wouldn't. While I agree that the cast had gotten a little sprawling and out of control at times thorughout the series progression, I never thought this character was a problem.

I'm sure that many of us could go round and round over the quality of the episodes in this latest chapter of Heroes. If you're following along with the weekly reviews, you've no doubt seen it play out in the comments. The thing that is a little harder to argue is the ratings. Over these last few months, the one time flagship NBC drama has seen its numbers drop to drastic levels. Put another way, if Heroes was a space ship, and dropping ratings signified an increase in speed, the show has gone plaid.

(S03E13) Man, they did it again. Set up a potentially solid climactic final chapter to a "Volume" and then just kind of fizzled out. Sylar's antics bordered a bit on the ridiculous, and I don't at all buy Nathan's character path over the past three seasons as plausible. I was pleased with the continuation and ultimate resolution of Hiro's story as it involved also Ando, Matt and Daphne. As it turns out, while these are by no means the central figures in the plots for this Volume, their story was the best.

Maybe it's because there was a minimum of whining (Peter) or pouting (Claire), and quite frankly there's only so much of that crap you can take. With the end of "Volume Three" tonight, as we've done in the past, we got a sneak peek at "Volume Four: Fugitives." And as has been the case in the past, the few minutes we got on a preview of the next volume was much more compelling than the finale of this current volume. Just like real comic books, you usually get a great build up in these big stories, ultimately leading to disappointment.

Brett already told you earlier today about the casting of John Glover as Sylar's father on Heroes. But there are many more changes coming to the NBC show.

Pushing Daisies creator/producer Bryan Fuller is back at the show. He worked on the show in the first season, and now he's coming back to work on it again starting with episode 19, a few episodes into the "Fugitives" chapter. In this interview over at Entertainment Weekly, Fuller acknowledges that the show has had several problems the past year. He's well aware of them, and he has some ideas on how to fix it.

1. Heroes. The show has problems, which have been analyzed to death in the past several weeks, but it's still an entertaining hour of television. Great cast, and it's a fun ride. But a few things about the show bother me. One is the number of characters. Well, not the amount, per se, but how the show is structured with all of the characters. I'd rather see several characters sit out an episode than have ten characters all fighting for screen time in one episode. It's just too much. I also hate that there doesn't seem to be any real danger on the show, no real risk. I mean, if Hiro can go back in time, where's the real danger? If something can be done where a character can come back to life even after he is killed, where's the real risk? The show has to do something to change that in the next chapter.

Everyone seems to have an idea on how Heroes can be improved. I think it's still good, but ratings are down, fans are fleeing, and it's probably not a show new fans can get into. Now creator Tim Kring has an idea.

For next season, he'd like to see more self-contained episodes instead of a long continuing storyline over the entire season. He talked about what he intended to do with the show and what the future might hold at the Creative Screenwriting Expo last weekend. He wanted to give NBC a show like Lost or 24, one with a serialized storyline that would have fans coming back each week. Now he says he's not sure if that was the right decision, describing those shows as "an absolute bear to do." He thinks that the way that people watch TV nowadays is a lot different than just three years ago, because of DVRs and online viewing and all that, and that has changed how viewers watch serialized dramas since they don't watch them live every week.

(S03E09) It's a shame that nobody's watching this show anymore, because tonight was all about setting the stage for the battle to come. With "Volume 4" coming either in December or early next year, we should be moving fast and furious to the big confrontation between Team Pinehearst and Team Primatech. By the end of this episode, all of our major players appear to have chosen sides. The stage is set, after only nine episodes, to get to the meat of this volume.

Remember when we were told that there was going to be an examination of the generations of Heroes, and possibly struggles between them. It looks like the Writers Strike swept all of that off the table. Hell, the only people left from the "first" generation are Angela and Arthur Petrelli, and now they appear to be on opposing sides. It took awhile to get to this point, what with wasting all that time on Mohinder and Maya early on this season, but it looks like we're finally getting to the good stuff. Creator Tim Kring took pen to paper, or more likely fingers to keyboard, to write this pivotal episode. Is there anybody left watching to appreciate his efforts?

(S03E08) Maybe they should have done this one a little earlier in the season. There was only one scene set in the present era, but it was a good one. The rest of the episode was "One Year Ago," weaving and interlacing with the events we did see during the show's first season, showing us what a lot of the characters we either didn't know or didn't follow then were up to, like Ma and Pa Petrelli, Linderman, Gabriel, Elle and even Claire's mother and uncle.

I remember that the second season was supposed to explore the elder generation, revealing more of their connections to one another and their motivations. We were going to learn more about The Company and what they were up to in regards to Peter and the rest of our main cast. It looks like those aborted promises are finally coming to fruition. It's unfortunate that the last season and so much of the start of this season was so lackluster, as things are really coming together nicely. And we're gaining sympathy for almost every member of the cast by learning more about them.

Please, Pushing Daisies fans, please note that I say IF. I even put it in capital letters!

There was talk that Bryan Fuller would be asked by Tim Kring to return to Heroes after NBC told Kring to let two other producers on the show, Jesse Alexander and Jeph Loeb, go. Now Fuller confirms that he will definitely go back to the show if Pushing Daisies isn't picked up after the 13th episode of the series, which will be completed in January.

The other day we told you about NBC telling Heroes creator/executive producer Tim Kring to fire two producers on the show (Jesse Alexander and Jeph Loeb), and now Kring says that he agrees with some of the criticisms of the show.

Kring has been very, very involved in the show this season as the showrunner, and many think that might be the problem. So now Kring wants to get back to a more simplified type of storytelling, with more character development and less outlandish scenes. This is welcome news to fans that think the show has gone off course but still want to watch it, as will this news, that not only will Kring possibly replace the two producers with first season producer Bryan Fuller, but also that some heroes are going to be killed off to clean up the story a bit. The "Villains" chapter ends next month; then we'll have the "Fugitives" chapter for the second half of the season.

This isn't the first time that Kring has agreed with criticisms of the show. He said it a few months ago about the second season too.

So the big Heroes backlash now has two victims.

NBC has fired two producers that have been with the show since day one, Jesse Alexander and Jeph Loeb. The show has been getting a lot of negative press lately (actually, ever since the strike-shortened second season), including this Entertainment Weekly cover story on what's wrong with the show and how to fix it. Sources say the two were let go because Universal is unhappy with the direction and cost of the show.

Look, is Heroes as good as it was the first season? No, it's not. But I think that's because of two reasons. One, it's not new anymore. Two, way too many characters, and when you have too many characters it affects the structure of the show. Now, the show has always had a lot of characters and storylines going at the same time, but now they have more "extra" characters on the show we have to follow (and often follow them in two different years, heh). So that criticism of the show is accurate.

Zeljko Ivanek is one of those actors you know by the face but you probably don't know what his name is. You've seen him as a guest star on Lost, 24, The Practice, Oz, Bones, Shark, Numb3rs, John Adams, Law and Order, The West Wing, and a ton of other shows, plus he just won a Best Supporting Actor Emmy for his work on Damages. He was also the killer in the series premiere of The Mentalist. Now he's about to become The Hunter.

That's the name of a new character that will be introduced midseason on NBC's Heroes. The Hunter will, presumably, hunt several of the heroes in the next chapter of the saga, "Fugitives." This chapter will start when the current chapter, "Villains," ends in episode 13. "Fugitives" will begin in January or February.