Heroes: Season Three

Twenty five episodes later, and Heroes has reached the end of its third season, to a fairly mixed reception and, undeniably, some rather disappointing ratings - an average drop of around three million viewers. Why is this? Well, it's a little hard to say, but certainly the programme this season suffered from two things - the fallout of the writer's strike that cut season two in half, and head writer Jeph Loeb. There were some great ideas this season, but the major problem with the programme was that it lacked focus, which is a great shame, all things told, because there is limitless potential with the format, the ideas and the, frankly quite brilliant cast.

Season Two was supposed to have continued by having a four episode volume called Villains, before going into the Fugitives volume that would have seen the heroes round up and locked away - though not because of Nathan, but rather because of the outbreak of the virus, which never actually happened due to the writer's strike. As a result Loeb decided to take the slightly unusual decision to still have the round up of heroes, but still at the end of the season, which meant that the opening needed to be expanded and this meant the inclusion of a new supervillian, Arthur Petrelli, backed up by Maury Parkman and some other nasty pieces of work. Brother vs brother would become son vs father, dramatic tension would unfold, the astonishing revelation that Sylar was a Petrelli would be revealed, and Peter would absorb Sylar's power and start down the dangerous path that his brother was already treading.

Except it didn't quite work out like that. Throughout the first volume, Jeph Loeb would come up with some great ideas, but then get sick of them and forget all about the fact they had happened. Yes, Peter appropriated Sylar's power, but an episode later and he had forgotten all about it. Sylar was revealed to be a Petrelli...and then it turned out that he wasn't and both Arthur and Angela Petrelli had been independently lying about exactly the same thing.

The big problem was that there was actually so much room for dramatic character development. How interesting would it have been to see Mohinder truly get darker and darker, becoming more and more desperate for power? To see Peter kill Sylar and effectively take his place? To see Angela truly run the company with Bennet as her right hand man. There was an enormous amount of paths that the series could have taken, but instead we got half way there, and then completely forgot about.

There were other problems, of course, including the fact that a number of the heroes were becoming more and more powerful to the point they were virtually unstoppable. As a consequence they had to have their powers very quickly removed, either by the much talked about antidote that Mohinder devised or they were just taken away by Arthur. Which leads me neatly to my next point, and that is the death of characters that were relatively entertainging. Micah and Monica were unceremoniously dumped, while Elle and Adam were killed off and Maya just stood around doing very little. As the cast expanded it became clear that the writers were having difficulty knowing what to do with them, and as a consequence they were just tossed aside.

And so with the ratings progressively deteriorating decisions were made and Loeb was given the chop (although curiously he was credited until the very end) and Tim Kring, apparently, returned to being the showrunner.
Finally the storyline of the heroes being rounded up came into play, but sadly they didn't end up being contained; rather they spent most of the time being on the run from the Hunters. Tracy Strauss, the new character portrayed by Ali Larter - a character with a very dark side, which was a nice move - was effectively sidelined (though she did very little for the opening part of the season). And then there was just a little too much character development, as most of the characters, when they weren't on the run, were moping about how they got into this position.

And then came Episode Twenty, and Bryan Fuller who had returned to be a consulting producer, delivered a script that was simply sublime. Tracy met with a devastating end (or did she?) while Micah returned showing initiative and power. For the next five episodes, the series delivered what it had done in Season One; action mixed with character moments that paid off and explained the motiviations of the characters, most notably Angela who had appeared to be virtually schizophrenic until we finally discovered why she did what she did.

I had been hoping for a huge showdown at the end of Volume Three, with the heroes uniting to battle Arthur Petrelli, but it turned out to be nothing but an anticlimax. Happily, though we didn't get the big fight against Sylar at the end of Volume Four, instead we got the heroes working together towards the eventual aim. The costs were high, as they had been in the finale of Season One, but the final actions of the characters have created some interesting pathways to explore next season.

Season Two had dared to be different to Season One, but Season Three seemed to be lost, struggling to recapture what was lost from the previous two season, whilst attempting to make its own identity. The theory didn't really work, and perhaps the writers would have been better starting afresh, without the leftover storylines of Season Two, and without attempting to be like the previous two seasons; rather just doing what it needed to do.

Season Four has been greenlit for the programme, as the show still is one of NBC's big winners despite the ratings fall, but hopefully the writers will learn from the mistakes of Season Three, utilise the characters better and finally slough off the stigma of the writer's strike. I don't think NBC will be forgiving if Season Four fails.