Spontaneous ∂erivation

Heroes, Season 1, was nominated for the following awards with cute names (and nominated for many more awards not covered here):

Emmy Awards

• Outstanding Drama Series
• Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series: Masi Oka

Golden Globes

• Best TV Drama Series
• Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Series, Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for Television: Masi Oka

Hugo Awards

• Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form

Saturn Awards

• Best Network Television Series
• Best Supporting Actor in a Television Series: Greg Grunberg
• Best Supporting Actor in a Television Series: Masi Oka
• Best Supporting Actress in a Television Series: Hayden Panettiere
• Best Television Series on DVD

Spaceys

• Favorite TV Show
• Favorite TV Show Character: Hiro, played by Masi Oka

No word on Season 2.

And with the… interestingness of Season 3, I suspect we’ll see at least one nomination: Fugly Worst TV Show. Doesn’t mean the show deserves the award, just that it may get successfully nominated. Um. Yes, I’m aware that’s not really logic.

(Note on spelling: the plural of Emmy is apparently Emmys, not Emmies. I did the same for the Fugly, but apparently the plural of Fugly is Fuglies, not Fuglys.

Go figure. I decided to go with rule 1, since Emmy is a proper noun and so is Fugly.)

Oh Heroes. What’s happened to you? What’s happened to your sense of wonder? Your sense of something bigger out there? Your sense of mere humans affected by powers that they stumble over—yet so many of them remain human, with motives that range from family to greed to a desire to help others.

In short, what happened to all the things that made you good tv?

Okay, some of you have really liked Season 2 and are enamored of the Season 3 2-hour pilot. This article is not for you. This article is for us, the discontented—the 25% of us who stopped watching, and those who watched but didn’t like what they saw, and think it’s a bad sign for the episodes to come. Although hope does spring eternal.

Moving on.

So what makes for good television, and how can Heroes be fixed?

Good television is what it’s always been—good storytelling. Even sports and the WWF involve stories that draw us to the screen—who of us doesn’t feel the tension and bad times or good times of the Superbowl? We definite a good Superbowl by how much drama it generates. We loved our Dream Team. The Olympics are stories of courage and feats of derring-do and incredible strength, endurance, flexibility. And the WWF is scripted.

In my opinion—and perhaps those of others—Heroes has lost its way where a good story is concerned.

Fixing Heroes means fixing the story-telling aspects of it.

Of course, Season 1 is a hard act to follow. In Seasons 2 and 3, we have established characters we love (or hate, the other side of the coin) who know their powers, so the story of finding and discovering themselves is pretty much over. And that’s one of the best stories in the world. We need to find something else as grand—and barring that, we need to find the kernels of what made Season 1 spectacularly enthralling, and what’s missing from Season 2.

And we need to find a way to make sure that the Seasons following Season 1 aren’t just rehashes of Season 1. I’m sure most of you remember where Lost went.

So here are seven ways I’ve thought of for fixing Heroes. I’m sure y’all can think of more.

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Definitions:

Long form dramatic presentation: movie-length or, in some cases, season-length.

Short form dramatic presentation: TV episode short arc length or less.

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