Heroes Season Two Preview

Heroes was easily my favorite new show from last season, and burrowed its way deep into my cold, dark, heart, right alongside Lost, 24, and Prison Break as pure TV gold…Gold Jerry, GOLD! (Sorry I’ve been watching Seinfeld repeats all weekend)

Although the finale of Season 1 of Heroes did leave quite the bitter, unsatisfied taste in my mouth, I’m expecting big things this time around. I do have some concerns about the tightness of the story, with so many added characters, and the semi-cop out of jumping three months ahead, but I have faith in Tim Kring to pull it all together, even if he did fail spectacularly at doing so with the end of the first year. (The bitterness will fade ppl, just give it time).

There is set to be some big changes. A new, scarier Sylar-type character, a quick death, a resurrection, and some Petrelli amnesia tossed into the mix, all in the first ep… not to mention our Japanese friend that has tumbled backwards in time to feudal Japan…going to be a quite the ride…

But, lets go back to something I touched on above, the slew of newer characters. Heroes last year already had a large cast, and we found ourselves going large blocks of eps without seeing some people (Isaac Mendez and Matt Parkman come to mind) and I just don’t want to see that kind of thing happen even more this year.

I was never a big Veronica Mars fan, but I know Kristen Bell and her snappy, witty talents will be well-appreciated here (Still wish she had gone to Lost though…)

Anyways, onto my other main concern, the jump-ahead gimmick.

This is basically just something that buys time, as you have to go through and piece things together from the point of the jump to where you’re at now, then go forward from there, prolonging the main story. As an author I’ll admit freely I’ve done this, because it can be beneficial to if a story has stalled, it lets you refresh everything and tweak people a bit. You have sort of a blank slate instead of one coherent, expanding story.

I only complain about this technique because I have come to believe it is nothing more than what I referred to it as above, a cop out, and I have actually stopped using it, because of that very problem. A good story should unfold in one long strand, getting more complex and layered as it goes, and I’m fearing with Heroes, it might not be as deep as I first thought, as I know Tim Kring talked about renewing the show in this sort of way every year. Just shows that the Heroes story isn’t as tight as it should be, or I guess, as much as I wish it would be.

All in all, I know Heroes is going to be good this year, spectacular even, and I know it will draw me in like it did before, because Tim Kring is a good storyteller, but the real question I’ll be looking to answer this year will be if Heroes is going to become something deeper, something fantastically unique, something to pore over, study and somewhat obsess about (Lost, you guessed it ) or is it going to be just brain candy like everything else…?