Heroes: Season 4

There are television series that are cancelled before they have an adequate opportunity to find their way thematically or garner an audience. Then, on occasion, a show starts out incredibly well but soon the new fad glow fads and external circumstances set in resulting in a rapid decline in popularity. One case study that perfectly demonstrates this phenomenon is ‘Heroes’. When it started out it quickly became the darling of popular culture and looked to as the savior of the flagging NBC network. Then the second season began and ran directly into the infamous Writers Guild of America strike cutting the season down from the planned 24 episodes to a meager 11. This necessitated a major revision in the major plot lines and character development. The writers and producers attempted to recover with a full turn around in direction beginning the season with a set of stories under the volume heading of ‘Villains’. Still the series never recapture that magical freshman season. Since so much that was planned had to be compressed or eliminated the carefully planned arcs were disrupted. Threads seem to hang in mid air, unresolved while characters enter the story only to leave without adding anything to the overall construction of the story. Diehard fans, including myself, gave the series the benefit of every conceivable doubt but when the credits rolled on the last episode of season four we knew it was not a cliff hanger teasing us for what will happen next but rather an unresolved curtain call that would mark the final attempts to resuscitate the series. It represented a grand idea, fresh with potential but ultimately could not thrive against the multitude of problems besetting it. There was a rich mythology at the heart of the stories that unfortunately will not be resolved within the context of the series although fan fiction is certain to keep things going for at least awhile. Now, with the DVD and Blu-ray release of the fourth season the saga ends but one thing has to be stated; every possible effort was made to give this series a shot at survival. It was cancelled before more damage could be done to the premise.

The original concept and initial crafting of the series was done by Tim Kring. Prior to this he had a hand in a couple of straight dramatic series; ‘Providence’, ‘Crossing Jordan’ and ‘Chicago Hope. With each of these shows there was some attempt to refine the vantage point of the genre giving the audience something fresh. With ‘Heroes’ the super powers were secondary to the character development. There was an obvious move to emulate the look and feel of classic comic books incorporating this distinctive style into the fabric of the series and the underlying mythology. The seasons were clustered into volumes which were supposed to further the story that is until external circumstances derailed the flow, in the fourth season many of the enhanced humans have scattered, once again seeking the anonymity of a normal appearing life. In this season we start off with the indestructible cheerleader Claire Bennet (Hayden Panettiere) as she starts her freshman year in college. Her father Noah (Jack Coleman) is, as usual, over protective but now without the usual covert activities to distract him he is even more reticent to let his daughter go out into the world. She just wants to fit in re-inventing herself her past continues to haunt her as someone else with abilities stalks her. Claire does make a new friend with her roommate Gretchen Berg (Madeline Zima) who not only learns Claire’s secret but develops a romantic relationship with her. Some have pointed to the plot device of Claire’s sexual orientation to be a ‘jump the shark’ device but it has handled in a non exploitive fashion.

Peter Petrelli (Milo Ventimiglia) was once the most powerful of all the enhanced humans able to absorb the ability of any other super power he comes into proximity of. In typical comic book fashion this made Peter too powerful so this season has been knocked down to exhibiting only the power of the last enhanced human he touches. For a while he has been using super speed to argument his job as a paramedic to randomly save lives in New York City. His flying political brother, Nathan (Adrian Pasdar) has been murdered be the heinous villain Sylar (Zachary Quinto). NYC detective Matt Parkman (Greg Grunberg) has grown beyond just reading minds to being able to alter a person’s memories and perceptions. He pushes the mental essence of Sylar into a dark corner of his mind and convinces him he is Nathan. While that was a panacea in the third season it unravels here. The mind of Sylar breaks free looking for his body. For awhile a portion of it haunts Parkman but then when reinstalled in the proper body Sylar wants to become a hero but his true nature is almost impossible to fight. While some of these plot devices are straight out of the comic playbook they didn’t work out as effectively as the producers had hoped. Having a character playing this type of possession is difficult since the audience has to see something different than what is portrayed on screen. In this case we would see ‘Matt’ but cut to ‘Sylar’. It was confusing and broke the continuity of the season.

The main focus of the season was the introduction of an entirely new portion of the mythology. Samuel Sullivan (Robert Knepper) ostensibly operates a traveling carnival but actually he is an enhanced human with the power to control earth. His power grows incredibly when he is near other enhanced humans so being surrounded by then in the carnival gives him the potential to destroy cities. At one time he was a research subject the government used to investigate powers but escaped to form the carnival as a safe refuge for people with abilities. This was just a ploy to increase his abilities to break away from normal humanity. Sullivan is on a mission to kill those with powers that won’t join him and gather the rest to his cause. He almost convinces Clair but losses her affiliation when he tries to kill her father. the carnival provided a nice means to explore the ‘us versus them’ mind set and offer an allegory for prejudice previously explored in things like the ‘X-Men’ franchise. The end finally came with a major revelation by Claire that could have taken the story in a novel direction but sadly for those of us who remained loyal throughout we will never know. The end came not with a bang but a whimper.

Posted 07/06/2010