overstaying your welcome (or why Heroes is keeping me up at night)
For some reason I keep watching Heroes despite the fact that I hate almost every character on the show and I constantly flip to different channels when I know something fucked up is about to happen and I can't bear to watch. This led me to think about one of the reasons Heroes might be so bad and why North American television might be so bad, in general.
I'm of the school of writing that you should get in, do your job, and get out. In writing terms that means start writing as close to the end as need be, tell the story as well and as succinctly as you can, and end it. I'm not a fan of overlong stories. One of the reasons I don't want to read Twilight (other than the questionable writing) is that it's so long. Unless you're James Joyce, it's likely your book doesn't need to be over 300-350 pages. It takes a skilled writer to keep a book going after those 300-350 pages, and let's face it, there aren't a lot of popular writers who are skilled enough to do that. People will finish those 1000 page tomes, but when they're done some will admit that if thirty percent of the book had been cut it wouldn't have been a loss.
So what does this have to do with Heroes and television? I think if Heroes and other primetime shows followed the thirteen episode season Showtime, FX, and HBO borrowed from the British it would solve a lot of the problems the show has been having. Thirteen episodes means the writing has to be tight and that no scene or episode can be a throwaway. We wouldn't have episodes where 3/4 of it is filler and the rest might be something important.
Thirteen episodes means there wouldn't be such a large canvas and we'd get to focus on the truly important people which, for better or worse, is the Petrelli clan. They wouldn't have the problem they had last year of introducing too many characters. Shows like Dexter only introduce one or two characters who stick around for the whole season and that's how it should be.
I think the folks at NBC, ABC, and CBS need to try out the thirteen episode season. It costs less and it means more shows during the year. Shows, even unsuccessful ones, would have their season's run and then disappear to DVD. Everyone sort of wins.
Another Thing About Heroes
I'm wondering if Tim Kring's biggest mistake first season was that he set the stakes too high. Maybe saving the world shouldn't have been the endgame, but saving the world as we know it. Stopping the world from exploding, essentially creates a point where everything ends and all that can be done is a continuous resetting before that date. Characters never grow and keep regressing. Nothing moves. Maybe it should've been that they were trying to stop Linderman from taking over New York, America, or something that could have a fallout. There is no fallout from the end of the world, so Heroes is stuck in the past and always will be.
This show is seriously trying to break my brain.
I'm of the school of writing that you should get in, do your job, and get out. In writing terms that means start writing as close to the end as need be, tell the story as well and as succinctly as you can, and end it. I'm not a fan of overlong stories. One of the reasons I don't want to read Twilight (other than the questionable writing) is that it's so long. Unless you're James Joyce, it's likely your book doesn't need to be over 300-350 pages. It takes a skilled writer to keep a book going after those 300-350 pages, and let's face it, there aren't a lot of popular writers who are skilled enough to do that. People will finish those 1000 page tomes, but when they're done some will admit that if thirty percent of the book had been cut it wouldn't have been a loss.
So what does this have to do with Heroes and television? I think if Heroes and other primetime shows followed the thirteen episode season Showtime, FX, and HBO borrowed from the British it would solve a lot of the problems the show has been having. Thirteen episodes means the writing has to be tight and that no scene or episode can be a throwaway. We wouldn't have episodes where 3/4 of it is filler and the rest might be something important.
Thirteen episodes means there wouldn't be such a large canvas and we'd get to focus on the truly important people which, for better or worse, is the Petrelli clan. They wouldn't have the problem they had last year of introducing too many characters. Shows like Dexter only introduce one or two characters who stick around for the whole season and that's how it should be.
I think the folks at NBC, ABC, and CBS need to try out the thirteen episode season. It costs less and it means more shows during the year. Shows, even unsuccessful ones, would have their season's run and then disappear to DVD. Everyone sort of wins.
Another Thing About Heroes
I'm wondering if Tim Kring's biggest mistake first season was that he set the stakes too high. Maybe saving the world shouldn't have been the endgame, but saving the world as we know it. Stopping the world from exploding, essentially creates a point where everything ends and all that can be done is a continuous resetting before that date. Characters never grow and keep regressing. Nothing moves. Maybe it should've been that they were trying to stop Linderman from taking over New York, America, or something that could have a fallout. There is no fallout from the end of the world, so Heroes is stuck in the past and always will be.
This show is seriously trying to break my brain.