I've reached a verdict on Heroes
Okay, so in my last post I wasn't sure whether or not I was happy/sad that Heroes has officially been cancelled, but I've thought about it more, and I think I've decided. I've written lists of pros and cons about cancelling it, and they made things pretty clear for me. I don't know how good these reasons are to anyone but me, but they're what I've got so...meh. Also, I apologize if the HTML is completely fucked when you're looking at it.
Reasons it would be bad if Heroes was cancelled:
- I still have unanswered questions dammit!
- A fifth season/miniseries/tv movie (henceforth just referred to as season five) could wrap up everything and give us a definitive ending instead of just leaving us to speculate what happens after Claire reveals the existence of people with powers to the general public. It would give us closure and a chance to say a proper goodbye as a show of goodwill/thanks for the first season being good. Sure, the subsequent seasons never lived up to its promise, but it was awesome at least.
- With cancellation hanging over their heads, it could light a fire under the writing staff’s collective ass, causing them to write something that’s actually good again for season five, which would maybe make NBC reconsider, and give us more ‘seasons that are good because the writers know it’s over if they suck’.
- If it ends now, Sylar will never become a proper supervillain, Future!Hiro will never come back, HRG will never be a badass again, and Claude will never again throw Peter Petrelli off a roof for us. Plus, I’d miss Mr. Muggles (who, like Pen-pen the penguin in Neon Genesis Evangelion, will never get to be revealed as the one who masterminded the whole thing).
- We won’t get to seem them finally/permanently kill off Claire.
- Caitlin (the Irish chick from season 2) won’t get to find a way to come back from the alternate-future and bitchslap Peter for leaving her there.
- Our last memories of HRG will be of him as a lonely, middle-aged divorcee trying to hook up with a co-worker instead of him kicking ass as a secret agent/hitman. Do we really want that?
- No one will ever become a proper superhero and save the world in a way anyone actually notices.
- No one will start using their powers for good and just helping make the world a better place in small ways.
- They could just retcon out the hell that was season four and let us start anew, since they seem to do it with everything else they realize was a mistake.
- Milo Ventimiglia is kinda hot, and I shall miss my Monday-night-eyecandy.
- Rex Is Not Your Lawyer isn’t even on the list of shows picked up for fall yet anyway, and it's not like NBC didn't cancel a bunch of other shows, so Heroes staying on wouldn't really effect it too much…
- Having to set aside money in their budget for Heroes keeps NBC from being able to produce another reality show or Law & Order spin-off (they’re just running out of ways to commit crimes in all of them).
Reasons it would be good if Heroes was cancelled:
- None of the unanswered questions I have about the show are things that, if left unanswered, would cause Heroes to make any less sense than it already does.
- If Heroes continued, it probably still wouldn’t bother answering those questions, and would just create more of them, eventually becoming like Lost (every new question is answered with 10 more), except with nothing actually planned out, resulting in sanity-loss for viewers akin to those caused by Lovecraftian horrors.
- Season four didn’t end on some, ‘OMG, there was an explosion and we don’t get to see who made it out alive until next season!’-type cliffhanger. It was acceptably open-ended while still wrapping up the season’s major storylines. The story ends nicely, and it could be continued if the people-who-decide-such-things chose to do so, but it doesn’t have to.
- If they choose not do put something out just as a final, definitive ending as it appears they might not, we won’t have to deal with the torture of a fifth season/miniseries/tv movie being really good, and then NBC either following through with the cancellation just as Heroes redeems itself, or them deciding to keep it, thus starting a potential cycle of crap & mediocrity, with occasional moments of greatness to keep us hanging on:
>S1 (awesome, made us love it)
>S2 (crap with the slight excuse of being effected by the writers’ strike)
>S3 (better than 2, but still mediocre)
>S4 (megacrap with no excuses whatsoever)
>S5 (surprisingly good)
>S6+ (back to crap)
- Season five, in whatever form NBC would let it take, could just turn out to be crap anyway, given the ‘quality’ of 2-4.
- Zachary Quinto, Masi Oka, Jack Coleman, and Christopher Eccleston are all now free to do better things. Okay, not so much CE since they haven’t used him past S1, but he wouldn’t have to take time away from something (like, say, maybe an 11 [or 8, since I don’t know what they’d do about 1-3 being dead] Doctors reunion special of some sort for Doctor Who's upcoming 50th anniversary?) to come back as Claude.
- Christopher Eccleston might throw Milo Ventimiglia off a roof again anyway if we ask him really nicely. And I have my own cute little yappy dog, so I don’t need Mr. Muggles.
- They can now have Hiro and Ando move to Burbank, CA and start working as part of the Nerd Herd with Chuck at the Buy More. I realize that this is not at all likely to happen, but since they wouldn’t be needed on Heroes anymore, the possibility now exists for the characters…
- If Heroes continued, Maya could come back and start crying. Again. Because her powers kill people when she cries. Which makes her cry more. Because she killed people. With her crying. AGAIN.
- No more Claire/Hayden Panettiere! Claire is a dumb, annoying bitch, and Hayden’s just pissed me off ever since that guest role on Law & Order: SVU she did when she was a kid.
- No more having to deal with Sylar’s mommy/daddy issues! Seriously, I think he may have more than Norman Bates and Sephiroth combined…The man needs help, people! Not more exposure to fellow-fucked-up-superbeings!
- No more new (or old or current, for that matter) characters played by Ali Larter!
- No more ‘romantic’ (read: filler) subplots for HRG!
- No more random changes to how Peter’s powers work!
- The closest anyone in the entire four seasons got to being an actual ‘hero’ was über-EMT Peter, and that only lasted until he absorbed someone else’s rather-useless-for-what-he-wanted-to-do power, causing him to lose the power to heal others. Do we really want to keep waiting for everyone else?
- They could end up breaking with tradition and not retconning away the hell that was season four.
- As cute and kinda sweet as Peter Petrelli can be, he’s still a massive idiot, and I know that there are cuter, sweeter, and drastically more intelligent fish in the sea that are better for me to fangirl over (see below). Plus, Milo Ventimiglia can go play someone with half a brain now.
- Taking Heroes off of NBC’s schedule makes room for things like Rex Is Not Your Lawyer (which may-or-may-not star a certain gorgeous, formerly-time-travelling Scotsman who’s definitely smarter than Peter…)
- Taking it off the schedule also frees up what I’d imagine is a fairly large amount of money (what with the sheer size of the cast and all the special fx) for other [better] things. Maybe give half to the budget for Chuck, then give the rest to Andy Samberg so he can make more 'digital shorts' for SNL.
As you can see, the reasons I've got for cancelling it far outweigh the ones against it, especially since I could come up with a way for almost all the arguments to keep it on the air to backfire on us. Except for Caitlin getting to come back to kick Peter's ass for abandoning her in an alternate-future-that-never-came-to-pass. The odds of that one thing turning out badly are so low they're not even worth mentioning.