The brilliance of Season 1 was due to a story and thematic symmetry.
Every story element and character felt balanced and well defined within the story, with just a little bit of mystery sprinkled on top...all creating a sense of wonder and magic, and finally a sense of satisfaction as all the different elements and characters came together, even if that final fight in the season could have been better.
Then I believe for me Heroes started from a snowball into an avalanche of inner story nonsense when they killed Simone....y'know, Peter and Isaac's love interest? Remember her? She was not that important? That's kinda my point. She died more or less because of Peter. Yet hardly a mention of her afterward. Shouldn't that have been one of the most important character development points for Peter?
Then there was Caitlin. Good riddance? It's not good writing to have left that little plot point hanging like a nasty booger....Who cares? Shouldn't that have been an important character development point for Peter?
I thought Maya's power was going to be the catalyst for the future virus.....we all know how well that was handled....
Then they take away Niki's power only to kill her, would have been cooler if she died in battle. What the hell happened to Monica, I believed her to be the one character from Season 2 with the most potential. The only thing worse than her offhanded dismissal was D.L.'s offhanded death. Why couldn't these heroes have died in battle against some great evil? Like the evil felt by Molly who in anticlimax turned out to be just Parkman's father...Miccah, now an orphan has the greatest motivation to be a hero and all that drama is left on the side, unless he is this new Rebel.
Then in Season 3, because the writers faced complaints of the slow pace of the storyline the previous season when Hiro diddy daddled for six episodes, they decided to bombard us with one thing after the other...Sylar is Petrelli, then he is good because his power is just a "hunger", then he works with Bennet, then he goes rogue,then he and Elle are going to have a child that will die, then he is not a Petrelli, then he goes bad, then he kills Elle. At what point exactly did the future change? When the fans complained about the "hunger"? All those villians who escaped, I thought for sure we would get a couple more Sylar-heavyweights, and then nothing at all. This show needs a lot more villians in that league. Was Bennet the only human agent of the Company? Why couldn't they introduce more badass agents? The security detail at the Company was rotten. Arthur Petrelli didn't accomplish much besides creating a few superpowered soldiers easily killed. I still don't get why he was doing what he was doing. Why try to kill his own sons over whatever goal he wanted to achieve?
The ability to paint the future is being passed around as easily as a veneral disease....shouldn't that ability have been special instead of a convenient plot crutch? Though it did provide amusing and funny moments with Hiro.
Peter gets the "hunger" and loses it next episode. Shouldn't that have brought a lot more consequences? Just like the futue visions... what exactly would have caused the world to split in half? Why didn't we get to that point, where Ando was willing to "kill" Hiro over whatever? Why did the story conclude in a lab explosion and not a showdown with all the heroes preventing the destruction? Why make a joke out of Hiro guarding the Catalyst? If Arthur got the Catalyst from the past, why do the heroes still have powers in the present? Why add the Catalyst at all when you have the Eclipse? Why did Nathan survive the shooting if Linderman was just a trick? Why did volume 3 feel like 24 episodes crammed in half that? A lot of buildup a very little payoff or satisfaction now....it's like a very hot woman who is a tease.
That is why I watch because I find the ideas of the show very, very cool, but what is disappointing is that the opportunities for great drama are missed, the ideas that are not so good are strechted out as far as they can, while the ideas that should be milked are introduced and over with in a couple episodes without real consequences. If only ideas and story elements from the previous seasons still had weight as ongoing points Heroes would feel more cohesive as a series, and it could have been one the best series ever. I watch because I hope.
Hope; it is the quintessential human delusion, simultaneously the source of your greatest strength, and your greatest weakness.
