On May 14, 2010 I was walking around with a grin on my face.  Why? Because it was Friday? No. Payday perhaps? Nope.  I was grinning because it was the day that Heroes was finally and irrevocably cancelled from the airwaves. Like unflushed vomit plugging the toilet the morning after a bender, the acrid stench of Heroes has swirled our bowls for the last time.  NBC has finally done the humane thing and spared the viewing public from another atrocious season of television.

Fuck you Heroes; I’m glad you’re dead.  Fuck you for getting me invested and then producing 77 episodes of total swill.  Fuck you, NBC, for giving this abortion of a show four years to fester on our television sets. And most of all, Fuck you, Tim Kring, you no-talent piss-stain, for “creating” this show by repackaging X-men and managing to make it a hundred times shittier.

For those of you in the cheap seats: I truly, deeply, despise this show.  And it’s a spite reserved for only the most bitter divorce proceedings.  I hated this show so much I continued to watch in giddy anticipation of it being cancelled.

Before I go any further, though, perhaps I’d better explain a little more.

Heroes premiered in the Fall of 2006 and was an immediate hit.  The first season of Heroes was mostly decent, it introduced a large cast of characters, a few mysteries and an interlocking narrative.  It was highly derivative of X-Men, although this aspect was heavily downplayed heavily by the creators in the major media.  Speaking for anyone who has picked up a comic book or seen a superhero movie in the last twenty years, however; we weren’t buying it. With the possible exception of Hiro, every character with powers has an analog in Marvel comics: Peter = Rogue, Parkman = Professor X, Claire = Wolverine, etc; you get the idea. The point is that the show was not terribly creative, but was at least somewhat entertaining.

After season one, however, it becomes obvious that the writers only had enough plot written for a single season and had no plans beyond that.  Without any foresight of where they were going, they sparked a decline in quality unprecedented in modern television.  I’ve seen a lot of crappy shows. I’ve also seen a lot good shows that jump the shark and deteriorate into staleness.  But I’ve never seen a show go from decent to unwatchably-fucking-bad in the span of a single episode.  Heroes managed this starting from the first episode of season two. Without exception, every single plotline from the once successful show goes down in flames overnight.

Here’s an example main character Peter Petrelli almost dies at the end of season one, but it turns out he gets amnesia, then he gets trapped in a cargo container, sails to Ireland, and joins the Irish mob. He falls in love with a girl and pledges undying love. After building that genius sequence of events for ten episodes, aforementioned girl gets lost in a parallel reality and Peter promises to never rest until he can rescue her, and she is never once mentioned again for the rest of the series.

Other Plotlines included the world’s most unconvincing love story between Claire and a vacant-eyed cud chewing flying boy. Hiro has no character development. We also find out that the main villain of the season decides to destroy the world because he couldn’t get a date 400 years ago. Actually, considering the fan base, maybe that last plotline does make sense.

Luckily Season two happened during the Screenwriter’s strike and so we were mercifully given only eleven episodes instead of a full twenty-two. Sometimes fate cuts you a break. At this point, though, fans had turned away in droves, the critics had slammed the series’ marked decline, and the show’s ratings were at an all-time low.  Naturally, NBC promptly responded with quick and effective action, by…renewing the show for 25 episodes.

The next season featured a main character Nikki Saunders being killed off and  the same actress returning to play her long-lost twin sister in the next episode. Parkman unconvincingly falls in love with a girl half his age and ignores the fact he has a wife and son. Sylar is a villain, then he reinvents himself as a hero, then he’s a villain again, then he’s brainwashed into being a hero once more, repeat ad nauseum.  Hiro still has no character development. Nathan Petrelli inexplicably becomes a Jesus-Freak for two episodes and then his religious conversion is never mentioned again.  He’s also killed off, but the actor returns in essentially the same role. Did I mention creator Tim Kring’s only film writing credit is Teen Wolf Too? I’m not kidding.

By now, all but the staunchest fans rejected the show, more critics booed and ratings fell to a new all-time low. But this time, NBC had learned it’s lesson, and quickly and decisively…renewed the show for 18 more episodes. The final 18 episodes, it would turn out, thank Christ.

Heroes' Ratings Decline, courtesy Wikipedia.

The final season had the threads of a few good ideas, such as when Hiro tries to face his impending death in the form of a tumor resulting from the use of his powers. For most of the season he reflects on his life and tries to set his affairs in order.  Then he goes inside his own brain and defeats the tumor in a sword fight.  This miraculously cures him. Need I say more?

Call it Failmetrics.  A new branch of statistics, economics  and business theory whereby a show can be completely critically panned and commercially unsuccessful and still get renewed every year. I understand that networks retain bad shows that can manage to get good ratings– that’s simple capitalism–but this is something new entirely. Tim Kring must have made a deal with an old Indian medicine man, or pushed a gypsy out of the way of a runaway carriage or something, because no one else in the history of TV has screwed up this many opportunities and been rewarded for it.

This is what probably pisses me off the most.  This show cost in excess of $3 Million per episode and lasted 77 episodes.  The show was failing in every possible way and was repeatedly renewed.  For those of you keeping score, Heroes lasted for more episodes that dozens of other more deserving shows which were cancelled before their time despite high quality, including  Firefly, Deadwood, Carnivale, Rome, Arrested Development, the original runs of Family Guy and Futurama, and so on. Think about that.  At least those shows went out on high points at the top of their games and will always be classics while with Heroes gave us unequivocal proof for all time that Heroes was indeed a horrible show.  Kinda like when Bush got a second term. But as for me, Heroes is finally done for, and the sadist in me is glad that my own personal target has been snuffed.