A thought about watching Heroes

[brak666]

It seems to me, from things I've read and people I've talked to that there's a general sense of disappointment that a lot of people feel at the end of each episode of Heroes. And I hesitate to say this, but I think they're watching it wrong. They're watching it like a TV show. They need to be watching it like a comic book. Especially like a modern comic book. The kind that gets written with the knowledge that it's going to be compiled as a trade paperback every six issues or so. In this case it'll be a DVD box set. See, the thing I'm noticing most is that it's not the cliffhangers that bother people. They don't mind being left hanging on the major plot points. They're used to that. It's the more subtle things that carry on from episode to episode. Things that as a comic book reader I know will carry through the entire arc. But to people who aren't used to how comics are written it feels like a point was raised and then abandoned without resolution.

Comments

[ladyjax.livejournal.com]

I think you're absolutely right about this. With every "To Be Continued" I'm automatically thinking about the next ep and how threads from the previous ep will carry over just like I would with a comic and for once, I'm there at the beginning instead of having to wait for the trade ;)

There's a different sort of buildup going on here than most people are used to.

IMO, we're actually approaching the first true moment of the season - not necessarily stopping the nuclear blast although that's important, but saving Claire.

"Save the Cheerleader. Save the World." Immediately I wanted to know why they had to save Claire. The obvious answer would be from Evil Dad but I feel like there might be something else at work behind the scenes and we'll eventually find out what it is just not right now.

And the end of this weeks ep, OMG, older, obviously seasoned Hiro!

[molly-o.livejournal.com]

Huh. You know, this makes sense to me. OTOH, that's one of the things I find frustrating about comics.

I came to the shameful realization that I secretly want Heroes to be a little more like "Greatest American Hero."

[zvi-likes-tv.livejournal.com]

Er, could you give a specific example? The only thing I feel frustrating about Heroes is that I don't have all 22 episodes right now. I haven't been following that much Heroes discussion, but I also haven't felt like things were left … unnecessarily hanging (except for Mohinder being suspicious of perky neighbor.)

[kenkari.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it seems like a lot of new TV shows are really serials instead of episodic. I think that true episodic TV (where each episode was a distinct story in the context of the larger universe) is dying. On one hand this is nice because the stories can be more complex. On the other, it's annoying because if you miss one, you're screwed.

More disturbing to me is how serialization interacts with network programming. For example, the six month gap in Stargate: Atlantis. How nice that B.G. is going to get a whole season in with out repeats (see comment about missing an ep. above) but if SciFi is concerned about the ratings for Stargate, what's going to happen when all the non-die-hard fans are supposed to pick up the second half of SGA in March? Plus, most other TV shows will have already started new spring episodes and people will have their habits already set. So unless you're a B.G. fan and a SGA fan, and therefore already in the viewing habit, people are going to have to change what they're doing and that worries me.