With or Without You

I noticed something about my viewing habit during last night's episode of Heroes. During the commercials I would run into the other room and check on CDs that I was ripping down to put on my iPod (I'm still in the process of throwing all my music on my lovely new 80 GB model). The funny thing is that the show would come back from commercial and I wouldn't be in a hurry to get back to the living room to watch it. If this was Battlestar Galactica or Lost, I would probably still be in my seat, most likely due to the mind-frak that occurred before the break and my inability to move as a result.

Heroes used to be a really entertaining and unique show. Now it's become just silly. Granted the concept is outlandish, but so are BSG and Lost. It comes down to the writing and to some extent the acting. Bad acting can kill a show, no matter how well it is written (I'm looking at you Babylon 5). Still, the words on the page have to deliver, both in plot and dialogue.

Take Farscape for example; this was visually one of the most outrageously goofy looking shows on television. Half the cast was in heavy alien makeup or were puppets, but if the show didn't have me on the floor laughing, in a good way, it had me sobbing due to the emotional turmoil the characters had to endure week to week. Of course the beauty of the show was that the main character was a guy from Earth thrown in the middle of it all who acted as our lens to this incredible universe.

In other words, what makes shows like BSG, Lost, and Farscape work is that there's a heavy emphasis on realistic reactions to outlandish situations. The characters on Heroes react, but usually the reactions are knee-jerk and for plot movement only. At least the show has narrowed the focus for the last half of the season. One of the biggest faults of the first half of season three was that the show was spread to thinly over way too many plots, many of which were just there to give some cast members something to do.

On the other end of the spectrum, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles may be suffering from too much character focus as of late. Granted, Sarah is the title character and she was in danger of becoming overshadowed by the rest of the cast. Unfortunately, the writers have spent four consecutive episodes diving deep into her fragile state of mind. While most of it is compelling, this show also has the word Terminator in the title, and people, including myself, want to see big robot shoot 'em ups, motorcycle chases in dried up canals, and explosions in factories that are empty of personnel yet still operating. Still, it's a ton more interesting and entertaining than Heroes has been as for the past two seasons.

I'm going to stick with Heroes for the rest of the season though. I rarely dump a show in mid-stream (the last season of the Dead Zone was such crap, I couldn't stand it anymore and jumped ship). Also, Bryan Fuller (DS9, Voyager, Wonderfalls, Dead Like Me, Pushing Daisies) has been tapped to come on board for the last quarter of the season and hopefully fix it. He wrote the show's best episode, the excellent "Company Man" from the first season, so there's some hope.

Now if they can get some better actors. I'd keep the guys that play Noah, Nathan, and Ando, but I say they should kick the rest to the curb.