Heroes Season 3 [DVD]

Heroes season 3 proves to be a shaky ride, both behind the scenes and the final product on screen, suffering from muddled writing, too many characters and an overblown episode count. However it's not all bad as for the most part season 3 remains enjoyable; though a far cry from the quality of the first season.

The first half of the season volume 3 revolves around a company (another one) known as Pinehurst who are recruiting people with special powers for dubious reasons, Nathan is still reeling from his assassination attempt; having found god, Peter winds up trapped in the body of one of the villains held by the company, who all escape. Hiro and Ando track attempt to track down a villain who has stolen part of a formula for the superhuman gene, while Mohinder begins transforming, Maya remains annoying and Matt follows a turtle in the dessert.

The first half of season 3 is the worst, as it meanders round fairly aimlessly and having little bearing on Heroes overall story arc. Nathan's god sub plot simply disappears from the story, the villains released form the company aren't very interesting or developed particularly well; most of them disappearing as the first half of the season progresses. Mohinder's story is rather dull and he becomes more of a supporting character this season while Maya simply disappears from the story (Thankfully).

Were also treated to the obligatory 5 years time story and Sylar switches sides more times than you can count. Recycled ideas and not very engaging stories for the first half of the season blight the story, as well as it being overloaded with far to many characters, who are simply written out again a few episodes later. This makes the first half of the season fairly unsatisfying though it does have it's moments.

The 2nd half of season 3, volume 4, revolves around the reveal to the world of the heroes and as such the government project to capture them. Volume 4 picks up the pace a bit with more focus on a more interesting story line an less on guest characters, its not perfect though still blighted by repeating story lines ( the end of 'cold wars') and some uninspired writing at times.

We focus on improved characterisation for the most part, Sylar's searching for his father with an annoying sidekick is hardly satisfying but it quickly dealt with and we get some great performances form Zackery Quinto in ' I am Sylar'. For me he was the best thing about this season giving great performances; if blighted by somewhat poor writing at times.

The rest of cast are mixed. Noah and Sandra Bennett give some great performances particularly in the latter half, Peter gets quite whiny for a fair part of the season, though brings it back at the end; likewise the same for Hiro. Nathan plays a key role this season and does so very well but suffers from switching sides syndrome which plagues a fair few of the characters this season. Claire takes a more active role this season and shows signs of growing up a bit, though sadly very little is seen of Mr. Muggles.

The final episode is for the most part satisfying, but yet again we do not see the big battle between the brothers and Sylar with is becoming a annoying re-occurrence for the show, we see the violent death of a major character and a twist ending; which will be interesting to see how it plays out in season 4.

Overall season 3 proves very mixed, unimportant supporting characters dominate the story, coming and going, character motivations shift regularly for little reason, the storyline seems stretched at times likely due to the length of the season clocking in at 25 episodes ( with season 4 reportedly trimmed down to 18-20 episodes)but for all it flaws the characters remain engaging, the direction slick and the stories interesting, for the most part anyway, if your a fan its worth a watch; it's just not the return to form I was hoping for.

There is a pattern to a number of TV dramas. They start off with some great ideas, and give us a super first season. Maybe they still have some good ideas, and the second season is as good, or better. Then the rot set in.

The basic problem is that they are making too much money to stop, but the ideas have stopped flowing. And that's when they start jerking our chains.

What are the symptoms of this? Well, the main one is that they make us question what we've been told. They make good guys into bad guys and vice versa, and keep swapping them around. They go back and rewrite what happened in the past. They over-complicate stories, thinking that they are delving deeper and deeper but in reality just going round and round in ever-decreasing circles. They probably think that they are being terribly clever but they aren't, because they don't actually know where they are going or how to get there.

This phenomenon has come to Heroes in its third season with a vengeance. Part of this season is subtitled "Villains", but the whole premise of this season is that - apart from a few people who you know are good (Clare, Matt, Hiro...), everyone's loyalties, causes and essential goodness is brought into question. Is Sylar still bad, or has he turned? Is Peter now the bad guy? How about Nathan? Who are Clare's real parents? We don't know, and the writers keep making us jump from one side to the other.

Another symptom of this malaise is invulnerability, and I complained of this in my review of another show which went through this process (Alias - and Lost is another classic example). Characters keep getting riddled with bullets (or otherwise injured beyond the point of survivability), and miraculously come back to life. OK, in Heroes they had a reason for one of the characters, who had this ability - that's fine. But then they do the same with lots of other characters, through various means. It's a fake way of creating tension without expending your assets - and, crucially, without having to think of a smarter way to develop the story. What the TV executives don't seem to understand is that after a while, this means that we can't trust anything they tell us ("trust" within the context of accepting the story that they are creating), and therefore we stop caring.

The acting, production, stunts etc are still excellent, which is why I've reluctantly still given this season three stars. But I still rather wish they'd stopped after the second season (or even the first), and started afresh. I doubt whether I'll be getting season 4.

(VERY MINOR SPOILERS)

Heroes has received a mixed bag reviews on Amazon. Many found that seasons 2 and 3 were quite disappointing, as to a lot of fans, they did not match the pure gold quality of Season 1.

I can see why people did not enjoy Season 2 so much as it was badly affected by the writers strike at the time. However, to me, Season 3 delivers.
The action kicks off right where Season 2 left off, so it feels like we never left the story and there are no time gaps to fill with catch ups or flashbacks...at least, not at the start of the season.

Volume 3, Villains adds a greater dimension of peril to the story, as now many other dangerous Heroes are put into play. Although some of these characters are bland and not that interesting, it does add a bit of flavour with these brand new threats, (in addition to Sylar who is also back on the rampage.)
With so many characters, the plot may seem slightly confusing at times but if you persevere, everything begins to even out into a more balanced Volume 4.

The actors all continue to play there parts well with some characters receiving greater portions of the script than in previous seasons. Certain characters, (Maya for example) are slowly faded out of the story, whereas other like Sandra Bennet have bigger parts to play, especially in Volume 4: Fugitives.
Once again though, Zachary Quinto,(Sylar) delivers the most outstanding performance.

To conclude, Heroes is definitely back on track after the inhibited second season. Although the story is slightly cluttered in places, it makes for highly enjoyable entertainment and I, for one, am looking forward to Season 4 on DVD.