A collection of writing

This article was originally featured on StudentPunch.com, which is a student online magazine that I write TV articles for. I will be archiving all of my articles that that were featured on Student Punch— Andrew.

So after three and a half years, NBC have cancelled Heroes. I’ve got very mixed feelings about the cancellation of one of my favourite shows on TV, and I’m sure I’m not the only one.

First off, let me just state that Heroes, despite my love for the show, has definitely been going downhill since the end of the first season, which, granted, isn’t a good sign for a TV show. The storylines, and the writing in general, just got pretty nasty as the show went on, and I don’t think it was even just the writers struggling to come up with new ideas, but more that they wanted to go in a different direction but were limited by what they had set up previously. That’s why in the later seasons, there are quite a few plot holes that appeared due to the storylines in the first two seasons.

The general action and hero powers in the show never really got worse, though. The special effects to show new powers were still fantastic towards the end of the show but the bad storylines just didn’t give those powers much justice, and made them just kind of throwaway for a couple of episodes.

But I think the worst trend that the show fell into was that it was just starting to repeat itself; not in the specific storylines, characters or powers, but the overall story of how the good guys beat the bad guys. In both seasons three and four, the show spent most of the season building up a supervillian to have a large amount of dangerous powers, before in the last episode that supervillian would crumble at the hands of a few heroes with pretty limited powers: this was done with at least three different supervillians (Sylar, Arthur Petrelli and Samuel). Inevitably, fans grew tried of entire seasons of expectations that ultimately lead to disappointing confrontations.

So yes, I definitely understand why the show has declined in ratings and why it’s no longer a viable option for NBC to keep the show running, but I’m still disappointed. The show, more than any other show for me, had so much potential. Even throughout the last season I thought it could still turn out great, but I was let down by the very disappointing ending. However, that bad ending was something I could live with when I thought another season was going to come along, and possibly make the show really good again, but this cancellation means that that ending might actually be the very end, which for any fan, is just a real disappointment. I’ve heard rumours of the show returning for a mini-series in order to give an actual ending to the entire show, but that’s unreliable, so I don’t want to get my hopes up for that. I really would like a proper ending though.

On the other hand, though, I’m kind of glad the show ends here. Because of the reasons I previously highlighted, the show has definitely gone down hill, and although I’m a sucker and kept believing the show would turn good again, it’s probably for the best that there can’t be yet another season or two which would make the show even worse.

But with Heroes cancelled, and Lost about to conclude, I’ve lost two of my favourite TV shows in a short space of time, and that sadly might force me out into the sun.

Andrew Cadman

The original can be found at http://studentpunch.com/heroes-is-cancelled.html