Did anyone expect Heroes to really be any good? It’s a show that showed up like a joke last summer: a straightforward superhero drama with a sprawling cast. Such a thing had never been done before, outside of maybe Fox’s The Tick (and that’s a stretch) and Smallville (which is just stupid). To most everyone with a brain or a TV blog (or, in rare cases, both) — including most of those who saw the interesting-but-not-mind-blowing pilot — Heroes being a quick cancellation seemed self-evident.

But somewhere between then and now, Heroes has broken all the rules. It started its goodwill tour early, with glimpses of cool Tim Sale artwork and positive, if wary, buzz surrounding the first few episodes. As we moved into November Sweeps, each episode brought with it a little more promise, and a little more interest from fans, both hardcore “I can tell you exactly which X-Men Characters all of these Heroes are based on” comic book fans and the less nerd-traversed, who merely felt kind of proud of themselves for catching Stan Lee’s Cameo.

The series is currently in a spring hiatus, returning in April for a run of episodes that will conclude the season. Despite the delay, hype surrounding the series is at a continual high, particularly on the internet. The requisite unofficial blogs and message board threads continue to buzz with every glimpse at coming plots and potential spoilers.

Taken together, it’s a very familiar scenario for a TV show, given just a couple of years ago the very same internet community was going nuts over another little show with a lot of geek-cred: Lost.

New Show Leads to Lots of Lost Puns

Lost started with similar doubt. Serial dramas with sci-fi elements hadn’t seen any success on network television since The X-Files killed the genre in the 90s. More than that, it starred Charlie from Party of Five and a hobbit. Sure, creator J.J. Abrams had earned some respect from his critically-acclaimed (but low-rated) Alias, but this new desert island venture hardly seemed like it was destined to be a hit.

But then, as if by magic — or, more fittingly, as if it was placed inside a magic box that can make all wishes come true — it became the season’s biggest new show, reinvigorating the serial drama as a viable television genre and totally erasing any memory most people had of Matthew Fox as the guy-from-Party of Five.

In many ways, there wouldn’t be a Heroes without Lost, which makes it all the more important to note that, somewhere between seasons two and three, Lost got lost. Its ratings have dropped, the internet community that once rallied around the show have gotten bored and turned negative.

Nerdy Analysis, or Nerdalysis

I’m not the first person to point to Heroes as Lost‘s spiritual successor . In fact, there’s already been a lot of argument as to how, as a successor, Heroes can avoid following in its desert island dad’s perilous footsteps.

Myles McNutt at Cultural Learnings has made the argument that Lost has merely found its natural audience, and the same fate will probably befall Heroes. I’m less forgiving. Lost‘s mistakes are absolutely tied to its waning fortunes, and avoiding those mistakes is the key to Heroes finding longer-term success in its second (and third, and fourth…) season.

Once you’re on top, maintaining that position is often impossible. Audiences are fickle to a ridiculous degree, and so one while one night they may be all about watching Regis and a “hot seat” crown Millionaires, the next they may be all about another Joe Millionaire, and that could easily be followed, inexplicably, by a brief love-affair with Donald Trump. It doesn’t make any sense. But all that understood, there are simple and straightforward guidelines a show like Heroes can follow to avoid shooting itself in the proverbial foot like Lost did.

Below are six such guidelines:

1. Stick to the core group of characters.

It’s no coincidence that Lost fans began to waver in Season Two with the introduction of the “Tailies” — cast members found in the wreckage of the tail section of the plane. Suddenly an already sprawling cast was sprawled even further, with new characters that, while not really bad or uninteresting by themselves, took away valuable screen time from the characters of season one — the characters who had driven us to the show in the first place.

So far, Heroes too has featured a large and rotating cast, with some characters not appearing for episodes at a time. However, they’ve managed to foster good will among their audience for (most of) these characters — some of us still hate Niki. As these characters find themselves continuously entangled with other characters and their back stories get fleshed out and their motivations explained, it’s easy to understand why a writer would rather simply introduce a new character rather than dwell on an ‘old’ one. But just because it’s easy to understand doesn’t make it good writing.

2. Continue with the ‘arc’ structure.

One of the greatest advantages Heroes has over Lost right out of the gate is the current arc structure. While there isn’t a lot of functional division between story arcs — nearly all the plots continued between the “Save the Cheerleader” and “Are you on the List?” arcs — the division serves as a sign post for the viewer. Not only does it create markers for the ‘important’ episodes, it’s also given the viewer the illusion that things are actually planned out in advance when it comes to the future of these characters.

Lost on the other hand, has floundered without any sort of indication as to when the series is ending or even when certain plot points will come to a close. Whereas we know, as viewers, that we’re currently building toward the nuclear New York scenario on Heroes, what exactly are we waiting for on Lost?

3. Keep it Simple, Stupid.

While series like these do thrive on continuity and back story, so much so that things are destined to be complicated, the ‘KISS’ theory is still important in a broader sense. The cardinal rule of the serial drama is that speculation fuels viewership. The viewers need to be able to guess at how plots are going to resolve and how character interactions are going to play out.

So while, sure, the actual plots can — and will — be complex, there needs to be a simplicity behind the resolution. I’d argue that one of
Lost‘s
biggest problems
now is that
nobody can
think of a
plausible conclusion. Aside from whatever file folder Abrams might have locked in his desk, there’s nothing that can easily explain all that these characters have experienced. And while being clever with mysteries is good, being cryptic is just annoying.

4. Listen to the hardcore fan base.

This is a bit of a dangerous one, and I’ll explain why later, but let’s see if I can’t simplify it down. After season one of Lost, the internet fans indicated that they liked certain characters and really disliked others. Most of whom were named ‘Kate’. Yet season two seemed to display an utter contempt for the characters fans had identified as their favourite, instead focusing on others (like Ana-Lucia) that fans would come to despise.

I’d never say that writers are bound to do EXACTLY what their fans dictate, but refusing to take any cues from fan feedback is ridiculously short-sighted.

With Heroes, it’s clear that Claire, her father and the characters surrounding their recurring plot are the audience favourites. Their recent episode, Company Man was ridiculously popular (and ridiculously good, by no coincidence). If the producers are smart, they’ll build their central season two plots around these characters, as opposed to taking a cue from Lost and suddenly deciding to focus on, say, Isaac or somebody like that.

5. Don’t mess with scheduling.

The last big nail in Lost‘s coffin came with the weird scheduling of season three. Showing only six episodes in the fall, and then breaking until February, was an odd decision made odder by the lack of any compelling cliffhanger or plot bridging the gap between the two groups of episodes. There was nothing to maintain momentum and, worse, there was no momentum, as season three thus far as added up to essentially one good episode (the most recent one) and a bunch of other episodes I can’t really remember.

Don’t play games with the Heroes time slot, NBC. While the current hiatus is a bit on the long side, it’s short enough and came on the heels of some memorable episodes, making the delay tolerable. But never is the TV viewer’s fickle nature more evident than when a show isn’t even on their radar.

6. Don’t cater to the hardcore fan base.

This is the flip side my fourth point, and illustrates the real danger of pandering to your hardcore fans. This summer, the Lost producers devised some sort of crytopgraphic puzzle to promote the series. It involved a lot of fake magazine ads, coupled with a bunch of websites and other such clues. The idea was that dedicated viewers could learn more about the Dharma Initiative through spending hours of their time decoding hidden messages.

My reaction to this, and I think a lot of other Lost viewers shared this with me, was simply “Aw, fuck, now you want me to do homework?”

Even though any information revealed was non-vital, it’s still rather distressing to make your viewers feel like they’re not getting the whole story simply because they’re not playing your internet game.

So, seriously, Heroes producers: I know you’re already producing comic books and things, but stay from things like the Lost guys have done with the internet. Your ultimate goal is to avoid your show becoming some niche-market-wonder. Pandering to that niche only encourages that reality.

Conclusions

There is still, of course, the X-Factor to consider here, which is that the producers will find some other way entirely to screw up Heroes. They could, for example, devote an entire season to all the central characters questing for mysterious moon rocks. Or turn the female supporting cast into 16th century witches. But, being just one guy, I can’t possibly cover all those bases.

I go back and forth between optimism and pessimism for Heroes. That it doesn’t have as much “This is the best-written show on television” hype as Lost did in its heyday is likely a good thing. People aren’t misrepresenting Heroes — it is schlocky and overwrought and relies on ridiculous coincidences to forward its conventions. It’s unlikely to win an Emmy, though it may take a Golden Globe. And that’s exactly how it should be — Lost was a victim of its own hubris, with first season hype pushing it toward further unconventional storytelling and philosophical cruft that sees ever new character named after a different philosopher (Seriously, David Hume? Are we supposed to think that’s cute?). When, really, what fans really liked wasn’t the out-of-the-box storytelling so much as the characters.

It’s the same thing with Heroes. Its success will be determined by whether or not the writers and producers remember that.

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