Sunday, September 27, 2015

Can "Heroes Reborn" Survive?

In September of 2006 a show premiered unlike most of the television of its day. This show had people with superhuman powers and they had a mission to "save the cheerleader, save the world". Besides Smallville there was just not a huge choice when it came to superhero shows. Heroes filled a gap on TV that was clear to people who were looking for a weekly episodic adventure.

The first season was great and the show drew in a pretty solid following. Then...disaster struck. The writers went on strike and many shows began to suffer as it drug on and on, week after week. When the writers finally returned, many television shows could not fully recover and  Heroes seemed to be one of those victims. The last few seasons before the network decided to pull the plug the series began to improve, but it could never regain its initial following.

Jump ahead almost 10 years and a show premiered in a very different climate. Superhero movies rule the box office. There are more superhero shows than there are days in the week with shows like Marvel's Agent Carter, Marvel's Agents of Shield, Arrow, Flash, Daredevil, and Gotham. And there are several more on the horizon.

Can Heroes Reborn find an audience? Watching the first episode, I found myself saying, "Where is Hiro, or Parkman, or any of the other older heroes I remember from the first series?" I did get drawn into the new show, but mainly to see what had become of the characters since we last saw them. I am hoping that this show will reveal where they have been, but even more importantly, give me a new story I can get excited about with where they are headed.