Customer Reviews

Heroes: Season Three

5 star:		(71)
4 star:		(22)
3 star:		(14)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(16)

 

 

There is no way around it: the first half of Season Three of HEROES was as bad as Season Two had been. And there was little hope that it was going to get better. But then it did. Much of the improvement might have been the result of one of the greatest tragedies of the 2008-2009 season, ABC's cancellation of one of the best shows in the history of television, PUSHING DAISIES. But one show's tragedy is another's great fortune. Bryan Fuller, who had been a consulting producer for HEROES in its first and promising season (he was given writing credits on what is to this day by far the greatest HEROES episode ever, the brilliant Season One episode "Company Man," was suddenly freed from PUSHING DAISIES, and was made the new show runner for HEROES after several producers and writers were released from the show. The improvement in the show was not instantaneous, but it was close. By the end of the season the show was as interesting as it had been in flashes in Season One.

Whether it was Fuller or not, the show had by the end of Season Three begun to have a direction once again. Both Season Two and the first half of Three had seen the show go down a series of confusing and generally unpleasant directions. One story arc had minimal connection with what had gone before and all indications were that they were just making things up as they went along. And what they were making up simply wasn't very good. Has the show finally turned around? If the difference has indeed been Bryan Fuller's involvement, it is entirely possible. I just know that by the end of Season Three I was actually looking forward to each episode again. For ages it was simply something I watched because I had been watching CHUCK.

There has been a lot of debate about what went wrong with HEROES, about why it failed to fulfill the potential it displayed in its first season. My own opinion is that the show never took its own name seriously. The truth is that despite its title there were very, very few heroic characters. Having superpowers does not make someone a hero. Being heroic does. But most of the characters were not heroic and most of them struggled more with their own pettiness. And the writers kept taking characters down the most outrageous paths. Like the nerfing of Peter Petrelli, leaving him a defanged puppy. Or making a mess of every character that Ali Larter has played.

But I have much higher hopes for Season Four. Almost all the high points of Seasons Two and Three took place in the second half of this season, after the time when Bryan Fuller took over as show runner. The show now seems to be moving in more interesting directions, and there were dramatically fewer "oh, no!" moments. And in the struggle in the season finale, there was some genuine excitement and true heartfelt tragedy. My confidence in the show hasn't recovered entirely, but for the first time since Season One, I find that I care once again about what happens next.

Smell that? That's the smell of a once great television show going straight down the crapper. Thanks to an unbelievably awful season 3-there's really little point left in following the once brilliant "Heroes". Over the course of this extremely disappointing season, Heroes devolved from a well written, exciting, "must see" television show into a frustrating exercise in viewer patience. Despite the hope that things would improve after a sub-par Season 2, the exploits of the so called "Heroes" (who really do nothing that even remotely resembles anything heroic) yielded nothing but disappointment "weak" after excruciating "weak".

The first volume of Season 3-"Villains" was excessively convoluted and drawn out-sans anything of any real substance happening. Characters also seemed to completely change personalities and flip flop their allegiances on a dime for no other reason than to suit the writer's purposes.

Despite my hopes for an improved second volume with "Fugitives" things only got worse. With a premise that smacked of the completely ridiculous (Nathan's wildly out of left field decision to betray all of his peers and condemn them all to imprisonment for starters) "Fugitives" became a hard pill to swallow in every way imaginable. Despite a noticeable attempt to improve the show and "right the ship" in the last few episodes, the silly and hard to accept premise kept getting in the way. With the exception of the episode set in the "Coyote Sands" desert (which was one of the few watchable episodes of the season) "Fugitives" like "Villains" was a total wash.

What I found most disappointing about Season 3 of "Heroes" however wasn't its silly and laughably-bad writing, or even its complete lack of direction-instead it was how the writers took some of most iconic and likable characters in television history (Noah Bennet, Mohinder Suresh, Peter Patrelli, Matt Parkman) and rendered them completely unlikable. Noah was consistently a two-faced jerk for the majority of the season and Suresh a whiney b*tch determined to work for the bad guy. Peter, the show's "anchor" went from being the most morally grounded "hero" on the show to a selfish allegiance-swapping loser with no honor at all and Matt finally revealed himself as a totally useless waste of a character. Even Claire was not immune with her character's "all-talk, no-action" stance on things. Outside of Hiro and Ando-by season's end there were no character's left who's stories I really cared about. And even the dynamic duo's story itself seemed to grow more silly and weak by the episode. (Aren't they running out of ideas by now how to keep Hiro from having powers?) And it absolutely blows my mind that the show insists on bringing Ali Larter's characters (all five hundred of them) back to the show time and time again. I know (or knew rather) a lot of Heroes viewers who absolutely hate Nikki/Jessica/Tracy/etc.-this one included. Why on earth do they keep bringing her back when she has yet to serve any real purpose but to annoy so completely?

I find it interesting that the next volume in the series is called "Redemption". With ratings plummeting and stories getting more silly, ridiculous & repetitious each season, and faithful viewers dropping off right and left, I hope there's truly some deeper meaning in that title....

Some Spoilers: Heroes season 3 stuffs so much in one season that it felt like 2 seasons in one. The first half was better though. How Sylar was used in the first half was brilliant. While the season could have used more of Robert Forster (Jackie Brown) in the 2nd half and he should have been in the series longer. He was fantastic as the Petrali father who wasn't really dead. He's evil and can steal powers by just touching people with abilities. He has a plan to give humans powers and is trying to have a drug created that can do that.

I didn't like how key characters lost their powers though. The season would have been better if Hiro and Peter had there's for example. I like Peter more when he's just as powerful as Sylar. The 2nd half was good and had it's moments but even the season finale wasn't as good as it could have been. It was a brain twister but not even one that made sense, since Claire's blood could have just been used or Sylar's. That's all I'll say about that. But it does make you at least interested in seeing what will happen next.

HEROES and LOST are the 2 more ambitious grand scale Sci-Fi series on today's TV. They both have in common stunning visuals spiked by well executed special effects, relentless action, a lot of it brutal and violent, intriguing story lines occasionally hinting critically at today's social and political realities (government-sponsored torture, the erosion of liberties, the roles played by large and secretive transnational corporations), large casts of great actors and the promise of getting at some core secret that would explain 'everything' but which is always elusive.

Of the two, HEROES seemed to be on the verge of self-dissolution last year, following a promising Season One. I am happy to see the series back on track with a vengeance on Season Three.

- CONTENT

HEROES Third season easily tops the first two seasons as the core that survived the frantic struggles of Seasons One and Two understand that 'normal life' is not possible for those blessed or cursed with super powers, not when a government that's jealously trying to maintain its own monopoly on violence is after them and not when there are so many opportunities to 'save the world'. The plot slowly shifts focus from the first 2 seasons' "HEROES vs. the Company" to their constant running and hiding from a secret branch of 'Homeland Security' determined to wipe them out but not before doing a little torture and experimentation on them. Not that what we would politically correctly call 'people with abilities' are all angels. Most of them are not and the struggle continues between the good and the evil ones where the good ones sometimes turn evil and some of the evil ones turn 'good', permanently or only for an episode or two but, interestingly, the old 'company' staff seems to be taking sides between the government and the HEROES and a lot of the plot is driven by their shifting loyalties and what appear to be their own personal agendas.

I hope I will be forgiven but I really don't wish to give away any of the plot's twists and turns because... this season's HEROES is THAT good. It's also possible that most have already watched many or all the episodes on TV and already have an opinion on what HEROES 3 was about. It's probably a lot more productive to discuss the Blu-ray edition which I shall.

My conclusion on 'content' - following the somewhat disappointed 'amputated' Season Two, this Season is a true treat.


- PACKAGING

To my surprise, after being spoiled by some other very tightly packed seasons, this Blu-ray box is quite large. While the 25 episodes where squeezed on only 5 disks, the box is thicker than I expected. On the positive side, the disks seem to be held securely in place by a new and innovative locking mechanism.

There isn't anything other than the disks in the box but brief summaries for each of the 25 episodes can be found on both the back side and on the interior wall that does not hold disks. The folding carton that holds the disks slides inside a cardboard sleeve.


- PICTURE AND SOUND

As expected, it's 1080p video, 16:9 or 1.78:1 - meaning 'full screen' on an HD TV set, no top and bottom bands. Some of the extra features may be in lower resolutions.

The Sound is DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 with English Dolby Digital 2.0 on the features.


- PRESENTATION AND PLAY

The episodes, about 42 minutes each, run for close to 18 hours.

The menu is relatively well designed but it's not perfect. The 'Play' option will play all episodes on a specific disk but, at least on my PS3, it could not resume play once interrupted. It was not possible to do a 'play all but start from the second episode'. To do so, one would start with 'Play', then fast forward or press the chapter skip button to reach the desired start point. Or episodes could be played individually. Individual episodes are not broken into 'scenes' in the menu.

During play, one can take advance of U-Control which can be turned on or off by pressing one of the colored buttons. During playback, Picture in Picture provides cast and crew commentaries. I found this distracting and I was glad to see that it's possible to play the same commentaries separately from the menu. The other U-Control enhancement is the availability of Hero Connections 'post it' like notes that pop on the screen and provide some information about a specific character that's meaningful within the context of the scene that's playing at the time. Each disk allows for the viewing of the updated Connections network separately from playback.

BD-Live allows for the downloading of a Season 4 preview and, being 'live', it's possible that more features may become available in time.

One annoying defect, at least on a PS3 is the playback becoming unresponsive once the Universal screen saver kicks in. After that, it's impossible to resume watching - pressing play/pause/fast-forward would return 'this feature is not available at this time' and pressing STOP would get me out of the movie and force me to reload the disk.


- SPECIAL FEATURES

They are quite few and thin for this season and many are bad enough to almost cross into the 'unwatchable' territory. After being spoiled with treats such as the story/legend of Takezo Kensei on Season 2, this season's disappoint. There are the obligatory 'behind the scenes' interviews but there is very little as far as 'creative content' is concerned. The short Pinehearst Commercial reminded me of the similar feature we watched while waiting to enter the Terminator 3-D show at the Universal Studios park in Florida and the Alternate Stories features are so bad, one wonders how they made it even as 'extra' features. Same for the Deleted Scenes - clearly, they were deleted for a good reason and watching them proves the director's wisdom not to include them.


- RATING

CONTENT - 5 Stars
PACKAGING - 4 Stars (could have been thinner)
PICTURE - 5 Stars
SOUND - 5 Stars
PRESENTATION AND PLAYBACK - 3.5 Stars
SPECIAL FEATURES - 2 Stars (big disappointment)

OVERALL (subjectively weighted average) - 4 Stars

Many people have decided that Heroes is nothing ike the first season, and therefore, is a bad show. Some of the reviews constantly compare the show to the first season stating that the show will never, or has not, reached the potential of that season. While I agree, I would also like to give an unbiased review of Season 3.

Season three had two volumes: Volume 3: Villains and Volume 4: Fugitives. First, let's take a look at Vol. 3. The volume took off from the ill-fated Season 2 (Volume 2) ending and tried to make due with. It started off promising with Angela Petrelli manipulating Sylar into thinking he was her son, watching Arthur Petrelli rise to power, and even additions like Daphne made for some interesting story arcs. I liked the idea of the formula, just not how it was executed. And, I even liked the story arc for Hiro. However, my main gripe with this volume was the ret conning of well developed characters as well as the break in mythology. When they ret conned Elle's sociopathic character to be a good girl turned bad by the Company, I was devastated because Elle was a well developed character by the end of Season 2. I also did not like how they tried to weasel her into Sylar's storyline by messing up the main impetus for Sylar's evilness that was developed in Season 1. Then, the whole idea of the catalyst being Claire but no one taking note of it until Volume 3 was a little farfetched. That being said, I did not feel like the show was just so horrible it couldn't be redeemed.

Thus, Volume 4 starts and gives us loyal fans, who understand that sci-fi shows take a few detours in trying to flesh out its mythology, we given some nice story arcs to love. I liked how the show began to go towards the Five Years Gone S1 episode future that many fans loved. I also was intrigued with the character of Danko and how he fit right in with the show. I like the flashback episode "1961" because it gave us some insight into the previous generation of Heroes, and I enjoyed Sylar's whole arc--from the journey to find his father to finally getting the shape-shifting ability--I thought they set his character up well. My gripes with this volume is that they took away Peter's ability and never gave it back. I am not sure why they did that, but it was a major thorn in my side. Also, they kind of acted like Vol 3 didn't happen. No mention of Arthur or Pinehearst, no mention of the formula or the catalyst, and they kind of didn't know what to do with Mohinder once he got an ability.

Overall, the show was trying to find its footing again after the second season was cut short and they had to scrap together a season. I believe that the show is just as good as it was in S1. The only thing is that the characters need motivation (similar to the NYC explosion in S1). However, I would not say that the show isn't as good as S1 because each season since has had it's own pitfalls, but it's triumphs as well.
Thanks!

While the first two seasons were reasonably good ( the first one was exceptional and the seocnd so-so), here the series is clearly losing focus. After having saved the world and having fought Sylar, the "Heroes" are having some difficulties doing something new. The ides here obviously is to at times turn everything upside down by giving most characters a dark side, except Hiro. Unfortunately this does not work at all since the whole idea of the show was to show regular characters being heroic; and since they very often only have superpowers that they do not put to any great use, the fact that they develop a darker side does also not help at all. The acting is good and the episodes can be at times very entertaining but overall the series is really losing steam here. In order to renew it they even shortly thry to humanize Sylar. Also a major problem is these series were characters die and come back all the time. While it is supposed to be unrealistic this premise does not help at all to focus or give a clear line since anything can happen but in the wrong sense.

Season 3 started slowly but most of us heroes fans were so desperate after a 9 month vacation(due to the writer's strike), that we took what we could get. the writers have not been able to recapture the magic of season 1. they keep bringing in too many new characters that just takes away from the harmony of the original cast. one of the plueses of this season is that sylar has a bigger role and they finally figured out that angela petrelli could be a major player. i love the show as a whole and will be around for season 4, 5 and 6 hopefully.

Season 3 of this once great show continues the decline. And instead of one story arc, it contains two distinct stories.

In "Villains," there is a mass escape of villains from Level 5, a detention facility used by The Company to house evil people with superpowers. Noah Bennett (Jack Coleman) gets to work trying to track them down. He's surprised to see his new partner is Sylar (Zachary Quinto) who is trying to give up his murderous ways and get back on the straight and narrow. Can they catch these bad men? Will Sylar remain a hero?

The second half of the season found our characters on the run. "Fugitives" found now Senator Nathan Petrelli (Adrian Pasdar) heading a task force aimed at bringing all those with special powers in "for their own protection." Of course, he's failed to mention his own unique powers. Leading the charge against him is his own brother Peter (Milo Ventimiglia). Will Nathan see the error of his ways before everyone is captured or killed?

The problem with this season lay in the story telling. When the show was actually good (back in season 1), the episodes spent time with the characters, letting us get to know them so we cared about what they were doing or why. That really drew me in. Here, we are forced plot points with cardboard characters. Heck, I had a hard time keeping track of who was doing what to whom it changed so often. And I just don't care about the characters the way I used to because there is no depth to them.

Then there's the case of Sylar. Don't get me wrong, I think Zachary Quinto is a great actor. But the way they keep including that character in events is forced and makes me wonder if we'll ever actually go somewhere with the story.

Yes, I am still intrigued to see where they are going next to keep watching, but just barely. They seriously need to make some tough decisions about how to best move the story forward and then stick to it, or they will continue to lose their audience.

Although I do agree with most critics that Season 1 set the bar for the show and that Season two was, indeed, weak, Heroes Season 3, which consists of both Volumes 3 and 4, was, in my opinion, brilliant! I understand that it was thrown together in an effort to salvage the direction of the show after the shortened Season 2 due to the writter strike, but I enjoyed the concept very much! I can't help but to wonder if I would have liked the original Volume 3 plotline formally known as "Exodus", which was about the aftermath of the virus actually being released. It's a big mess to clean up, and hard to recover from! I'm sure it would've been good, but I don't know if it would have been better than "Villains".
What I love most about Season 3, Volume 3, is the change most of the characters went through. I love the promo line, "In every HERO, there is a VILLIAN". In this volume, we saw the characters such as Peter Petrelli go down a dark path. He goes from trying to save a possible world that his future self, who seemed a bit villianous, warned him about to absorbing Sylar's ability that gave him the hunger that makes Sylar who he is. Then there are characters like Sylar that goes from trying to murder for more power to trying to change into a "good son". In the episode, "I Am Become Death", we see Sylar as a father who has put it evil ways behind him. There are more characters that went through personality changes in this Volume such as Nathan Petrelli who goes from doing "Gods work" to taking over the company that was responsible for the future that Peter tried to save. It is through this failure that leads Nathan to turn against his kind which takes us to Volume 4 known as "Fugitives". Towards the end of Volume 3, the characters that were on the path of a personality change went full circle and ended up as their original selves. It was a brilliant display of GOOD vs EVIL!
I think this is a great buy for all Heroes fans whether it's as a collectors item or a great Heroes experience!

This is closer to what the 2nd season should have been, with evil villains and a few questions answered. Is it as good as the first season? No, not even that close. Is it much better then the 2nd? Yes, and well worth watching again.

While I can not recommend this to everyone, if you could watch season two without grumbling (much) then season 3 will probably be a light at the end of the tunnel. If season two was complete garbage and turned you off the series completely, I'm not sure if this will bring you back.