Heroes Reborn

Close to the original series, except for one tiny little detail: novelty… The same plates are now served cold as a caricature of themselves: the short sequences are punctuated by a metronome, the interlaced narrative flows are multiplied, these awkward silences with the camera panning on a digitally reprocessed scenery are repeated indefinitely and the story keeps looping around these not bad guys doing bad things by mistake or for higher purposes. The underlying message hasn't changed: tolerate the difference, but the perspective on the world sticks to the point of view of a wealthy white Christian American middle aged man: the world is a chaotic and dangerous place requiring a revamp by informed people, using violence. I've survived the show until the half of the fourth episode and will stop here. I understand that my expectations for anything surprising will not not be fulfilled.

Reviewers Notes: 1. The original Heroes was one of the best written best directed and best produced shows in TV history. Its only crime was to appear as a wide-net network show just as the TV landscape was splintering into a zillion pieces. The exec who decided to deep-six the show should have lost his parking spot in the VIP zone, at the very least. While the entire series was iconic and wonderfully new (SAVE THE CHEERLEADER SAVE THE WORLD) the last season with the carnival locale presented one of the most memorable stories I have ever seen with brilliant acting and writing.

2. So that's a tough act to follow. Going into REBORN I was wondering if this was a sincere effort (as in, we goofed and we are going to fix it) or merely an exploitation of the remnant audience for fast ad profits in a new TV landscape where highly specialized shows, produced for cheap, can show a nice bottom line if pitched to a segmented but identifiable audience...?

3. Based on the 2-hour opener, looks like they are taking the low road. The show seemed to have cheap production values, some of the special effects were terrible, the dialog was far below the original series, and the electricity seemed gone.

4. Reminds this reviewer of the old joke about the test of an optimist - a young boy is taken to a locked room and finds it filled to the ceiling with horse manure. He is seized with joy and starts to dig. When the tester asks "why" he replies, with this much horse poop, there must be a pony in here somewhere!

5. We eagerly await the pony. But confidence is not high.

I was a MASSIVE fan of Heroes throughout its original run. I thoroughly enjoyed all 4 seasons and was still watching it religiously after 90% of people had jumped ship by the end of Season 4. I picked up & read every little bit of information that would add to the lore & immersion of the Heroes universe & just simply loved the whole concept. So when Reborn was announced I was overwhelmed with excitement, but at the same time I was very, very cautious as to how and if they were going to be able pull it off, as historically reboots are often complete flops. Knowing that Noah (played by the excellent Jack Coleman) was returning gave me at least some peace of mind as he was the anchor of the whole show, but I still went in to the premiere will extremely low expectations. That being said, even with these low expectations, I've come away after 13 episodes feeling HUGELY disappointed, and absolutely LIVID with the finale.

The show failed in pretty much every category it could fail in. The writing was awful. The actors were poorly directed. The script was shocking. The pacing was ludicrous. The CGI was absolutely cringeworthy. The character arcs were laughable & character development in itself was virtually non-existent - which resulted in literally no reason to passionately care about any single person unless they were a well developed character from the original series. Every now & then there were glimmers of what made the original series so great, and the June 13th two-parter was simply superb. But on the whole, if Reborn was a standalone series & it didn't rely so heavily on people clinging to nostalgic memories of the original, then I don't think it would've managed to retain even a fraction of the viewership that it ended up holding on to.

As much as I absolutely adore the Heroes Universe and the original characters, Reborn has to be the worst high-budget network show I have watched in my life. It is an insult to the original & Tim Kring should frankly feel ashamed of himself.

If you're a fan of the original like me then for the love of Sylar stay away from Reborn. It will do nothing but taint your fond memories of the original series.

I'd like to consider myself a huge fan of this show. I understand the time jump but given the pre-story of the show, the mini-series seems to be dragging at at snail pace. Maybe it is just me wanting the story to pick up from the beginning since its only 13 episodes. A few things that frustrate me. The married couple killing evos "out of nowhere" kind of seems like they have one purpose to the show which is to avenge the death of their son, but that deranged batsh!t wife, I honestly think she has no purpose in "heroes". It probably would have been better if Zachery Levi's character was the lone warrior hunting evos down himself, finding his purpose of why he's doing so but she needs to go! HRG's absent memory is bizarre, I mean given the character's actions throughout heroes, he was always for protecting Claire, now all of a sudden he's out protect all the evos that are left in the world because of one KEY memory is gone that would actually prevent him from doing so. I hope they reveal what he wanted to forget, soon. There are a lot of other things, but these two stuck out the most. I do enjoy the series but they really need to pick up the pace.

I'm just not completely sold on Heroes Reborn. Unfortunately it just doesn't compare to the first few seasons of the original show. While it's not bad and it does have potential to progress into a semi-decent show I still think it needs to iron out the kinks. So far I don't love the villains and aside from the original cast the new characters are a bit weak. Maybe with time and as their true potential starts to show I may feel more invested.

If I could change anything I would make the first season less "end of the world" catastrophe focused. They really just delved into it without properly establishing a backstory. And I'm not sure if I just can't remember the finale of Heroes but the continuing story just doesn't make sense. This show could be much worse though.