I agree, of course.
]]>Frozen Time
Caitlin is living a wonderful life in Montreal with Peter: a peaceful marriage, running a bar, and Peter working as a paramedic. But her nightmares remind her of a virus-ravaged future. And Caitlin starts to realize that time around her seems to run in a loop and oddly, she isn’t aging. Despite 40 years of happiness, she remains frozen in time. She realizes that she is trapped in a mysterious pocket dimension.
Peter admits the truth. He explains that he intentionally trapped them both here.
At the end of Season 2, Peter was crushed by his failure to retrieve Caitlin from the future. With Hiro's help, he repeatedly revisited the pivotal moment from "Powerless" where Peter prevented the viral outbreak -- and erased the future where Caitlin was stranded.
Peter had no way to find her again. His power and Hiro's did not allow him to traverse parallel timelines. He asked Hiro for help.
Peter and Hiro tried stopping Peter from stopping the pandemic, restoring the viral-ravaged future from which they could save Caitlin. But then they couldn't stop the pandemic at all, which would turn Caitlin's future into their present. They were forced to reset time to the way it was before.
Peter and Hiro tried delaying Peter's confrontation with Hiro and then Adam, giving Peter more time to visit the future to find Caitlin, minutes after Peter had failed to rescue her. But two time travel events in proximity created a burst of temporal momentum that caused them to return weeks after Adam had already unleashed the pandemic, and it was too late to stop it. They were forced to reset time to the way it was before.
Peter and Hiro tried delaying Peter's confrontation, then retrieving Caitlin at a later point in the future. But at that later point, Caitlin had already been infected; bringing her home would again turn the present into Caitlin's future. They were forced to reset time to the way it was before.
Desperate, Peter collaborated with Hiro in a fourth effort, combining their time-travel abilities. Together, they created a pocket dimension where Caitlin’s disease progression was looped, never getting better or worse, and where Peter and Caitlin could enjoy a happy life within a temporal bubble of bliss.
For 40 years, Peter and Caitlin thrived within this time bubble. But now it’s collapsing, and Caitlin leaving the bubble means her death.
Caitlin is saddened that her life has been cut short by a loop and mourns the lost potential, lost opportunities and lost life. Peter offers to take her wherever she wants to go for her last few hours of life; the loop will prevent her from infecting for a few hours after leaving the bubble.
Caitlin asks Peter to take them to shortly before they first met: when Peter was an amnesiac in Ireland, chained up in a storage container. Caitlin plants information to alter events, ensuring that Elle, the superhuman who was hunting Peter, and who has electrical superpowers, will find Peter before Caitlin's brother came across Peter.
As a result, in this altered timeline, Caitlin never meets Peter, never goes to the future, never gets stranded, never gets sick. Instead, the role of Peter's companion is now occupied by Elle, who accompanies Peter into the future and whose powers enable her to not be separated from Peter.
In this new timeline, Caitlin lives a life untouched by Peter’s influence, while Peter forgets her entirely.
The story concludes as Peter returns to the moment he first attempted to save Caitlin: the press conference in “Powerless.”
The altered timeline erases Peter's memory of her, explaining why he never mentioned Caitlin again.
And so, in the folds of time, Caitlin’s fate finds resolution, even if it remains hidden from the world.
**
I would note that HEROES and FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS in 2007 were dealing with different narrative situations. I'm not super-familiar with sports, but I assume that sports matches and a pandemic are events that take place on pretty different scales. It may work for football games to happen offscreen. That wouldn't work for an end-of-the-world situation (although MILLENNIUM tried to wrap up a global pandemic between Seasons 2 - 3 and to laughable results).
HEROES had planned a 24 episode arc for Season 2: the first 11 episodes were Volume 2, "Generations", and revealed that superhumans, including Sylar, were becoming infected with a debilitating virus. Peter and his girlfriend Caitlin (Katie Carr) accidentally visited the near future in which the virus had begun infecting normal humans, and 93 percent of the human race had died. Peter lost control of his time travel powers and was sent back to the present before he could bring Caitlin back with him. Episode 10 revealed that the legendary samurai Takezo Kensei, also the immortal known as Adam Monroe (David Anders), had created the Shanti Virus as a means of population control and sought to unleash it. Monroe would later goad and taunt Peter that the woman he loved was trapped in a terrible future.
"Generations" was to end with Episode 11 in which Peter would fail to stop the virus from breaking out, heralding the future he saw and in which Caitlin was stranded. The town of Odessa, Texas would be quarantined. Nathan, announcing the situation to the press, would fall ill and collapse.
Then we'd have Volume 3, "Exodus", across Episodes 12 - 24. The heroes would try to contain the virus while Peter would trying to regain control of his time travel powers before changing the future, so that he could save Caitlin before that future timeline was erased.
When the HEROES creators realized that they would have to stop production with Season 2, Episode 11, they were facing a difficult situation. Due to their shooting schedule and contractual agreements, even if the strike were resolved, HEROES would be filming Season 3, not the second half of Season 2. The viral outbreak storyline was not something they could cover with a time gap and references to offscreen events. It needed to be a current and immediate situation if the story were to be told at all. Also critical to the story were Caitlin and Adam Monroe, which was another problem.
With the strike and the hiatus, HEROES had lost full access to David Anders, whose Adam Monroe was intended as the primary villain of Season 2. And HEROES' contract with Katie Carr to play Caitlin expired as well, and my understanding is that once Season 2 shut down, Carr was travelling between the United States, England and Australia, engaged in a modelling career and studying screenwriting in London. The bookings and studio sets HEROES had made for locations to render the viral quarantine of Odessa, Texas were also lost.
They'd lost the ability to use David Anders as the primary villain, they'd lost Katie Carr, they'd lost their preproduction work, they'd lost the immediacy of following up on Episode 11 a week later. With all this, the HEROES creators felt it simply didn't make sense to end Episode 11 on a clifffhanger and do the "Exodus" viral outbreak storyline in Season 3 in 6 - 12 months' time. They had no way of following up on it properly with all their losses.
If they'd done "Exodus" for Season 3, they would have had to write David Anders out with minimal appearances; they would have been unable to feature the Caitlin character significantly or at all. They would be following up on a viral outbreak cliffhanger that had aired 10 months ago, losing the opportunity for Season 3 to offer a clean and clear jumping on point for viewers as is expected for the season premiere of a major network show.
Given the multiple characters and arcs unfolding simultaneously in Season 2, it was a lot to ask a 2007 - 2008 audience to remember. HEROES was only available to stream via NBC Direct for US residents and wouldn't be available on iTunes until 2009.
Even as recently as 2021: I watched THE FLASH where the first three episodes of Season 7 were devoted to the mirror dimension plotline of Season 6, a season that had been cut short due to the pandemic hiatus. Like HEROES, THE FLASH was off the air for 10 months. Unlike HEROES, THE FLASH didn't (and couldn't) wrap up its truncated season and had to devote the first three episodes of Season 7 to resolving Season 6.
I was a devoted fan of THE FLASH, and I watched Season 7's first three episodes with great confusion. It had been 10 months since Season 6 and I had largely forgotten all the details of the storyline. I couldn't remember who Eva McCulloch was or what she wanted or how the artificial speed force tied into it or how mirror duplicates were involved. I couldn't remember. And I was too busy to rewatch Season 6. Due to limited recall, THE FLASH's sixth season opening was baffling to me.
And THE FLASH in Season 6 had a lot less going on than HEROES of Season 2, so I would posit that the average viewer would have found Season 3 of HEROES even more confusing than Season 6 of THE FLASH had HEROES attempted to do the "Exodus" storyline 10 months delayed.
I think the HEROES team saw that the virus plot was not something they would be able to follow up on effectively, so they reshot Episode 11 slightly so that Peter would stop the virus, and the replacement cliffhanger wouldn't require the audience to remember the Shanti Virus storyline when Season 3 premiered.
And on the whole, the creators' predictions seem to have been pretty accurate. David Anders was tied up with an independent movie when Season 3 started and had to be written out fast; Katie Carr was, I believe, in Australia. Ignoring Caitlin was a bad option, but there were no good (or available) options to bring her back.
From a writing standpoint, it was also difficult to address the emotional fallout of Caitlin's lack of fate. But the strike made it impossible to film anything new with Katie Carr for Episode 11; even if they attempted to save her with dialogue referring to her being offscreen, how could they save her from a timeline that was gone? Given that Peter couldn't control his time travel powers and was fighting Hiro at the end of Season 2, what options had there been to resolve Caitlin's storyline before the virus future was revented? Addressing Caitlin was a problem; ignoring Caitlin was a problem. HEROES is about ordinary people in extraordinary situations. Peter Petrelli's character is defined by his empathy and how he connects with people, reflected in his power of empathetic ability replication. Caitlin is an ordinary person, so leaving her in a horrific future undermines HEROES' entire mission statement.
Caitlin is an innocent person whom Peter loved, so Peter not saving her undermines Peter's characterization. Peter would either seem callous for dismissing her situation or be shattered by his inability to return to that future to save her, which would tie his character up in a distant storyline. As a result, the writers made the displeasing -- but understandable -- decision to simply never refer to it again: to bring it up would either undermine Peter or overcomplicate Peter. Their expectation was that when Season 3 premiered in September 2008, the majority of the audience would have forgotten about Caitlin, a character who had not been seen onscreen since November 2007, almost 11 months.
So, there were really no good options here: ignore Caitlin and move on from the virus plot and seem callous to anyone who remembered the character. Focus on Caitlin and the virus plot and Season 3's first impression would be that it was still mired in a storyline that, without immediacy and recent memory, was now difficult to follow and remember and also difficult to film due to losing the guest actors.
They chose to ignore Caitlin and hoped the audience would too... and I can't say the alternative would been any better. So I forgive the writers for choosing the simplest bad option over the complicated and confusing bad option. And I think they forgave themselves.
What HEROES should have done, however, which they never did -- they should have devoted one of their many webcomics to resolving Caitlin's story so that fans who did remember and care about Caitlin wouldn't think poorly of Peter for never mentioning her again.
I would note that the Charlie character (Jayma Mays) in Season 1 was really beloved as Hiro's love interest. She even inspired a tie-in novel, SAVING CHARLIE. But Charlie's character was unsustainable for the show as a regular, and she died a terrible fate. She wasn't mentioned in Seasons 2 or 3.
And yet, the HEROES creators brought the character back in Season 4 to give her a (somewhat) happy ending. I think they would have liked to do something similar for Caitlin... but how?
I imagine the reason the creators didn't at least produce a comic book is because with the viral outbreak timeline having been erased, the writers were at a loss for how to even find Caitlin. Even in a comic book: how were they supposed to get Peter back to that future timeline that was no longer available, even to a time traveller?
I myself have needed 17 years to come up with a solution...
]]>And that was because FNL was stuck with a format that made sense. Time had to move on. But Heroes wasn't. They could've done anything. Even if they didn't want to use Caitlin anymore or couldn't use the actress, there could've been a throwaway line where Peter mentions that he went to the future and either brought her home or left her there or whatever.
Seems like a lazy answer based on either forgetting to resolve it or not caring enough.
]]>It's funny -- Season 2 of HEROES was in 2007. It was 17 years ago. But I still feel really sad about the Caitlin character.
Since it was 17 years ago, I should probably explain: Caitlin was an Irish barmaid with no superpowers, whom Peter Petrelli romanced in Season 2. They accidentally visited a future timeline where Earth was ravaged by a terrible virus. Peter and Caitlin were separated, and when he tried to save her, Peter accidentally travelled back to the present day. Peter couldn't go back for Caitlin until he'd acquired a cure for the virus and regained control of his time travel powers.
Originally, Season 2 was going to have Peter return to the future and Caitlin would re-enter the storyline. Unfortunately, due to the writers strike of 2007, the 24 episode order got cut to 11 episodes. The 11th episode was originally a mid-season cliffhanger with the virus being unleashed.
But when the writers saw that the strike was coming, they realized they had no idea when they'd be back on the air after their 11th episode; they hadn't even started filming the 12th. With the likelihood that it could be as much as a year before HEROES could air another episode, the creators decided to reshoot their 11th episode cliffhanger. They instead made Season 2, Episode 11 a season finale where the virus was contained, averting the future of viral contagion... which also erased the future timeline in which Caitlin was trapped.
Then it became difficult to follow up on Caitlin. Season 2 came to its abbreviated end in December 2007, the airdate for Season 3's premiere was September 2008. Heroes had been off the air for 10 months, as opposed to a usual 2 - 3 month summer break. Ten months was way too long to reopen virus plotline. Which meant the show couldn't revisit Caitlin.
When asked about Caitlin in pre-Season 3 publicity and if her character would reappear or even be mentioned, showrunner Tim Kring said, "No, we passed it. We leapfrogged it," explaining the virus plot was just not something they could revisit, and understandably so. A season premiere, especially after 10 month hiatus, needs a clean slate. I understand the decision.
And I know it's ridiculous to still feel sad about it. But it bothers me.
]]>That said... I'd say that HEROES demonstrated that Tim Kring is exceptionally great at conceiving, pitching, selling and producing a show: concepts, cinematography and director teams, amazing casting, wonderful locations and high production values -- but he's been exceptionally poor at actually showrunning a series, with Season 2, 3A, 4 and REBORN revealing a lot of incoherent character behaviours, filibustering dialogue to stall and delay, and a total inability to stage a compelling climax, payoff and conclusion. TOUCH was also about the same.
When HEROES succeeded in Seasons 1 and 3B ("Fugitives"), it was because Bryan Fuller was working on the show and Tim Kring clearly saw and deferred to Bryan Fuller's genius storytelling. Fuller has become a problematic figure in recent years, but I think it shows that Kring is a great TV producer who needs to be partnered with a great TV writer-showrunner.
I made the following comments to Rewatch Podcast, who are doing a rewatch-review of the series:
I honestly never found HEROES or HEROES REBORN to be *bad* in the sense of actively hurtful, harmful and abusive to its audience. We're not talking about something like the Professor getting his brain sucked out and getting shot and blown up, or Wade being sent to a rape camp, or home being invaded by Kromaggs and Rembrandt abandoning us all to die.
I would say that HEROES was more... incompetent. It was counterintuitive and seemed incapable of setting up its payoffs or paying off its setups. It was puzzling, confusing, baffling, and meandering. It was not a *bad* show in the sense of SLIDERS constantly trying to hurt its actors or previous writers and by extension hurting the fans. It's more that HEROES was inept. Ineffectual. Inefficient. I think incompetent is probably the right word.
I guess it was a bit like those post-Kevin Williamson episodes of DAWSON'S CREEK. You liked and disliked some of the episodes, I only watched up to Season 4, but my argument was not that the writers were bad, but that the series was defined by the voice of a very specific set of experiences and a very specific style from Kevin Williamson, and when Williamson left, the show never regained its footing.
With HEROES, I think that despite Tim Kring creating the show, the reason it worked was because of Bryan Fuller. Bryan Fuller understood that with the budget and effects limitations, HEROES was going to be defined by what I call "conversational conflict" or as detractors might describe it, people standing around talking (or "a Kevin Smith movie").
Fuller understood to make each conversation an exploration of the characters' psyches: their fears, insecurities, failings, weaknesses, needs, desires. Fuller understood how to make people standing around talking into something that was usually compelling, and he really raised the quality of the show within its limitations.
Bryan Fuller left after Season 1, and unfortunately, Seasons 2 and 3A deteriorated in his absence. The remaining writers just didn't have Fuller's gift for conversational conflict, which in their hands became filibustering and stalling followed by shock value scenes that lacked Fuller's talent for characterization. Fuller came back about 1/6 into Season 3B and noticeably, the quality leapt upward. But then Fuller left before Season 4 started, and the results were... I mean, when we're not talking about SLIDERS, I don't like to say that a writer is bad or that a creator is bad.
Fuller had a talent for finding ways to limit onscreen use of superpowers and make it look like conflict and characterization. In the later writers' hands, it looked like avoidance and authorial dictate.
I think they just didn't have Fuller's unique touch and ability to write a very difficult show under very difficult restrictions. Superpowers on a TV budget from 2006 - 2010 was really hard; SMALLVILLE went from 2001 - 2011 and SMALLVILLE couldn't afford to let Clark fly or and couldn't even manufacture a Sueprman costume for the finale. HEROES struggled even more because SMALLVILLE usually just had two or three superpowered characters in an episode whereas HEROES would have anywhere from 6- 10 per episode. Kring's ambitions outstripped his budget and his talent pool (once Fuller left).
Bryan Fuller himself is a pretty problematic figure today, but I don't question his writing skills.
Anyway. I know that Tom and Cory will always be fair, and they genuinely understand television despite never having made any. Tom and Cory understand that TV is limited by what's performable and filmable, and they grasp the visual limitations and don't ask for the impossible. But often, HEROES unfortunately fell short of even the minimally achievable.
I agree, of course.
]]>Why oh why oh why oh why did Tim Kring, knowing this was a single-season mini-series, END ON A CLIFFHANGER?!?!?!?!?
Tim Kring is teasing (and threatening) some follow-up to HEROES REBORN, NBC president Bob Greenblatt (also the guy who called SLIDERS in Season 3 to be much stronger than Seasons 1 - 2) said that if Kring had more ideas, there could be more HEROES. Ugh.
The sad thing is, the series finale wasn't even that bad, but it had the best and worst of HEROES. Unlike the previous episodes, it was filled with incident and didn't feel slow and stalled. Like the previous episodes, there was no care for theme, characterization and storytelling. With some tweaks and adjustments, HEROES REBORN could have been about sacrifice.
If Claire's death had been presented as her sacrificing herself for her children, if Tommy's identity crisis had been shown as him sacrificing his identity to save the world, if Carlos' issue had been that he'd taken credit for someone else giving up their lives -- then Noah's death would have worked. But REBORN was far, far too late in indicating that Malina and Tommy's powers could combine while being lethal to the conduit.
It's a real shame, and it just goes to show how HEROES REBORN would have been better off if Tim Kring would take a step back from writing and hire someone else to produce the scripts.
]]>I thought that he shared Malina's power at the end, but none of it really makes sense. He took Claire's power and killed her. Then he took Hiro's power. But they never really said which kind of leech he was. They didn't seem to care.
I mean, maybe? It seemed like an entirely new power - not just "pushing" the flare away. And his taking away of powers was permanent, right? So if he leeched Malina's power, he would've leeched it when they were kids too. In fact, that was the reason they were split up. So why be un-split up later?
But, yeah, it doesn't matter. They didn't seem to care.
]]>HRG was a main character, so he got a death scene. This bugs me on TV... Important characters never suffer as much as extras. Like on Arrow when poison gas kills extras in seconds, but doesn't harm any main characters.
]]>How come time travel powers + wind (?) powers = Fifth Element powers? If Nathan/Tommy's power was to leech powers (like his uncle and grandfather), then why doesn't he ever do this again? Does he only steal one power once and that's the one he gets forever? How come the lab technician was killed immediately after he touched Nathan/Malina, but HRG just goes white and then dies?
Why would any of these reboot/sequels EVER end on another cliffhanger?
]]>The potential was here. I just wish the writing was there. The fanfic writer in me kinda wants to take the ideas and rewrite the whole damn thing, but that would take too much time.
]]>I suspect a lot of the casting choices were due to budget. The HEROES REBORN actors are all excellent. I wouldn't blame them for any of the material aside from their agreeing to perform it. All the ideas here -- digitizing superpowers! Picking up years after the Season 4 cliffhanger! Creating distance from Sylar and Peter! The twins! The villains are actually trying to save humanity! There's neat stuff here -- but it would have been best if Kring had written brief summaries of the 13-episodes -- and then had a collaborator taking over fleshing out each episode and making sure each installment and each arc were focused, tight and meaningful and that every character's line and action informed and revealed.
A lot of the developments are just artless. For example, the idea that Tommy is actually suffering from amnesia is not built to -- there aren't clues and hints that mislead but fit. The memory wipe, as a blanket explanation, doesn't explain why Tommy doesn't notice all the gaps in his memory. There's a lot of blatant filler in these episodes like the videogame segments. None of the scenes for Luke actually address his hatred for superhumans and discovering he's one of them. These are all problems that, I think, are present in any first draft; it's important to then refine, rewrite and revise.
Instead, I often get the sense that Kring is just not going through the process of developing and reworking his material. This was something Bryan Fuller did for him and, for whatever reason, Kring has failed to find someone else to perform that role. I don't know why. When Fuller returned to HEROES for Volume 4 ("Fugitives," where the government is hunting superhumans), Kring readily deferred to Fuller, so it's not like Kring was dismissive of collaboration at a later date.
Not a popular opinion here: I thought Volume 4 was excellent. I'm not saying it wasn't filled with logical errors, but with Fuller back, everything made *emotional* sense. And then, with Volume 5, the circus, -- I know you guys liked it, but to me, it was much like HEROES REBORN -- slow, bland, vague and boring.
When HEROES REBORN was finding writers, there were plenty of available veterans writers from BUFFY, ANGEL, SMALLVILLE, THE DEAD ZONE, LIE TO ME out there, all with experience writing superhero shows filled with stirring visuals and punchy dialogue and striking characters. Kring is good at conception, he needs a partner to help him write the scripts.
It's a real shame he didn't do this and it's a really sad way for HEROES to go out.
]]>And I agree - I think he needs someone to focus him a little bit. What's interesting to me is that I liked the idea that it was a new story with new characters when it was announced - that our main characters from the original run would be there but would be supporting instead of leading. But I found myself so uninterested in the new characters that I actually perked up more when we saw Mohinder or Angela or Parkman.
His ideas are good - I thought it was pretty clever that Tommy and Malina ended up being the twins. It was a neat twist that I didn't see coming. I think the world they set up was pretty cool, and I think it perfectly played off how season 4 left off. I LOVE that he left Sylar out of it. And, for the most part, the Petrellis.
But the new characters weren't interesting, entire plots (the luchador guy) went nowhere, and the acting has been pretty weak. For the most part, I think Zachary Levi is the only one that seems interested in being there.
]]>