Spice up your failing TV show with carnies

By Tony Black | Friday, October 2, 2009, 01:54 PM

This blog entry could also be titled “My take on season 4 of ‘Heroes’”

The newest season of “Heroes” starts by introducing us to this season’s new ‘carnival’ of characters, literally. The premiere opens with a funeral scene where this season’s villain named Samuel is delivering the eulogy for his brother who we all know will turn out to still be alive and show up later in the season. After the funeral ends, the mourners gather up and start walking toward a carnival on the horizon.

This is how I imagine the brainstorming session “Heroes” creator Tim Kring had with the producers of the show about season 4:

PRODUCERS: Well, Tim, ratings are slipping. The premiere of season 2 had almost 17 million viewers while the premiere of season 3 only had a little over 10 million. What are you planning to do in season 4 to breath new life into this franchise?

TIM KRING: Carnies.

PRODUCERS: Huh?

TIM KRING: Carnies.

PRODUCERS: Carnies? Do you mean people that work at carnivals?

TIM KRING: Yep.

PRODUCERS: Tim, (I assume they are on a first-name basis with him) what will these ‘carnies’ be doing?

TIM KRING: Villains.

PRODUCERS: Okay, so they will be the villains in season 4?

TIM KRING: Sure.

PRODUCERS: Sure? Are you saying they might not be the villains? What will the overall story arc of the season be?

TIM KRING: Dunno.

PRODUCERS: Well, okay then. Here is your money.

I mean who thought this would be a good idea? The season 4 premiere had only a little over 6.2 million viewers. Almost a third the viewership of the season 2 premiere.

Why is this show still on? A show about people with super powers is such a good idea but they just don’t make good choices. These characters barely use their abilities anymore:

• A little part of Hiro seems to die every time he uses his powers so he doesn’t really use them anymore.
• Parkman tries to quit using his mind control powers as if they were a drug.

This all stems from not knowing how to write about people with super powers. Giving Sylar and Peter the ability to “absorb” other abilities makes them too powerful for the writers to handle so they keep developng story-lines that prevent them from actually using their powers (season 1 is the exception):

• Season 2: Peter has amnesia and doesn’t know that he powers. Sylar is recuperating after the events of season 1 and finds that his powers are gone.
• Season 3: Peter discovers his dad is alive and his dad steals Peter’s powers. Peter is now only able to absorb 1 power at a time. Sylar is tricked by Angela Petrelli into believing that he is her son. She teaches him to control his hunger for killing people / absorbing their abilities and he tries to become a better person. Once he realizes she is lying he goes on a quest to find his real parents which means no interaction with the other characters of the show.
• Season 4 (so far): Peter’s ability to absorb powers returns but he distances himself from other ‘heroes’ and focuses on being a paramedic. Sylar’s mind is trapped inside Parkman while his body has been shape-shifted to look like and have the memories of Nathan Petrelli who died in the previous season.

See how they write ways for them to not use their abilities?

This show needs a new direction fast or I can’t see it surviving another season. But I’ll keep watching it because bad TV can be just as entertaining as good TV.

Tell me what you think about this season of “Heroes”.

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‘Zombieland’ leaves you hungry for more

By Zack McGhee | Friday, October 2, 2009, 11:16 AM

Zombie preparedness is an increasingly controversial subject. Yesterday, for example, the University of Florida discarded its emergency plan for dealing with just such an outbreak. I only hope they’re ready for a mountain of liability when their campus is overrun by the undead and no one has any idea which exit to use.

Zombieland stars Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin as a motley crew of survivors in the zombie apocalypse. That’s a winning formula any way you slice it. But although it’s consistently fun, Zombieland only really succeeds when it breaks free from convention and greets us with the unexpected.

In voiceover narration that teeters on excessive, Columbus (Eisenberg) gives us the rundown on where things stand, and how he’s managed to survive. The key to his success? Isolation. In post-apocalytic times as tough as these, no one wants to get too close.

So when Columbus first encounters Tallahassee (Harrelson), he refuses to learn his name. Instead, they don monikers derived from their desired destinations. They team up for a ride, and before long they’re hornswoggled into chauffeuring con artists Wichita (Stone) and her younger sister, Little Rock (Breslin), on a road trip to a California amusement park.

Zombieland prevails on a lot of fronts. The performances are an unmitigated success, with the actors bringing a lot to their characters. There’s smart, clever dialogue in the screenplay by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, but they also ape genre conventions without dissecting them. It’s a stylish feature debut for director Ruben Fleischer, but even at a lean 81 minutes, Zombieland is also a little sloppy.

I winced when Wichita was reminiscing about seeing her first R-rated movie — Anaconda. But Anaconda is not rated R, and how hard is that to check? There’s also a scene toward the end of the film where one of the characters is wandering alone in a place for an unknown reason, attacked, not shown to escape, and then shows up fine in the next scene. We can assume this person escaped somehow, but it makes for bad continuity.

Still, I liked Zombieland. It’s a good time at the movies. And there’s an unexpected treat that I won’t spoil for you that elevates the movie to a higher plane of comedic joy. To quote Matt Singer for the second consecutive day, “The thing that I liked best about Zombieland — the thing EVERYONE’S gonna like best about Zombieland — is the thing you can’t talk about.”

P.S. Don’t miss Sir Critic’s take on Zombieland.

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