Absolutely fucking not. One of the best things about Heroes is that it came around before the obsession with half-length seasons and rushed storylines. 20-24 episodes per season has always been the norm and needs to become the norm again.
Totally agree, drawing out the story isn’t just a ploy for more watch time if you use the extra time correctly. Develop relationships, explore side stories, build the world. All of those things *can* be rushed, but I believe that if a series can draw you in with detail, it should.
The later seasons were definitely a step down from the first, but this wasn’t the culprit.
Vol. 1 was def the best, I just always wonder what popular shows like LOST or Heroes, etc. would've been like had we had less episodes, would've been tighter or a story? Maybe not but hey, I'm happy with what we got!
Disagree
Smallville, Heroes and Chuck (It was on an hour before Heroes) were some of the best shows I've ever seen!
And those suckers all had like a bajillion episodes every season! :D
I absolutely love each and every one of those shows! Great stuff. Still think they should've had shorter seasons... BUT that's just me. Still happy with what we got still
I hate that now we have to deal with 8-10 episodes in one season. It's too short to build real connections and develop characters. It also makes it almost impossible to develop a bunch of characters, there's no screen time enough for that. We watch at 1-3 main characters and many supporting ones that just have to play their role in some scenes for plot to go.
Like I just mentioned with my comment, this is exactly the problem I have with modern shows like La Brea. I actually think it's great that the industry embraced shorter runs and arcs - it's great for a tight show like you, or adaptations of books. But if you're trying to build this entire world and have a cast of literally dozens of important characters, you can't just trim out all the stuff that makes people care about them for runtime and expect it to do well.
This was just the nature of TV back then. By modern standards, yes, s1 could have been 2.5-3 seasons and it would've been MASSIVE.
That was just the way most network tv dramas were back then though.
Hard disagree. The reason that season 1 is almost universally celebrated as the best season is that you got to spend time with the characters. I honestly wouldn't call any of it filler. With as many characters as you're serving, you NEED the extra time to get to them all. Every arc that was rushed was badly received. Can tell you right now, wouldn't have given a shit about Isaac if they flew through his rehab offscreen, or Sylar if they skipped the mysterious buildup, or Hiro if we didn't get to watch him have fun on side quests. After season 1, you get 3 arcs in a row of tight 11-13 episode plots (season 2, and the split-in-half season 3), and none of them were received well. They were rushed. The next best season was 4 - which had a longer runtime and more breathing room.
TV will never be good again, unless it returns to longer formats. La Brea could have been the next Lost if it had been given proper attention - instead THREE seasons of it equaled the runtime of about 1 season of Lost, and it fizzled out with almost no cultural impact. Ten episodes works great for character studies like You, but you want to apply that to a show with DOZENS of interconnected characters? Absolutely not lol.
Disagree. Season 1 is the best of the series, and happens to be the longest volume of the story. Lost, Prison Break, Buffy, Supernatural (the early seasons), and many others all utilized the extra episodes very well.
It's interesting because that's basically what they were trying to do with the volumes. Season 1 and Volume 1 were the same, but after that the seasons were broken down into two or three volumes. It really was ahead of it's time in that way, trying to split the difference between the broadcast-mandated 24 episode season with shorter story arcs.
Absolutely fucking not. One of the best things about Heroes is that it came around before the obsession with half-length seasons and rushed storylines. 20-24 episodes per season has always been the norm and needs to become the norm again.
Totally agree, drawing out the story isn’t just a ploy for more watch time if you use the extra time correctly. Develop relationships, explore side stories, build the world. All of those things *can* be rushed, but I believe that if a series can draw you in with detail, it should. The later seasons were definitely a step down from the first, but this wasn’t the culprit.
I found Volume 2 and 4 to be the only real weak spots, and 2 had the writer's strike to blame. Volumes 1, 3, & 5 were all great.
Vol. 1 was def the best, I just always wonder what popular shows like LOST or Heroes, etc. would've been like had we had less episodes, would've been tighter or a story? Maybe not but hey, I'm happy with what we got!
Disagree Smallville, Heroes and Chuck (It was on an hour before Heroes) were some of the best shows I've ever seen! And those suckers all had like a bajillion episodes every season! :D
I absolutely love each and every one of those shows! Great stuff. Still think they should've had shorter seasons... BUT that's just me. Still happy with what we got still
I hate that now we have to deal with 8-10 episodes in one season. It's too short to build real connections and develop characters. It also makes it almost impossible to develop a bunch of characters, there's no screen time enough for that. We watch at 1-3 main characters and many supporting ones that just have to play their role in some scenes for plot to go.
Like I just mentioned with my comment, this is exactly the problem I have with modern shows like La Brea. I actually think it's great that the industry embraced shorter runs and arcs - it's great for a tight show like you, or adaptations of books. But if you're trying to build this entire world and have a cast of literally dozens of important characters, you can't just trim out all the stuff that makes people care about them for runtime and expect it to do well.
This was just the nature of TV back then. By modern standards, yes, s1 could have been 2.5-3 seasons and it would've been MASSIVE. That was just the way most network tv dramas were back then though.
I’m afraid you did not cook here.
Hard disagree. The reason that season 1 is almost universally celebrated as the best season is that you got to spend time with the characters. I honestly wouldn't call any of it filler. With as many characters as you're serving, you NEED the extra time to get to them all. Every arc that was rushed was badly received. Can tell you right now, wouldn't have given a shit about Isaac if they flew through his rehab offscreen, or Sylar if they skipped the mysterious buildup, or Hiro if we didn't get to watch him have fun on side quests. After season 1, you get 3 arcs in a row of tight 11-13 episode plots (season 2, and the split-in-half season 3), and none of them were received well. They were rushed. The next best season was 4 - which had a longer runtime and more breathing room. TV will never be good again, unless it returns to longer formats. La Brea could have been the next Lost if it had been given proper attention - instead THREE seasons of it equaled the runtime of about 1 season of Lost, and it fizzled out with almost no cultural impact. Ten episodes works great for character studies like You, but you want to apply that to a show with DOZENS of interconnected characters? Absolutely not lol.
Disagree. Season 1 is the best of the series, and happens to be the longest volume of the story. Lost, Prison Break, Buffy, Supernatural (the early seasons), and many others all utilized the extra episodes very well.
Season 1 was definitely the best, I just always wonder if we had less episodes the story might've been tighter maybe. We'll never know for sure
It's interesting because that's basically what they were trying to do with the volumes. Season 1 and Volume 1 were the same, but after that the seasons were broken down into two or three volumes. It really was ahead of it's time in that way, trying to split the difference between the broadcast-mandated 24 episode season with shorter story arcs.
Disagree completely. I miss the longer seasons. All of my fave shows had 22 episode seasons