The Hollywood Reporter…reports…that NBC has graciously put Heroes out of our collective misery. Though there was speculation that the network would order a shorter season or an extended television movie to tie up all the loose threads of the troubled series, they've ultimately opted for cancellation. Insiders cite the high production costs and NBC's interest in rebranding itself with all new programming as chief reasons that Heroes is being ushered out behind the barn in the middle of the night. Despite popularity overseas and great success in DVD sales, the network simply wants out of the relationship. Whatever episodes you've been neglecting on your DVR are the last of it.
And though the wounds are still fresh, NBC's found itself a rebound superhero drama to premiere later this year. The Cape centers on a wronged cop turned caped vigilante:
"The Cape" is a one-hour drama series starring David Lyons ("ER") as Vince Faraday, an honest cop on a corrupt police force, who finds himself framed for a series of murders and presumed dead. He is forced into hiding, leaving behind his wife, Dana (Jennifer Ferrin, "Life on Mars") and son, Trip (Ryan Wynott, "Flash Forward"). Fueled by a desire to reunite with his family and to battle the criminal forces that have overtaken Palm City, Faraday becomes "The Cape" his son's favorite comic book superhero — and takes the law into his own hands. Rounding out the cast are James Frain ("The Tudors") as billionaire Peter Fleming – The Cape's nemesis – who moonlights as the twisted killer: Chess; Keith David ("Death at a Funeral") as Max Malini, the ringleader of a circus gang of bank robbers who mentors Vince Faraday and trains him to be The Cape; Summer Glau ("Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles") as Orwell, an investigative blogger who wages war on crime and corruption in Palm City; and Dorian Missick ("Six Degrees") as Marty Voyt, a former police detective and friend to Faraday."
At least NBC isn't throwing out the baby with the bathwater and seems not to be viewing Heroes' superhero elements as the source of its problems. There's no telling whether The Cape will find an audience, but if the network's confident enough to pick it up, there's hope for more quality science fiction and even superhero drama on television. But if it does get cancelled after 13 episodes, we may have to put a bell around Summer Glau's neck. Just saying.
How do you feel about Heroes' cancellation? In your mind was there any hope of turning it around or any subplots worth seeing to their conclusion?
Find us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter
Subscribe to our RSS Feed
Some rights reserved.
No resolution to the story? Suck it NBC!
hasn’t mattered for over a year and a half now. It is good to see NBC taking a chance on another property with Superhero ties…but "The Cape" doesn’t sound like it will be the answer.
I kept watching Heroes when almost everyone I knew had given up and I even enjoyed it most of the time. But the last season just petered out. A lot of back seat drivers say, "What they should’ve done was…" but I’ve heard nothing suggested that wasn’t expected or budget breaking.
Sadly, I won’t miss it.
Summer Glau is the Ted McGinley of the 2000s.
I will murder anyone speaking ill of Summer Glau.
That said, I give the Cap half a season.
this show was never able to get me hooked. I only had room in my life for one overly complicated weekly and that was LOST. I honestly i no idea Heroes was still on the air.
@flakbait – I’m not speaking ill! I’m just saying she’s probably a huge draw and a fan favorite, but maybe, just maybe, the kiss of death.
(I think she’s awesome)
I missed the boat on Heros initially then only heard things about it last year because a friend was a huge fan and he would always complain about it. He suggested I get the first season and then leave it at that, which I did.
They were doomed after the first season finale. They spent a season exclaiming "Save the cheerleader, save the world," and then they saved the cheerleader. They spent a season saying Sylar would destroy everything if they didn’t stop him, and then they didn’t stop him. When I stopped watching, he was like a sitcom dad. Such promise; such disappointment.
Totally great news. Good riddance to bad rubbish!
Overall, I liked Heroes. That’s not to say it didn’t have plenty of faults! I think the writing and story were inconsistent – the writer’s strike pretty much gelded the second season, and I don’t think the show ever recovered. The first season, it was pretty original and had a voice, but that was lost when it tried to be an X-men ripoff. Government guys after the "specials"? Check. Rounding them up for internment? Check. Brotherhood of Evil Mutants? Check. As Jimski mentioned, we were cheated out of the big team-up to take out Sylar at the end of Season 1. Then, in a later season, we’re cheated out of seeing Peter and Sylar fight, which had been building up for a whole season or more (Flashes of light, loud sounds – "What’s going on in that room?" "Peter and Sylar are fighting, don’t go in there!"). Then when Sylar killed Nathan, same thing – it happens just off screen and we miss the fight. It’s not nice to tease the fanboys. I’m sure part of that was cost-related, but don’t even mention it if you can’t show it. These were things we were waiting for! No wonder people bailed on the show.
I’ll miss it a little, but I will definitely miss Lost much much more.
I always admired NBC for doing this type of show . . . BUT — Heroes was always a mess.
Shoulda pulled the plug two years ago, around the same time I stopped watching it . . .
@Spoons – That’s probably best. Not to criticize the show needlessly but season 1 felt like a complete tale told, with justa few loose ends. Every season after that felt rushed or half thought out.
This show sounds interesting, but honestly, I really tried to imagine summer glau waging war with an angry blog post or letter to the editor, but she’s going to be showing more than a few bad guys their spines isn’t she.
I stuck with the show til the end and I’m not too sad to see it go. It’s not a very good sign when you recommend only the 1st season of a show. I’m mad I never got my badass future sword wielding Hiro. He never got cooler after season 1 and him and other characters kinda became useless.
I stopped watching when I realized the first season was winding up to be a ripoff of Watchmen. And to tell you the truth, I thought it was cancelled two years ago. Had no clue this was still on television.
Absolutely loved the first season, but after that it seemed all over the place. Sadly The Cape coming to NBC isn’t a continuation of the NASA drama from the 90’s starring my man Corbin Bernsen.
I really loved the show, until the last episode season 1. I thought that episode was horrible, I tolerated season 2, it was mediocre. Everything else…was even just boring. Very disappointed.
I stopped when the first season finale turned out to basically be a giant middle finger to everyone who had invested into the series. Decided almost immediately that I wasn’t going to give Season 2 a chance. All my friends said I was crazy. It only took a couple of episodes into season 2 before they stopped saying that.
@Slockhart
100% agreement.
It’s such an easy premise too. How did they manage to fuck up so bad?
No surprise, Surface was a good show with a cliff hanger season finale, and NBC dropped it without any resolution, that’s what they do.
This sucks, I love heroes! Is there really no one else here who cares that it’s all going to be over? Four years of Monday nights wasted.
Heroes was dying since season 2. Granted there were a few signs of life (i.e., good superheroic plot) interspersed which kept me (stupidly but loyally) watching, I had made my decision to stop watching it at the end of this year’s finale.
Human target is now my "can’t miss" show fow which my wife clears out the living room TV for me.
Can Captain America: White actually come out now?
The Cape doesn’t really sound all that interesting and it has a horrible title. It sounds more like it should be a farce than something serious. Ugh.
When I hear "The Cape" I think more in lines of geography. Like it’d be a primetime seaside soap with Peter Gallagher and Lori Loughlin. And me, Ron, and Conor would totally love it.
Man this sucks that cliffhanger ending of last season could’ve sent the show to a whole new level of possibilities maybe even bring it back up to the popularity of the first season. They better make some kind of movie to resolve the show
Heroes has been really bad for a really long time. It had to die.
I had the last 2 episodes recorded on my DVR since the beginning of Febuary and as soon as they annouced this, I walked over and deleted them. I had just begun to not even care.
after the dreadful season 3, I tried to return my seasons 1 and 2 on Blu-ray but NBC was not accepting refunds… I have six eps on my tivo from season 4, hopefully something new and better will come along
Remember Mantis?
YES!
Season 1 of Heroes was perfect. I feel confident handing it off to someone and saying you can stop here. I thoroughly enjoyed the second season and the second half of the third season (the first half was terrible). I’ve only watched a little bit of Season 4 and it’s been sitting in my Netflix streaming since. The show was awesome for one thing; my mom of all people was excited about something with superheroes in it. I will always remember this series for fond memories.
And who doesn’t remember Mantis?! That show was awesome.
Out of curiosity, what is this spectacular cliffhanger several people have mentioned?
My problem with the whole show was the inconsistent writing. When the whole Claires blood can heal everyone, all i thought was no one can ever die on the show now, because all they have to do is give her blood to someone and bam they are alive again. But they keep killing off characters but Claire was right there as they died. Ohh and what about the poor Irish girl that went to the future with Peter in Season Two and got lost in time, never got back to that one did they?
Mantis!
I’ve been waiting for this day for a while. I had to write a blog post for a job I didn’t get on Heroes and if you don’t mind me cutting and pasting, and the length, I’d love to share it with you. And, if I’m asked to take this down, I don’t mind and I apologize in advance, guys:
Heroes. Rewind our lives 4 years ago when it was the talk of the town. Comic book fans got a nice representation of super powers on screen, non-comic fans got to dip their feet into the pool of a new genre, and everyone else jumped on an obviously growing bandwagon. Fast forward to 4 years later, and the excitement for the show is equated to sitting down and having teeth pulled. So, where did it all go wrong? Here’s 5 good reasons:
1.Bringing them in and…well, nothing – If something is introduced, and placed away for later, it’s expected it will be addressed again some time in the future. Heroes has a nasty habit of introducing plot lines, yet never really going in depth with them. Remember Hana Gittleman from season 1? Yeah, me neither. She showed up in an episode or two and then nothing. Remember Mr. Petrelli’s plan in season 3? Yeah, I wasn’t too clear on that, either. I know he was the main villain, yet I wasn’t clear on his motivation. Remember Usutuu visiting Parkman in his mind throughout season 2? Where did that go? If you’ve seen the show, you know exactly what I’m talking about. If you haven’t and are confused…well, so were we when they dropped these plot threads on us.
2. Side-stories/other media – When Heroes first came out, we were treated to the web comic. An interesting idea that allowed us to follow the path of the above mentioned Hana Gittelman, gave us some back-story on some characters and an insight to the Heroes world. Then came the webisodes and mobile episodes. All of this sounds like fun extra stuff, but somewhere along the way it became required reading and watching. If character X left the episode to do something, you had to read the webcomic to find out what happened to them. Remember that obscure reference? Well tune into the webisode to find out what it means! And so on. Extras are fun, in that they’re something nice to check out later. They shouldn’t be homework all because the writers wanted to jam too much story in, or use the show as a back-door pilot to get you to watch their spin-off side stories.
3. Sloppy Seasons – Popular opinion says that seasons 2 and 3 were a complete mess that tanked the popularity of the series. Season 2 had the excuse that it was a victim of the writer’s strike. Fair enough. But season 3 was a train wreck. Volume 3: Villains had a great idea; let’s see what people with powers were to do if they weren’t like our beloved main characters. That could have made for some interesting stories. Instead we got a collection of "bad guys" who were hardly in the damned thing, an eclipse that took away powers, and an evil plan I’m still not sure what the purpose was. Volume 4: Fugitives again started off well, but by the end we had a garbled mess involving politics, paternity, and an ending worthy of Marvel comics-level stupidity. Season 2 made fans wary of the show, but the two volumes in Season 3 became the straw that broke the fans backs.
4. Inconsistent Characters – You want to know a HUGE problem of Heroes? Inconsistent characterization for no good reason. Let me give you the perfect example. Sylar. A villain who started off as a serial killer hunting people with powers. We got a little of his background in Season 1 flashback episode. It was short, simple and threatening. Now, let’s see where they’ve taken Sylar over the past four seasons: he lost his powers, he gained his powers back, he’s immortal, he’s really the long lost son of the Petrelli’s, he has something called "The Hunger" inside of him, he’s an agent for the company, he’s in love, he’s not in love, he’s not the Petrelli’s long lost son, he’s a mentor to a teenager, his real father is just as bad a monster as he is, he joins the government secretly, he’s posing as president, he has someone else’s mind placed in his body, he’s in Parkman’s mind, he’s an amnesiac, and now he’s a hero. Mind you, this has all taken place in 4 SEASONS. They took a simple idea and over complicated it for the sake of "story" Mind you, most of these stories lead to nowhere. It’s only because the actor and character are so popular that they felt the need to keep him around, hence all the garbled mess. We are supposed to find something to latch on to with these characters. They are also expected to grow, but when you make changes just for changes sake, the handles we hold on to with the characters keep moving position.
5. The Viewers – We killed a great show. You didn’t read that wrong. I said it. Heroes was supposed to be a show with a rotating cast. We’d follow ordinary people through ordinary situations. But, as a show appeals to a broader audience, plans have to change. When your female demographic faints for characters like Sylar and Hiro Nakamura, or when your male demographic drools over a barely legal cheerleader named Claire, to kill them off means to alienate your viewers and ratings decline. Unfortunately, we stuck to these characters too closely and we ended up handcuffing the writers. As a result, we ended up creating even more of a mess. When this was pointed out to us, we jumped off the bandwagon and left the show in a hole that, no matter how hard they tried, they could never climb out of.
Heroes used to be a fun show. But, a subtle mix of popularity, hubris and good ol’ fashioned American fickleness tore it down. In the annals of history, let Heroes be the prime example of a show that enjoyed huge success, but was crushed under it’s own weight.
I’m shocked it’s getting cancelled. Only because NBC has barely any programming in general. You’d think they would keep this going since they have very few options. But yeah the show pretty much ended after Season one, could never top themselves.
The Cape……Yeah probably skipping that.
It was a shame because NBC has a very good track record of putting out good shows. EVen the ones that get cancelled like SouthLand i tend to like.
Heroes just tried too hard, and was too complex for its own good. If you missed an episode or two you were done. Kinda like LOST.
I didn’t even know Heroes was still on.
Wally, I totally agree. Heroes got way too complicated for it’s own good. The stories became less and less fun. They were a chore to get through, and no show should be like that.
Dudes, I loved Mantis when I was kid.
A quick search of Hulu found this: M.A.N.T.I.S.
It’s pretty simple why Heroes failed. The obesession with Noah Bennet and "Clair Bear" was a large part of it. They should have left him for dead when he got shot in the eye. But no, they had to use Claire’s blood to bring him back to life (which of course they never seemed to bother trying on other characters that died). Seeing Claire strike out on her own could have lead to some interesting character developments, but instead we were stuck with the same old teenage angst problems.
The only sadness that comes from the loss of Heroes is that we will no longer to to liveblog with Conor on Mondays anymore. The last two seasons that was really the only reason I was still watching. 1st season was magic. 2nd was terrible. Third was only a marginal improvement and so on.I’m not much of a TV watcher anyway, but because the community was there to support the effort… I stuck through it.
I will try anything with Summer Glau so I’ll give the Cape a shot.
Sad to see Heroes go since the show had so much promise, but was never able to keep the momentum going after Season 1. Despite all the bad twists and turns the show took, Season 1 was amazing. I gave up after Season 2, and I’m glad I did. It goes without saying that the writer’s strike really hurt this show’s momentum.
I have to agree with the consensus. This show was something that needed to be put out of it’s misery of bleeding to death. If the show was left to go on until its "finale" i’m pretty sure most of us would be pretty disappointed. I stopped watching the show after missing an episode of season threeish. After missing one episode, i realized that i didn’t miss anything and that the shows hooks in me finally lost their hold. Hell i now realize that i didn’t really enjoy Heroes after season 1 so much. Too depressing, too confusing, too mixed up, too boring, and finally very little payoff. Yet it doesn’t seem fair to let the loyal viewers deal with their wtf feelings of a show with no real ending.
The show has not been right since the writer’s strike.
What I want to know is – what is everyone going to watch when LOST ends?? *big void in life approaching*
Why did I think that Heroes got cancelled last year? Weird…
The cape looks like the perfect answer to save NBC. Looks and sounds like a crappy 90’s televesion show.
@janna – its prob cause NBC stopped virtually all advertising and promotion for the show. I thought it was off the air a while ago as well.
I loved Heroes for the first two seasons and the last couple were just okay. I thought that image of the cape was fake. I don’t know about this..
@iiiplace, I was just about to mention Mantis too!
I gave up after the first season (I thought the first season was "okay", but not good enough for me to keep watching), then for various reasons just before season three I watched the season two DVDs, and then continued on through season three as they came out each week…until I did finally give it up before season four. (I think this shows how much I really wanted to like the show, but just couldn’t.)
Okay, question, no one thinks this show can go "JAG" or "TAXI" or "Welcome Back Kotter" on us here? Is this truly an NBC owned property with no ability to jump to some other media-delivery-methodology? Revision3, perhaps? 😉
The Cape does not look promising. Sounds like a cheap Spawn, or Darkman, or a lighter Punisher, or whatever rip-off.
Having said that, I’ll probably end up watching every episode of its first season.
Never watched Heroes but I had to comment on a show called the Cape. Really?!? I don’t know what’s funnier, that Heroes was so terrible they replaced an entire Justice League with one h-list superhero drama or that at some point, some variation of the following discussion probably took place at NBC. Producer A: "The whole brooding cop on the edge thing has been done to death. We’re smarter than that. We’re really smartier than that – so what if we did a whole show about a brooding cop on the edge but the cop wears a cape?" Producer B: "That’s why they call him the idea man – genius, pure unadulterated genius." Thank you NBC for a great laugh. I continue to wait for someone to give Summer Glau a decent role – like by bringing back Firefly after this show – which I would embarrased to be part of as a cast member – gets cancelled following the third episode.
Thank god someone else finally noticed the Summer Glau thing.