Every new TV show wants to be The Show.
The Show elbows its way out of the crowded pack of wannabe hits and bona fide stinkers to become the must-see show everyone’s buzzing about.
This season, The Show has been “Heroes,” NBC’s superhero drama about a group of ordinary people who can do way-cool things such as fly, see the future, read minds and teleport across the globe.
Much like the Super Friends, this band of unlikely heroes — a stripper, a hospice nurse, a Japanese office drone, a Texas cheerleader — must unite to save the world and do battle with an evil, skull-slicing serial killer who has a markedly different agenda. He wants to kill millions, nuke the Big Apple and eventually become a power-drunk commander-in-chief lording over a police state where people with special abilities are rounded up and detained like terrorists.
Sound familiar?
Since its September debut, “Heroes,” whose season finale airs at 8 p.m. Monday, has averaged 13.6 million viewers. Yet there’s more to the story: The show is a hit on the Internet where NBC has wisely promoted blogs, a graphic novel, a game and various other “Heroes”-related sites.
The result: The show’s buzzworthiness and cool factor are off the charts.
Tim Kring, the show’s creator, isn’t exactly sure why.
“You never really know why things connect,” he said late last year. “It’s some combination of zeitgeist, fairy dust and luck. But there’s a kind of hopefulness to our show’s message. … While we are in a world that’s complicated and confusing, our show posits the idea that there are people coming along who can do something about it.”
Before “Heroes” burst on the TV scene, “24” and “Lost” were the gold-standard serialized dramas. But “24” lost its way this season (Jack saving Audrey from the Chinese — ugh!) and, at times, “Lost” has become harder to follow than driving directions written in hieroglyphics.
“Heroes” doesn’t take its sweet time telling its epic good-vs.-evil saga, and it boasts TV’s best jaw-dropping cliffhangers.
“We didn’t want to frustrate our audience,” Kring said.
He definitely wants to surprise them.
“When you think you know what’s going on, the next week you find out you’re completely wrong,” said Malcolm McDowell, who plays Mr. Linderman, a Las Vegas gangster who may or may not be dead after last week’s episode.
Adrian Pasdar loves how viewers find it difficult to get a good read on his character, the shady politician Nathan Petrelli, a hero who can fly.
“When you think he’s bad, he does something that might be called heroic,” Pasdar said. “If he does something that’s good, he does something that’s not so good. “
Kring has promised that the finale will be mind-blowing good like a big-budget action movie. So, what happens?
All Pasdar will say is: “Questions do get resolved in a big way. I have a big part in the last few moments of the finale. It’s stunning the way it’s all put together.”
Does that mean we won’t see Nathan next season?
“I’d like to stick around,” Pasdar said. “But if and when it’s time for me to go, I’ll just be happy to have been part of a terrific season on TV.”
