HEROES-HYPE.COM

There’s an interesting Heroes article over at boston.com. They ask whether the show is growing too fast and whether it is deserving of it’s acclaim.

As the fall TV season approaches, and we wonder which series will shame themselves, “Heroes” is looking increasingly like a prime suspect. Since the Monday night show is NBC’s only newish non-reality hit, the network and Kring have spent the summer heaping tacky expansion gimmicks onto it with abandon. “Heroes” has been turned into a relentless and tiresome source of merchandising, casting, and spinoff hype — hype about how the show will grow as a product, not media-generated hype about how good it is.

To me, it’s as if NBC is pressing “Heroes” into child labor. The network is working the show like a mature blockbuster — on the order of “CSI” or “Lost” — too soon. Underneath all the great expectations, there is just a wee sci-fi TV series whose unformed back is carrying too much weight.

It’s an interesting question and one which many Heroes fans will not like to consider, but I can see where they’re coming from. However, despite the hype surrounding the show, we must surely wait to see the contents of season 2 before we criticize the merchandising and marketing too harshly?

Every week, it seems, NBC releases yet another tidbit of obviously targeted casting news, to reach the cult- and comic-book-minded. The latest name is Kristen Bell (from “Veronica Mars”), who follows David Anders (from “Alias”), Nichelle Nichols (Uhura from “Star Trek”), Dominic Keating (from “Enterprise”), and many others onto the show.

Viewers who’ve watched the series loyally know that if there’s one thing “Heroes” emphatically does not need, it’s more characters

This is one aspect which Ive seen on the forums - the fans, to their credit, are expressing concern over the amount of new cast members. I think that Heroes has to be careful of over-doing it, because even with come and go characters, at the end of the day the fans are already invested in their Peter’s, their Sylar’s and their Hayden’s - it’s a fine balance, but Tim Kring has to get it right, otherwise even the most loyal of fans will start to grumble and potentially tune out.

NBC has also announced “Heroes: Origins,” a six-episode spinoff series that will air during the “Heroes” mid-season hiatus. A spinoff series after a single season? How inflated is that?

The idea of “Origins” — which former NBC chief Kevin Reilly requested as part of an effort to “bulk up” the NBC lineup — makes me cringe. “Origins,” whose premiere will be directed by Kevin Smith, will introduce a new character in each episode, and viewers will get to vote one of them onto “Heroes.” In other words, while “Heroes” was NBC’s only scripted series in the Nielsen top 25, the network will now tack reality-show stratagems onto it. Come on. Let the storytellers — and not the viewers — tell this story.

The timing of Origin’s does seem a bit early, but i suppose by the time we get to May, it wont be too bad. I guess they want to keep the fans involved and so far that’s something they’ve done well.

Read the whole article here.