‘Heroes Reborn’: Don’t Forget That The Original ‘Heroes’ Was Really Good (…At First)

Heroes Reborn debuts on NBC tonight at 8 PM ET and it’s one reboot that has a lot of people scratching their heads. Back in 2006, Heroes was a phenomenon that soon lost fans as quickly as it wooed them. Its final seasons were convoluted and its mythology wound up making little to no sense. In an age where we have more than enough superhero shows, do we really need to revisit Heroes? I’m not sure we needed to reboot the series, but we certainly do need to remember Heroes and its role in television history.

Here’s what most people forget about Heroes: the first season was almost perfect. Sure, the finale fumbled at the clutch — Sylar and Peter’s much-hyped showdown was more like a frat bro fight — but until then, the season contained some of the most thrilling, inspiring, and heartfelt “superhero” storytelling we had ever seen on television. It might seem a little cheesy now, but Heroes was made two years before The Dark Knight and Iron Man hit theaters. We live in a time where superheroes are dominating the media, but back then, they were still marginalized to comic-cons and nerd culture. So Heroes felt bold and fresh.

Heroes’ take on the genre was to strip away the kitsch and the costumes and focus on the human drama. The time travel is used cleverly and sparingly. Mysteries are resolved in a matter of episodes. There are expertly executed story arcs — “Save the cheerleader, save the world.” — and exquisite stand-alone episodes like Bryan Fuller‘s magnificent “Company Man.”

You could argue that the show’s doom was that its first season was so gosh darn good. Expectations soared higher into the stratosphere than even Nathan Petrelli could fly and NBC put pressure on creator Tim Kring to change his concept from an anthology series (which would have wrapped up the Sylar/Peter/Claire/Hiro saga in one season) to a traditional multi-season drama. This doomed the show. Kring had always intended the show to feature a shifting cast of characters. New heroes with new powers and new problems would be introduced each season. He could hit the reset button start fresh. But when people fell in love with Masi Oka‘s noble Hiro, Hayden Panettierre‘s winsome Claire, and Zachary Quinto‘s devilish Sylar, Kring had to keep their stories going even when they’d reached the end of the line. This led to uber-complex plot-lines, terribly dull twists, and just plain terrible television.

Instead of remembering Heroes as a terrible show, we should think of it as a fantastic show that lost its way because it came before its time. It was envisioned as an anthology series almost a decade before streaming culture (and Ryan Murphy) made that format popular. It needed crazy money for crazy special effects (that are easy to pull off now). Most importantly, it pre-dated the explosion of superhero shows. The irony is that Tim Kring is finally getting the chance to reboot his show as an event miniseries…just in time for his once fresh ideas to feel half-baked and behind the curve. Heroes Reborn lands on television just as we have Arrow, The Flash, Gotham, Marvel’s Daredevil, Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Marvel’s Agent Carter and this fall’s Supergirl, Marvel’s Jessica Jones and the upcoming DC’s Legends of Tomorrow burning up our screens. To put it succinctly, the Heroes franchise has horrific timing.

Early reviews for Heroes: Reborn are mixed. The AV Club thinks it’s a fantastic reboot of the original series, while Alan Sepinwall at HitFix thinks it will only appeal to the mega-fans who stayed with the original series through its last dying gasp. Which leads me back to where it all started: Heroes: Reborn might be doomed to repeat the mistakes of the original series, but nothing can tarnish that first season of the groundbreaking show. Instead of watching as NBC flails to resuscitate one of its greatest misfires, why not go back to the beginning? Treat the first season of Heroes as its own contained story and respect the audacity of its cast and creators. They made a nation believe that if a dreamy male nurse named Peter Petrelli could save an Texas cheerleader, he could save the world. If only we could use Hiro’s power to go back in time and save the show from itself. [Watch S1 of Heroes on Netflix]

Heroes Reborn debuts on NBC tonight at 8 PM ET.

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[Photos: NBC]