My Apology
Over the past four weeks or so, the output on Cultural Learnings has been fairly limited. This has been especially damaging when, over the past week, the WGA strike has essentially provided a whole host of important commentary that any good blogger should be commenting on. However, coincidentally, I was dealing with a strike of my own, assisting my Students’ Union with an information blog during a three and a half week long faculty strike.
As a result, I’m sorry I missed many great episodes of television, many important news stories, and in general just wasn’t around. During that time, I was fortunate enough to finish in 2nd place in Hey! Nielsen’s Best in TV Blog Contest, and I felt incredibly guilty that I wasn’t living up to this fantastic honour bestowed upon me by you, the reader. I plan on trying to live up to that in the near future, so stick with Cultural Learnings in the interim.
Tim Kring’s Apology
However, my apology is not the only one I want to discuss today. Tim Kring, creator of NBC’s slowly fading Heroes, has officially gone on the record that the second season of Heroes has been a wildly miscalculated and redundant exercise (my words, not his). For someone who has defended the show’s various problems (Which aren’t all new, let’s be honest), it is strange to see Kring backing down – the fan response has just been that overwhelmingly negative. And I tend to agree with Alan Sepinwall: just as Kring says this, the show has its best episode of the season. Coincidence? I think not.
Now, I think we shouldn’t give Kring a free ride based on this apology: he’s never been a good writer, and much of last season’s iconic moments came from the mind of Bryan Fuller, not the ex-executive producer of Crossing Jordan. But it’s good to see that he’s at least admitting that his series has fallen off the rails creatively, which shows me that he’s willing to listen to fans. However, adversely, he also considers his vision to be expendable.




In case you missed the big news from very late last evening…well, okay, very late for me four hours ahead of pacific time…
When NBC released promotional images for Heroes’ second season this weekend in preparation for Comic Con, there was something about them that bothered me. Ever since the first season ended, I have been hoping against hope that producers would not be stupid enough to sustain the life of the evil villain who was thwarted at the end of the show’s first season. Alas, it appears that they’ve made the decision: Zachary Quinto and his character, Sylar, will be around for Season Two. And this, my friends, basically kills any of the resolution of the show’s first season. These are the reasons why Sylar must die for this series to continue with any level of quality.
A lot of great things happened in the first season, but paramount amongst them was all of the Heroes coming together in the end to defeat Sylar. If Sylar doesn’t die, then this would have basically all been for nothing: Hiro’s training and resolve wouldn’t have resulted in his murder of Sylar, but rather just a life-threatening injury. This emasculates everything Peter, Claire, Hiro and everyone else went through if he just slinks off into the sewers. They stopped the bomb, sure, but the evil serial killer who threatened their livelihood? He just got hurt a little.






