New year, new slogan for 'Heroes'
New year, new slogan for 'Heroes' By ROGER CATLIN , The Hartford Courant Chris Haston, NBC/SHNS“Heroes” returns with fresh episodes at 9 tonight on NBC. Standing are Masi Oka, Leonard Roberts and Adrian Pasdar. Seated are Greg Grunberg, Ali Larter, Tim Kring, Sendhil Ramamurthy, Hayden Panettiere and Milo Ventimiglia. Save the cheerleader; save the date: "Heroes," the hit new TV drama that coined the slogan "Save the cheerleader, save the world," returns tonight with fresh episodes. And with the new challenges of a handful of former strangers who are starting to bond because of newfound superpowers, there comes a new potential catchphrase. It's not that "Heroes" creator Tim Kring purposely implants his scripts with potential catchy slogans — at least that wasn't the case at first. The "save the cheerleader" campaign, he told writers at the TV critics winter press tour last week, originated with a line of dialogue from the script that just "caught the imagination of a few people over at NBC in the promo department, and they ran with that." "And so from then on, we started thinking about, 'Well, what could we do for this next pod of episodes?' " Kring says. "And sure enough, the script already had another line in it that we also liked." Ready? It's: "Are you on the list?" "It's not like we fished around for lines to impose onto the show," Kring says. "They just sort of come naturally out of the show." But, jokes series star Masi Oka, "it also helps T-shirt sales." The extra promo might be needed in the new year. "Heroes" will have to face some formidable competition, with this week's return of "24" opposite it (in a time slot that will feature "Dancing With the Stars" in March). "I would be lying if I didn't say I wasn't worried about it," Kring says. But it's clear his concerns are not for his own ratings but for fans who would want to watch both shows. Thinking of the fans — served further by copious online content from the network — is one reason "Heroes" is so loved by its audience. "From the other shows that I've been on, this is just something completely different," says Greg Grunberg, who plays the mind-reading Los Angeles cop Matt Parkman. "We were just in Vegas, and this teacher stood up, and she said that we have really had a profound impact on the kids at her school. It was really moving, because these kids have learning disabilities, or they have trouble learning. And it's an encouraging thing for them to see people have hope and know that they could possibly ... aspire to be something more than they are." To a great degree, the show has learned from "Lost," which lost some fans who felt the story wasn't moving along and its questions were not being answered. "We feel like we've made a pact with the audience that something is going to happen every week," Kring says. "We're not going to have the frustration level of having to wait several episodes before things actually happen." How is that accomplished? Kring says it helps to have a large ensemble cast involved in multiple story lines. "One of the fears going into it for a lot of people that I heard was 'Aren't you afraid you're going to run out of story?' And the idea is really the opposite. Rather than it being like a tank of gas where you use up the story, these twists and turns and reveals and cliffhangers actually generate more story," Kring says. "It's an engine that feeds on itself." It generates new characters, as well. "People will come and go. That's the nature of this kind of storytelling," he says "One of the goals of the show is to fold people in. So in the coming season we hope to do that." But it also might mean characters must die to make room. "Stop reminding us," says Sendhil Ramamurthy, who plays Mohinder Suresh, the professor investigating the phenomenon "That's why we race to get our scripts," Grunberg said. Such mortality means actors have to spend their time on the show wisely, says Milo Ventimiglia, whose character Peter Petrelli absorbs the abilities of others and whose apocalyptic dream will set the stage for future episodes. "You have to keep your head focused on the page and the work of the day and make sure that it's your best work possible, because it may be the last scene you're ever in," he says. "But there's no pressure," jokes Leonard Roberts, a relative newcomer to the cast as D.L. Hawkins. "No pressure."