Heroes
Ordinary people wake up with extraordinary powers, and NBC's 2006 serial made watching them find each other appointment television. "Save the cheerleader, save the world" became the rallying cry of a show that felt, for exactly one season, like it could save television too.
Heroes premiered on NBC on September 25, 2006 — Tim Kring's high-concept drama about ordinary people worldwide discovering superpowers. The pilot drew 14.3 million viewers, the network's highest-rated drama premiere in five years, and season one was an event: the American Film Institute named it one of the year's ten best TV programs, and "Save the cheerleader, save the world" became the defining catchphrase of the TV season. Masi Oka's time-bending Hiro, Hayden Panettiere's indestructible cheerleader Claire, and Zachary Quinto's brain-hunting Sylar made the ensemble a cultural moment.
The decline was nearly as fast as the rise. The 2007–08 writers' strike halted season two at 11 of a planned 24 episodes, and the show never recaptured its footing — by the season four premiere, the audience had fallen to 5.9 million. The final episode aired February 8, 2010, and NBC made the cancellation official that May. A 13-episode revival, Heroes Reborn, arrived in September 2015, but the zeitgeist moment had passed; what remains is the memory of that first season, when a cheerleader's fate felt like the most important thing on television.
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