Exploit the Cheerleader, Save the Show

Or so Heroes seems to think. Now that Bryan Fuller has left Heroes to its own fate (*sob*), the troubled series is planning on grabbing ratings the old-fashioned, desperate way: girl-on-girl action. From The Hollywood Reporter:

Days after “Californication” co-star
Madeline Zima was cast to play Claire Bennet’s (Hayden
Panettiere) college roommate Gretchen in a multiepisode arc, Claire
got herself yet another roommate.

“Days of Our Lives” co-star Rachel Melvin has been tapped to guest
star and potentially recur on “Heroes” next season, playing Annie,
who also will share sleeping quarters (and maybe more) with
Claire.

There’s no one here who thinks this will be a deep, well-written coming out of a major show’s major character, right? We all know it’s just going to be a cheap, exploitative grab for attention to cover up the fact that the Heroes writers couldn’t plot their way out of a paper bag, right? Look, it would be one thing if the show hadn’t shoved it’s one gay character under the metaphorical bus back in season 1. Or if the show had been building to this, instead of having Claire desperate to hook up with Aqualad at the end of last season (hell, if the show could build up top anything). Or if Claire wasn’t the stupidest character on the goddamn show, no mean feat when a senator whose entire family has superpowers creates a secret government division to hunt people with superpowers and doesn’t think there’ll be a problem, the time traveller arbitrarily refuses to use his powers when they’d actually solve problems, when the wisest of them forgot to look for her sister and abandoned her for 40 years in the desert, or…

…ahem.

Need I go on? I don’t think so. Thanks to everyone who sent this tip in.