• by Jack Feuer , May 16, 2007

Unilever may sit out the upfront. "Crossing Jordan" was cancelled. The online complement to a New York Times section on baby boomers included a crossword puzzle with clues created by Bill Clinton and a documentary on boomer sex lives. And "National Bingo Night" premieres this Friday (downloadable jingle available on abc.com).

It's going to be a rough week.

But none of that was as unsettling as the news that NBC's hit "Heroes" is getting a mutated version of a spin-off. The reason is that the new show, "Heroes: Origins," will introduce a new character every week, and viewers will choose which character stays into the next season. It's a terrifying exercise in participatory storytelling, the next step in the devolution of video entertainment, and the child of a Bad New Media World.

We're done simply following the content. Now we're gonna screw with it.

Look, "Heroes" was already a portentous media play. It sprang from its womb with digital doppelgangers fully formed-next-day Web site broadcasts and an online graphic novel. Its creator spoke in interviews of how he had to get his Internet play locked down from the get-go, or his show would never make it. He also said that he was a brand manager as much as a writer. Tim Kring said that (to Wired magazine), not Jerry Zucker.

Okay, I get it. We're all digerati now. And there's nothing wrong with the technological equivalent of serialized novels in 19th Century newspapers. I like a good Spider-Man video game as much as the next loser. I'll cop to every now and then watching webisodes starring characters from one of my favorite network shows. I still read "Star Wars" paperbacks. I printed out Jack Bauer's MySpace page ("You don't want to try me") and tacked it up on my office wall.

But this spin-off is something else. It's the serial drama equivalent of the Subservient Chicken. The hideously deformed and creatively sterile offspring of a one-night stand between a reality show and scripted entertainment. And proof positive that this whole consumer choice thing has gone batshit crazy.

If you think letting fans tell storytellers what should happen in their stories is a good idea, I have four words for you: Snakes On A Plane.

Behold the ugly face of television's interactive, on-demand, technologically enabled future. Soon, every show will be, ahem, written--in part or even entirely--by the people who watch it. Plots will be sliced, diced and turned into video garbage by the writhing, glassy-eyed viewing mass. Characters will be voted on or off the show by toothless sub-humans in trailer parks across the country. "Law & Order" will let the people decide--literally--whether the antagonist is guilty or innocent.

The only criterion will be popularity. Like high school. How'd that work out for you?