In Defense of Heroes

(pretty much spoiler-free)

To begin, I'll state that I've never been among Heroes' diehard fans. When people compared Heroes to Lost in its first season I thought they were joking - they aren't even in the same playing field. Heroes was never a great show, just a fun way to watch a comic book on TV.

But what Heroes naysayers (which is most of us) sometimes forget to mention is that not all latter Heroes is created equal. Season 2 was, in my opinion, unequivocally terrible, and nothing Heroes has done since has even come close. The Wonder Twins, the pointless arc in New Orleans, Claire's lame boyfriend, the constant moving through time - if it weren't for Sark and Veronica Mars I'm not sure any of us would have made it through.

Season 3, though still a far cry from the first season, showed many signs of improvement. It actually had some good ideas - the group of bad guys that escaped from the Company, the formula that gave people powers, giving Sylar a redemption arc - it just had too many of them. By the time Sylar had switched sides for the 13th time and those escaped villains had been long forgotten, we all gave up hope of a Heroes comeback.

But now having finished watching season 4 (or 3.5, if you prefer) off of my DVR, I'm willing to say it: Heroes is back. Everyone was too disheartened by the past two seasons to notice, but Heroes actually improved. Sure, it had its problems (loads of them). Some major characters got neglected (Peter, Claire, Hiro), others got annoying (Parkman), and many storylines didn't tie together (what was the point of Sylar finding his dad, and why did Rebel largely disappear after being revealed?)

Heroes has never been accused of being a tidy show however, so I'm going to focus on the positive. First off, they finally took everyone's biggest note: stop following eight storylines at once. Now each episode concentrates on 3-5 characters, so you actually spend some time with them instead of whipping back and forth between a bunch of bores. By not cramming everyone into every episode, everyone wins.

Second, this season saw a real return to the core characters. The only major new character was Denko, and Heroes needs to bring in new blood for its villains (cause Sylar-as-villain has become ridiculously played out). With Denko and his government agency providing a central threat, the main guys actually banded together, which means more X-Men style fun and less time-killing misadventures.

Finally, the individual episodes were just better. The last two seasons got so caught up in their overall over-complicatedness that that's all there was. This season saw some more focused episodes, whether it was the reveal of Rebel's identity, Angela's childhood flashbacks, or the fairly satisfying finale, which came up with a pretty cool twist to make next season actually worth watching.

So I'm still not saying this is a great show, or something likely to make my top 10 list, or even better than its first season. I'm just saying that after two seasons of watching solely out of habit, I actually enjoyed Heroes again. There's still a lot of work to be done, and it's possible (even probable) next season will see it revert to its old ways. But if you stopped after season 1 and have been meaning to catch up since: just watch the past 12 episodes. It's all you need.