Heroes The Next Generation

You wouldn't believe how busy I've been. You see, when I got back from holiday it turned out that I had only 3% free on my Sky + box which meant that I had to spend all of November and December catching up.

Obviously over Christmas all good television stopped, so I would have been able to write stuff then, but I had git loads of work to do.

I'm now having a week's holiday involving me trying to tidy my house and catching up with a lot of television.

So last night I got a chance to watch episode 13 of series 3 (or episode 1 of season 3b if you like that sort of thing) of Heroes.

Had I been able to get off my lazy behind and blog over the last couple of months I would have registered my moderate displeasure at the whole first half of series three. It was all fairly ropey. Confused, too many things happening, uncertain motivations, what Arthur Petrelli's powers actually were, Sylar turning good then turning bad again, it was generally poor.

So the new thing started and it all just looks like the same characters going through the motions. Honestly, in series one Sylar was exciting and evil and a great character. When I saw Sylar in last night's episode I just felt tired.

It seems as though each series of Heroes has become like an episode of Star Trek. No matter what happens in the episode (series) at the end of it, it'll all be back to normal. Unless they're planning something different in the next thirteen episodes, series four will start off with the same core characters doing the same old stuff.

The likes of Lost, BSG, hell even Prison Break, have an ongoing story line throughout the whole of the show's run. And while it can be a little frustrating when you're watching early episodes of Lost where all you want to do is find out what's in the hatch and they're trying to fob you off with yet another episode exploring Jack's relationship with his Dad, you can forgive them when every episode now seems to genuinely force the story ahead to a conclusion.

With Heroes, no matter happens I feel as though the story is being pushed towards a conclusion which will involve some disappointing showdown where they all get involved, maybe Sylar will be a goodie this time, maybe a baddie, and at the end of it it'll all be back to normal ready for the next episode.

Maybe series 4 will be the Chinatown episode, where Peter, Matt and Sylar have to help a young couple who own a shop fight some unscrupulous gangsters who want to knock the shop down for a new hotel, meanwhile Clare and Nathan Petrelli get trapped on the holodeck by Professor Moriarty and Hiro falls in love with another woman who's about to die.