My Heroes Are My Mommy and Daddy

Heroes, Season 3, has been a roller-coaster ride so far. And by that, I don't mean nonstop thrill ride, I mean some episodes are good and some bottom out so fast, your stomach feels like it exited your body through your mouth. A quick disclaimer: I never thought Season 2 was as horrible as many people did, but I tend to just be happy when there's comic book characters anywhere.

I've really liked many of the new villains, but find Nathan ridiculously obnoxious and don't like new Nikki. In those two cases, at least, it seems like the characters have gone backwards. Nathan is back to being a whiny, wanna-be president lapdog to an evil and manipulating man, though this time it's his father instead of Linderman, and he keeps speaking in his worst fake Christian Bale Batman voice. In addition, he has one of the least useful powers on the show. Sure, everyone wants to fly, but as Senator of the US, he has access to jets and hot stewardesses. The only time his power was cool was when he flew into the Voodoo guy and knocked him into a car. That was pretty badass.

Getting back to motivations and regression, the same has been true of Hiro, Peter, Sylar, Angela Petrelli...hell, anyone connected, with insider knowledge. Either the character has become powerless or weak in some form (through erasing Hiro's mind and Peter losing his powers) to give the character an additional obstacle and doubt to overcome on his path to becoming a hero, or they've been left twisting in the wind, dealing with more lies and coverups than a Wolverine origins story, or they're still manipulating everyone and hiding the truth, despite that not having worked out well ever before. I've heard reasons, such as Peter was too powerful and needed to doubt and needed to be normal, which is maybe the same reason why Sylar lost his powers in Season 2.

Oh Sylar. Sylar. Sylar. Why can't they just pick a path for you and let you take it? They keep torturing you, changing their minds over whether you're hero, villian, or anti-hero, like when Venom went straight. Also, an episode before the stupid "Eclipse" arc, Sylar was able to gain someone's abilities just like Peter, without harming them. Was that just a fad, or did he only gain the powers when the persn was around, so killing them was needed for a long term solution? He's a great bad guy, but everyone knows there always needs to be a more evil bad guy, like Magneto and then Apocalypse, which often makes the first bad guy sort of good, if only for a little. I loved the episode where Sylar offered to make pancakes for Peter, despite it taking place in the future, and was pretty bummed out when Peter and Gabriel never mounted up and possed out on Arthur Petrelli's ass. That partnership had so much kick-ass potential.

Back to the negative on the Eclipse arc, this is how I imagine they sold it: "We're gonna change everything and kill off Sylar and Claire, but then everything will be back to normal as soon as the Eclipse is gone, because we wanted to shock people and have everyone worried about the eclipse, but we've already used the future many times to kill off people and the eclipse really wasn't as universe shattering as we may have led the public, so basically everything is status quo, yet again."