Another innovative TV series seems to have hit the skids. Another one you say ?  Think Lost and Prison Break. Both groundbreaking new shows that blazed a trail through their debut seasons only to slide and slide in subsequent seasons. NBC's Heroes is going through a similar funk with its widely anticipated second season. Perhaps that's just the problem. How can a widely hyped and ultra successful show top all the expectations that have been built ?

Some background for folks who have no idea what Heroes is all about.  Heroes is the uber-comic fan's cult TV show. Think super powers without the costumes and cheesy dialogue. It's about ordinary people (there seems to be a lot of "ordinary" people) discovering that they have extra-ordinary abilities and coming to terms with their powers and discovering themselves. As with many TV scripts, there's a super secret evil conspiracy that they all have to work together to uncover and destroy.

What made the first season of this show great is that it is really a journey of discovery for the viewers together with the characters. You couldn't wait to really understand what a particular character's powers are and whether they are good or evil. The problem with Season 2 is that the discovery is done and dusted and we are all familiar with the characters. So what's next. Here's where the problems start.

Firstly, the writers employ the good old reboot technique. They decided to wipe out the powers of the uber evil Sylar (who in Season 1 systematically killed heroes to assume their powers) and they decided to wipe out the memory of Peter Petrelli (the good guy who can absorb the powers of all heroes he comes in contact with).  So both the protagonist and antagonist have been rebooted. That's not good. Why ? Because it makes for repetitive story telling. We've already done the whole discovery thing in Season 1, to go through it again is far from interesting.

Secondly, they introduce a bunch of new heroes with new powers. Well, that should be good as it keeps things fresh. But .. again it's about discovery. We've done discovery already. This was the same issue that Lost had. As a digression, Lost would randomly introduce new characters and kill them off. There was no advancement in the storyline.  

Continuing on the repetitive theme for a minute. We also have the case of Noah Bennett, foster father of the cheerleader, Claire. In Season 1, we watched with baited breath as we all tried to figure out whether he's good or bad. The character starts off seemingly bad but we find out in the end that he was actually good. But in Season 2, he seems to be bad again. Come on, that's just plain boring. Can we just get the whole good versus evil alignment sorted out ? Another problem with the Clair story arc is the extremely annoying boyfriend that she's hooked up with. They need to kill that character off.  

Good versus evil alignment consistency is one problem. Another inconsistency is wise versus stupid. How can a super smart character like Suresh become so stupid. He's in charge of Molly who has the ability to find any person in the world, thus potentially the most important hero. She gets sick and what does Suresh do ? He delivers her straight to the shadowy organisation that has pledged to destroy heroes because they are the best equipped to cure her. That logic just doesn't make any sense. And while he finds himself ensconced at the "Company", he reveals to them that he's actually conspiring to destroy the "Company". 

Heroes so far is definitely a far cry from the exciting writing from Season 1. Even Tim Kring, the show's producer has admitted as much in an interview with Entertainment Weekly.  He offers a very candid critique on the show thus far but promises that the story will be reignited with some fresh ideas soon.

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