Yes, it has been much better this season. It is the X2 to season 1′s X-Men. Characters are expanded and there is a looming sense that evil is spreading. Pretty cool so far.

Season 2 we will all agree was X3…

Well, I decided after the first Ep, that I have had enough of the moronic thought process’ employed by the characters on the show, and will instead, partake of the high-brow commentary on display during Monday Night Football.
Seriously, this show had some promise early on but it devolved into just being a showcase for all the stupid things in comics.
Let me know when characters start making half-way intelligent decisions and half the story isn’t about timetravel/alternate futures.

Avoid Heroes season 3 at all cost. Between the completely nonsensical “twists,” the lame attempts to be edgy, and reliance on tricks that successful in season one (time travel to post-apocalyptic future anyone?), season 3 is coming off more like a bad X-Men arc than anything else. You can definitely tell that Jeph Loeb is writing this shit.

Definitely my least favorite show to watch week to week this season. I still watch it, but it’s only a shell of its former self. At least season 2 was focused! This season is following each of like 10 characters every episode, and not giving me enough time to care about whats happening to any of them.

I will note that its also the only show I watch without any form of humor whatsoever in it, so that could also lead to my distaste.

Heroes biggest flaw seems to be some cool ideas and concepts executed with ludicrous planning and character decisions. They’ve once again separated all of the main characters into their own storylines and used time travel as the means to finding a big threat. And I’m not even really sure what the threat is at this point, thanks to how just random and wild the time travel was this season. Though last night’s episode seemed to be pointing to a team of super-villains. Too bad all the heroes have gone from interesting to extremely blargh this season, to be replaced by far too much Sylar as he rides his popularity to Wolverinesque status.

I think the season has been wonderful so far. Lots of intrigue and surprises, and some unexpected fun with Sylar. Let’s just say that the man can play a wider range of emotions than I’d thought.

I feel like Heroes used to be a classy, smart show with a nod to comics- now, it just feels like a wasteland of gimmicy comic sequences- none of it feeling thought out or mature. It feels junky and topsy-tervey to me.

Look! Good guys are bad! Bad guys are good! We’re sooo wacky! Can you handle this?
Well, yeah, I can. But I don’t really care about anyone anymore. I don’t feel any real evolution to where people were at last year.

And can I just say- since season 1 I’ve really disliked Hiro. He irritates me- and not in that wacky character we need anyway kinda way. His season 2 adventure annoyed me, and this whole stupid “becoming a bad guy” thing is just lame- such stupid, stupid lines and choices with no hint at any learned wisdom whatsoever.

I’m saddened that it feels like this is the final season.

And did we REAAAALLY need Claire’s bio mom to remind us once again that she has lighter powers? Seriously, EVERY episode this season she reminds us of her power- or should I say, token special effect. It’s old.

Everything feels too comicbooky now. They went tooooo far- I don’t want a primetime cmoic book- I was Heroes, which used to be a bit smarter then that, while taking cue from it, it made it SMARTER.

“It remains a hazard, however, to be black and super-powered.”

I thought the series creator never read comics?

It needs more Red Hulk and mutant werewolves.

@tom:
If that were true, they would’ve stopped ripping off popular comics like Watchmen and X-men story-arcs.

I’m confused, this question seems to be based off the mistaken impression that Heroes was ever worth watching at some point.

I mean, I thought it was pretty obvious from the get go that this show was a express delivery fresh off the Jeph Loeb shit truck.

It’s love it or hate it now. I’m personally enjoyed the hell out of season 3. IMO- watch the premiere. If you enjoy that, you’ll enjoy the rest of this season so far. If you think it’s crap, don’t bother with the rest.

My biggest gripe though? Mohinder. This season would be a million times better without him.

Heh. This is a question that I find myself discussing with friends a lot lately. Here’s what I’ve come up with:

The Pros: 1. Though it’s not as inventive as it was in season one, each episode still has at least one really nice idea or scene in it. Often two or three. 2. We’re finding out some of the show’s many secrets, and the reveals are usually pretty cool.

The Cons: 1. The writers often violate character to make the plot go where they want, to the point that many characters don’t even seem like the same people anymore. 2. The reveals, though seldom disappointing in terms of pure drama, often contradict things we already know. So, much like the characters, the plot is beginning to feel like a patchwork of neat ideas that maybe don’t belong together. 3. They’ve abandoned the slow burn and gone too far in the opposite direction, so that now everything’s happening too fast. New characters and situations are coming and going without proper set-up or exploration, and I care less and less about all of it.

So, to sum up: while the show’s fun and exciting on the surface, the writing has failed on the most basic levels and it no longer works as an ongoing series. I watch it at half-attention, with a sort of “What bizarre thing is happening now?” attitude, and on that level I can appreciate it. But The Sopranos, it ain’t.

Thanks everyone for your comments. It’s interesting to see how polarizing this season has been … as Tony said above, “It’s love it or hate it now.”

So even though I’m probably opening myself up to “Don’t say we didn’t warn you!” comments from at least half of you, I’ll likely check out the first episode and go from there.

Spend the time you would have watched Heroes on No Heroics which premiered this sept on the bbc.

That goes for everyone.

Middle Man is a pretty good super hero show, too.

If you can overlook obvious logic holes, then I would say this season is better than the last. The problem is that the characters could clearly get out of certain situations with their powers, but they never seems to think about it. As others have pointed out, it does seem like this season they are trying to go full throttle just to show that they can do better than last season. The problem is that it feels a bit forced.

Also, on a completely shallow level, which at the same time says something about the current quality about the show: I am more facinated by the wig H.P. wears as Claire- since she cut her hair over the summer, they’ve had to fit a blonde wig on her for this season. Sometimes it looks real- other times, not at all. After her brush with vortex, as she caught up with her Dad, I was distracted by her unnatural hairline.

Please be a better show. PLEASE.

I don’t get the reasoning behind adding to the Petrelli clan and I don’t like what tey’ve done to Mohinder, but it isn’t terrible, so far.
I think everyone knows that season 1 borrowed from Watchmen, Season 2 from the X-Men’s Legacy Virus story- but was anyone else reminded of Jessica Jones and the Purple Man (from Alias) in the scene with Claire’s birth mother being forced to watch the guy eat dinner?

I’m enjoying Season Three so far more than the beginning of Season Two, but I have several major problems with it that I hope will be addressed. Without giving anything away, for those that have watched it:
I feel like Claire is finally back on a decent plot path, but Mohinder has been completely derailed. Peter kept being interesting, but certain events in Episode 5 felt extremely forced in regards to him. Nathan and Tracy (aka Nikki) remain complete wastes of space. Sylar feels a bit forced, but I’m truly enjoying the “quest” his character is undergoing. Hiro and Ando were doing fine but uninteresting things until Episode 5 (which just became the opposite of fine)… which they really will have to explain well at some point soon. And I’m still not sure how I’m feeling about HRG this season; he got so derailed in Season Two that his character is becoming a mess.

If nothing else, I thank the creators for pairing down the outrageous numbers of Specials we were watching in Season Two.

Avoid it. The dialogue is awfully written, every character is a whiner it seems, the plot is a total repeat of season one, nothing every happens in a slow soap opera way, and the level of coincidence is ridiculous in that Independence Day-way. If I didn’t have to watch it for my podcast, I wouldn’t.