"Heroes" (2006-Present)

This show looked good in the commercials, but since it was on Monday night, we figured we would never see it. After all, our Monday night’s are already booked, with CSI: Miami, 24and “WWE RAW”.

However, a commercial on the Sci-Fi channel (now the SyFy channel) led us to it’s showing of “Heroes,” on Fridays. Thankfully, a Sci-Fi “Heroes” marathon helped catch us up on most of the episodes we had missed, and NBC’s website was able to catch us up on the rest – as they put all of the episodes online.

Once we started watching, we were instantly hooked. The storytelling is totally not what you’d first expect on hearing the plot. Instead of making the events incredibly fantastical, “Heroes” is able to merge these events with reality in such a way that they become more real to the viewer than most other tries at big-screen superheroism. “Heroes” merges superhero-abilities and a compelling storyline into 2006’s biggest hit.

Of course, what would any show be without good characters? Heroes‘ characters are what help make the show so enjoyable, and they are as big a part of the show as the storyline. The main characters include:

• Hiro Nakamura (Masi Oka) is able to bend the space-time continuum, allowing him to both stop time and (at times) to time travel
• Claire Bennet (Hayden Panettiere) is indestructible
• Matt Parkman (Greg Grunberg) can hear people’s thoughts – and more
• Peter Petrelli (Milo Ventimiglia) is able to take on the power of a person close to him
• Peter’s political brother, Nathan Petrelli (Adrian Pasdar), can fly.

With a first season that impressed viewers tremendously (it garnered 2 Golden Globe nominations and is the only TV show listed on TIME Magazine’s “27 People Who Mattered In 2006″), “Heroes” was all set for a second season – and many flocked away in droves, thanks partly to a bit too much time spent in medieval Japan, rather than in today’s world.

I, personally, missed the entire 2nd season when it was on TV, since Spike didn’t show the Friday repeats like they had for season 1. With a 2nd DVR in the house now, I bought season 2 on DVD recently, and watched basically the entire season in one night.

While the first half of season 2 wasn’t as exciting as season 1, it did pick up during it’s last few episodes, making it extremely hard to stop watching at that point (apparently most of the viewers left before it picked up again).

Season 3 had it’s ups and downs, with the second-half picking things up a bit more than the first.

Will this now no longer fledgling series be able to survive much longer, or are the best days of these heroes already in the past?

Since we now have 2 DVRs, we’ll be tuning in to NBC Mondays at 9pm ET to find out.