Heroes Season 3

This entire review will include SPOILERS. You have been warned. 

Ok, here are the things I liked about Season 1 of Heroes:

- Hiro and Peter and their determination to save the world
- Although there were many plot twists there was still a clear thread running through the entire season
- Noah Bennett as the bad guy (it works)
- Cool new powers being revealed every so often and the consequences for the characters who have to deal with them

Which brings me to the most important thing. While the heroes had all these abilities they still managed to be human, and because they were human they were confused by these powers. This season it's not the characters who are confused, it's the writers of the show.

The characters change sides and motivations so many times that I've become completely desensitized to these people betraying each other. The worst example of this is Suresh, but ALL the characters go through this at one point or another this season.

The season was split into two "volumes" and there is a big difference between the two.

The first one (Volume 3) was called Villians and it was so messed up that I was forced to conclude the writers of the show were playing a strange game of "let's see what other combination of good/bad or character alliances/betrayals we can write in to the show" when they wrote this. They might as well have been pulling plot ideas out of a hat and randomly sticking them together for all the sense it made... or flipping coins every episode to decide whether each character would be good or bad for that episode. There's a new company Pinehearst, and somehow the Petrellis' dad, Arthur, turns out to be alive, and evil. The result is that Angela Petrelli and Arthur Petrelli are having this weird feud where we have no idea what either of their motivations are and which characters are on which side. We get a lot of new characters with interesting abilities, but the writers were too busy destroying already established characters and bringing back Nikki's new reincarnation to bother developing these new characters. The result. I failed to care about anyone.

The worst part here is that Arthur Petrelli showed that these people's powers have no limits. You need limits for this kind of thing to remain believable.

The second half of the season (or Volume 4) was titled Fugitives and this time there was one coherent plot/idea and a clearer sense of what it was that these characters faced in the future. The threat was the government program that Nathan had unleashed. I really like Nathan as a jerk... that's how I always saw his character, especially compared to Peter. There's still an endless switching of sides and motivations, but this time we have a new villain, Danko. who actually stays consistent through the entire season. They also do some interesting things with Sylar, in fact they seem to focus on Sylar and I was happy with this. Although he undergoes more motivation changes and side-switches than anyone else it works because he's supposed to be insane and because they actually spent some time and effort developing this and making it believable.

Another cool character was Rebel. I could see it coming three episodes before they revealed that he was Micah, but I like it. They finally found a believable way to use his powers and incorporate such a young hero into the main plot. It works, and I'd love for it to stay.

I thought what they did with Peter's power was interesting... it was an admission on their part that they do need to set some limits. However, I want him to get his powers back now, and not just one at a time. Hiro also needs to somehow regain his powers and Matt Parkman had better stop acquiring new powers. He's great the way he is and any more would be overkill. I like Ando's power, but I keep wanting to headdesk every time he's talking to Hiro about Hiro's loss of power and neither of them thinks of using his super-charging power to fix this.

Also, I was very disappointed by the hints we get that the Nikki reincarnation, Tracy, will again be reincarnated. She just needs to go away. I'm starting to suspect that this actress funds the show or something so they're too scared to get rid of her character(s).

Ok, that was a longer rant than I meant to write.

Overall, Villians was a terrible Volume and Fugitives was a pretty good one. If they keep going the route that they went with Fugitives and stop the motivation-shifting Season 4 might be awesome. This bring me to the world-building rating. I'm going to have to rate the volumes separately.

World-Building Rating: 

Villains was horrible. I won't downgrade it any further than I did Season 2, because while it was ridiculously confused stuff actually happened. So Villians remains at a rating of Shoddy.

With the whole government program thing Fugitives did what Season 1 should have done with the company. The government program had clear aims, clear motivations, and a stable and clear structure. We understand them and what they want so it works. Of course, the characterization suffered in exchange, but in terms of World-Building this season was definitely Great.