Heroes and Lost

Lost returned a couple of weeks ago. Heroes returns tonight. The big question for both is how well they will keep up their energy.

Lost started strong. They explained some of mysteries such as why the Others were present at Locke's birth and early childhood. The episodes are strong on plot instead of being a framing device for the flashback as it was during the worst of the 3rd season.

Heroes faces a difficult challenge. The second season lost some momentum. The producers thought that what was needed was to bring back all of the elements from the first season but mix them differently. Thus we got an apocalyptic vision of the future that had to be averted, Hiro's excitement as he learned to use his powers for the first time, an artist who paints the future and Hiro buying a comic book to see what he should do next. They also decided to play with the concept of hero and villain and make us reevaluate our standards - or so they said. The execution of this was spotty and prroly thought-out. We might like one ambiguous anti-hero but not a series of them.

NBC got the message and replaced the writers. Now we will see if it helps. They are promising a completely different story arc this time with the heroes being hunted. This worked pretty well for the X-Men so it might work here, also. As Lost has shown, it is possible for a show to return after a slump.