NBC Heroes Season 3: Will it Survive the Ratings?

The much-hyped Heroes Season 3 premiere generated so-so ratings for it's time slot, down 25% from the previous year and ranking behind ABC's "Dancing with the Stars". The Heroes premier s l o w l y picked up the pieces of a lackluster Season 2 and attempted to start us questioning again. The hope, of course, is that we will be newly engaged and tune in to get those questions answered. That is, if we can get past the pain of establishing fresh story lines. Well the answer is in the form of ratings and so far that answer is a resounding- "Eh, maybe".

As much as everyone at NBC would like to believe the lackluster start for Heroes is the result of the writers strike, they are fooling themselves if they pin it all to that dead horse. The truth of the matter is, NBC, no one wants to watch anything for 3 hours. That is unless they have just shelled out 20 bucks for a bucket of popcorn and Heath Ledger covered in white-out. The first hour of the Heroes Season 3 premiere night was painful, at best. The show's stars are no hosts and the god-awful number of commercials and fan shots meant I quickly caught up with the show "live" even though I waited 15 minutes to begin my viewing so I could skip the fluff.

For those viewers who did manage to muddle through that first hour without switching to DWTS the reward was a uninspiring premiere. Although I understand that a new chapter might lend itself to a slow start, I wonder if the rest of America will. Instead of ridiculous parties and endless re-caps NBC needs to let its old viewers know that the beauty of a serial story is that you can pick it up in a new season without ever seeing the last chapter. Afterall, you don't have to have read Superman Volume 2 to enjoy Volume 3. We can all just put Heroes Season 2 behind us and go on our merry way as if it never happened, as I we didn't get left hanging mid season forced to watch re-runs of MTV's The Real World Season 32, Des Moines.

If you haven't watched Season 3 yet, you should. Yes the season opener was slow but the potential is tremendous. Sylar is a good guy, Claire has anger issues, Peter is bad, Ando has powers in the future and Mohinder takes his shirt off- several times. It is becoming clear by episode 3 that The Company has been manipulating heroes and perhaps creating them for years. Nicki/Jessica and the new character of Tracy, played by Ali Larter, appear to be early recipients of a power-granting formula. It seems that Sylar, referred to as "patient zero" by Mohinder's father was also given his abilities from a similar formula, which would help explain how his abilities could be "lost" temporarily and later regained with Mohinder's assistance. All of this ties in with the fact that Mohinder has discovered a formula to generate powers in a human while at the same time Hiro is charged with guarding half of a secret formula, which he quickly looses in classic Hiro fashion. Clearly this formula will explain a few things about the mysterious Company and the dark sins of Linderman, Angela Petrelli and company. I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn later in the season that the esteemed Dr.Suresh Sr. is really quite villainous him self. Perhaps the good doctor was attempting to re-create the power-granting formula to somehow get back at The Company and those running it for injury to the original "patient zero"- Shanti Suresh.

Whatever the outcome of this Season 3 the theme is timeless story-line gold, anyone can be a villain. I will certainly be tuning in to watch it unfold and I hope more of American does that same.