The Writing Has Improved
No, really. It's very tempting to give most of the credit for this to the return of Bryan Fuller, now acting as "consulting producer" on the show - After all, the turn-around coincided with his first episode back, which also happened to be the best episode they'd had in years - but it's not as if he's the only person who's been delivering recently. Perhaps he just made everyone else step up their game, or maybe he's been reminding everyone what the show is really about, but the show is once again becoming fast-moving, popcorn-smart, funny entertainment again... and the characters are no longer seeming to shift personalities every couple of episodes depending on who the plot needs them to be in order to move forward or shock the viewers (Well, except Sylar, but that's intentional... I think). Also, they titled an episode "Turn And Face The Strange." That's got to be worth something, right?

No More Time Travel
The best thing about "Fugitives," the current arc? There's absolutely no time travel in it at all. For a show that had continually gone back to the same idea of "Character X Has Seen The Future And Must Prevent It" for its last three "volumes," this is nothing short of stunning... and, more than that, very welcome indeed. Instead, the show is slowly coming to terms with the idea that conflict can come less from predestination and more from the characters just doing what they do. Yes, they may still be ripping off the X-Men, but at least they're not still ripping off the one same storyline over and over again. Baby steps, people.

(Also something that seems to be finally being abandoned: The Daddy Issues. Now that we've dealt with Papa Parkman, Papa Petrelli and Papa Sylar, here's hoping that the show can finally move away from basing so much of the drama around characters' unhappy relationships with their fathers. If nothing else, they'll always have the Nathan/Claire/HRG triangle for cheap therapy.)

The Cast Is Shrinking. Ish.
Whether it's essentially sidelining characters (Mohinder keeps disappearing to "find himself" or "find the truth about his father" or something similar, and that's just fine with me), killing them off (Bye, Elle! Bye, Daphne! Bye, Tracy, even though I totally don't believe that you're dead!), or even just forgetting about them altogether (Are we ever going to see Monica again? What about Maya? Actually, no, I don't want to see her again), it's as if the writers had suddenly realized that the series was massively overpopulated, and mostly with characters that no-one cared about. Even though the show has only really started to improve in the last few episodes, a small cull has been underway since the start of this season, and it's something that I hope continues next year. One suggestion, though: Let's start killing off main characters who aren't serving any purpose anymore. Yes, Mohinder, I mean you. You too, Matt Parkman.

(Actually, another suggestion: Can you stop only getting rid of the female characters? It's kind of creepy, the weird gender bias when it comes to the characters who've been disappearing.)

Someone Has Started Thinking About The Powers
More signs of intelligence from the writers room: The Deus Ex Machina characters? Suddenly depowered in a move so welcome that I won't even complain too loudly about how awkwardly it was achieved. One of the show's constant problems has always been "The Flash Dilemma" - that is, the fact that if all of the characters were thinking, the stories would be over before they'd started because everyone involved was so powerful (So named because, if the Flash is really the fastest man alive, if he actually stopped to think, he could run around at superspeed and deal with all the bad guys before they'd had a chance to boast about how unstoppable they were), but now Peter Petrelli has to touch someone to gain their power, and even then, he can only mimic one power at a time, and Hiro can only stop time, not travel in it, nor teleport out of trouble with an overly-squinty blink. Only Sylar remains all-powerful, and that's as it should be; the bad guy should always be the one with all the power, otherwise he's no threat - and, even then, his power comes with a price (Not to mention a cameo from Ellen Greene in last week's episode). The result? Tension that you can believe in, without thinking that your favorite character is stupid.

Less Episodes Means Less Filler
Perhaps most importantly, NBC just announced that there'll be less Heroes next year; they plan on making somewhere between 18-20 episodes in total, compared with the 25 of this season. This is definitely a good thing, because it'll cut down on the random, go-nowhere shenanigans that the show has used to stretch out stories past their desired length so many times in the past (Case in point: Claire helping comic store geek escape the authorities). Hopefully, it'll also make the show's PTB think more about what needs to be said, as opposed to following their desires down creative dead-end alleys (Almost all of the recent "1961" episode) in order to fulfill the season's episode order.

Don't get me wrong; the show's nowhere near perfect, still; there are still moments that you want to throw things at your television and scream that everyone involved just may be retarded, and Nathan's hair continues to get more out of control with each and every episode. But Heroes has, rather remarkably, turned itself around from the carcrash it used to be to become something that, once again, has the potential to fulfill its own potential. It's also, thankfully, become more entertaining in doing so, and is worth your attention for an hour every week again. Tune into Monday's big season finale to see the fireworks and over the top plot resolutions to see if you can fall in love with the show again... and stick around for the final scene that'll show what we have in store for us when the show returns in the fall. You know you want to.

There's a lot of coolness in "It's Coming," including a showdown between mind-reading Parkman, speedy Daphne, and the whole Petrelli clan. Suffice to say Parkman and mama Petrelli manage to defeat papa Petrelli's mind-smoosh, and are now scheming with Peter and Nathan to stop papa's evil plan to find the "catalyst" that will make the formula work. Yes, the "catalyst" is in Claire's blood, and yes of course freezy PR girl Tracy is scheming with papa to turn Nathan to the dark side.

But the most interesting developments by far last night involved Hiro and Sylar.

First let's consider Hiro's predicament. The once-beloved character has reached pretty much the nadir of his arc. He began so promisingly in the show's first season as an innocent otaku with a future of sword-wielding badassery, and then somewhere in season 2 it was if the show creators gave up on making him into a capable adult. Throughout the current season, he's been a grating clown who acts like a 10-year-old; and now, thanks to papa P's mind-scramble, he actually believes he's a 10-year-old. As you can see in the clip above, Hiro spends most of the episode acting silly in a waffle restaurant at a bowling alley.

Why haven't we seen Hiro developing into badass Future Hiro with the leather and sword? The man who no longer has to speak in pidgin? The simple answer is that the dystopian future where he became that man isn't going to happen. But the more disappointing answer is that this show can't seem to allow its Asian male heroes to be powerful, fully adult, sexual beings without punishing them. Each time Hiro has inched towards having an adult identity, whether that's as Future Hiro or the lover of the feudal-era princess in season 2, he's slapped back. Not only is he robbed of these identities, he's actually turned into somebody (a child) who can never have them.

And don't even get me started on Suresh, who was an unctuous weakling for two seasons, a guy who spent all his time whining or being a voice-over. And then when he finally became sexually involved with somebody, it turned out it was because he was slowly mutating into a hideous monster. Why can't Heroes make these men sexy and tough, instead of reducing them to aimless boy-children, easily manipulated and undermined at every turn?

It's interesting to compare Hiro's fate to Sylar's because their beginnings were oddly parallel. Sylar, AKA Gabriel, began as an awkward geek who wanted to be a hero. But unlike Hiro, whose dark future self never came to pass, Gabriel's dark self was fully realized in the serial killer Sylar. Gabriel moved through that dark self, a kind of hideous adolescence, and is now progressing beyond it. Hiro never got the opportunity to explore his darker half, and therefore his character remains a kind of eternal child. Meanwhile, Gabriel is evolving into a multi-faceted character who is the master of his fate even when captured by papa Petrelli.

One of the very best scenes all season came last night, when Gabriel truly emerged from Sylar. Papa Petrelli tells Sylar that he can actually take someone's powers without killing them, as long as he feels empathy. And then he locks Sylar in with electric Elle, who is filled with pain, wants to be rid of her powers, and hates Sylar for killing her father.

She also, of course, loves Sylar too. Last week we learned that she worked with HRG to seduce Gabriel into becoming the monstrous Sylar - and her seduction was not entirely a put-on. As Sylar faces Elle's rage, his dark self is burned away and Gabriel emerges. He's become a man who understands his power and can control it. And he's finally able to connect with another human being without taking her life. We know that Elle and Sylar are going to end up romantically involved, and there is nothing cutesy-poo or innocent about that connection.

While Hiro scampers around acting like a kid, Gabriel has become a man. And now I'd like to see Hiro get the same thoughtful treatment that Gabriel has. His character was my absolute favorite during the first season, and I feel like we've missed out on the opportunity to see him develop into an interesting, complex superhero. Will we ever get that chance, or do the show creators think the only possible role for our brave otaku is one of babyish impotence?

The mechanics of time travel is something that the writers of Heroes seem to have spent some time really thinking about, given the various ways in which they've used it throughout the show. We've seen people who can paint the future (Something that four separate people have done so far on the show, to varying degrees of success - although it's maybe worth noting that only Isaac has a 100% accuracy rate, perhaps because everyone was better at forward planning in the first season), we've visited the future - well, futures - and we've even visited the past a few times, as well. But that doesn't necessarily mean that the laws of time travel on the show are entirely consistent. Fans may argue about whether or not Hiro did change time when he tried to save Charlie, but the writers seemed to be fairly clear that the main events had stayed the same: Charlie still died, Sylar still had her powers afterwards, and Hiro decided that he couldn't change history (Even though he actually already had, by that point). But then, how do you explain the show's multiple futures?

By our count, Heroes has had somewhere between four and six different "futures" that we've actually seen for ourselves - the oracular painters' visions don't count, because people with no irises scare us - and most of those have been undone by the characters changing that future's history based on foreknowledge of what was to come:

Future 1:
New York gets blown up in a nuclear explosion caused by Sylar one year in the future, as seen when Hiro saw when he first discovered his powers in "Don't Look Back," the show's second episode (The cause of the explosion is revealed in "Five Years Gone," later in the season).
Undone because: Peter saved the cheerleader, but didn't save the world. Of course, what caused him to save the cheerleader? Hiro time-traveling and telling him to do it.

Future 2:
New York gets blown up in a nuclear explosion caused by Peter one year in the future, as a result of Peter saving the cheerleader because Hiro told him to. Bad move, Peter. Everyone has gone bad as a result - well, except for Ando, who died in the explosion: Hiro has become a ninja, Nathan has become President and Ali Larter has become a stripper because the writers like to imagine her naked. We saw all of this in "Five Years Gone" in the first season.
Undone because: Nathan flew Peter into the "high-enough-that-a-nuclear-explosion-is-apparently-meaningless-sphere" at the end of the first season. It's unclear why this didn't happen in the Five Years Gone timeline, other than the promise of cheap drama, so this may not have changed as a direct result of time travel (although Hiro's time-traveling antics probably helped, let's face it).
Possibly not undone because: See Future 4a. No, really.
Future 3:
93% of humanity has died as a result of the Shanti Virus, which was a plot device if ever there was one. We see this in "Out of Time," during the second season of the show that we all try to forget ever existed as completely as Peter has forgotten Caitlin, his Irish girlfriend that he accidentally abandoned there. Oops.
Undone because: The virus didn't get released after all at the end of "Powerless," the last episode of the second season, thanks to Peter knowing what would happen if it did, thanks to time travel. So what happened to Caitlin? No-one knows, not even the writers, who've complained that their heads spin when they try and work it out.

Future 3b:
This future definitely doesn't exist but in some strange fan-fiction somewhere, but as originally shot, the Shanti Virus did get released at the end of "Powerless," and the never-completed later episodes of that season would have included Peter's attempts to rescue Caitlin and a town quarantined because of the virus.
Undone because: It never really happened in the first place.

Future 4a:
Four years from now - although when "now" is seems to be a somewhat elastic concept; I think it's actually somewhere around the end of 2007 at best, but "four years" forward brings us to the same time period as "Five Years Gone"'s Future 2, which may be important - future Claire tries to shoot future Peter, because she blames him for the way everything has turned out. It all happened at the start of "The Second Coming" from the third season.
Potentially meaningful point: Both Claire and Peter look exactly like they did in Future 2, whether it's hair color or massive scar on face and stubble. Are the hair and make-up people that lazy, or is there some connection between the apparently undone "Five Years Gone" flashforward to this time period
Undone because: Future Peter shoots present Nathan, thereby stopping him from revealing the existence of superhumans publicly, which was what caused all the problems, apparently. Time travel saves the day again! Except, maybe not. See below.

Future 4b:
Hiro travels to some unspecified point in the future where he is fighting Ando, who now has superpowers - and he's not the only one - before there's a massive explosion that's very similar to the McGuffin behind the first season. But Claire's not a cheerleader anymore! How can they stop this one? Again, from "The Second Coming."
Undone because: Well, it's not, yet.

Future 4c:
Again at some unspecified time in the future, all of the regular characters on the show have been killed by escaped villain Knox, escaped Alias actor Adam Monroe, Matt's telepathic absent father, some Ali Larter character that may or may not be Tracy Strauss (and really who cares that much anymore?) and potentially Sylar. This may or may not have been a true future - We saw it at the start of "The Butterfly Effect" in the third season, but it was Angela Petrelli's dream, and even though she's one of the show's many oracular characters, it was a dream.
Undone because: We don't even know if it's real yet, never mind how to undo it.

The problem with these last three futures - besides the feeling that we've seen them before (perhaps literally, given the crossover between "Five Years Gone" and "The Second Coming") - comes not from the show itself, but from an interview with writers Aron Coliete and Joe Pokaski, who said that not only wasn't future 4a changed by Nathan's shooting, but that "[t]hese are in fact, all the same future." Wait - didn't we see Hiro get killed in two entirely different ways in two of them (Zapped by Ando and then stabbed by a sword, respectively)? How does that work? Tomorrow's episode of the show, "I Am Become Death," promises to either address some of this confusion or increase it, as FuturePeter and PresentPeter travel to a/the future and, let's face it, probably see Hiro die in yet another way just for shits and giggles just to mess with our heads.

So exactly how does time travel work on Heroes? After literally minutes of consideration, the best we can work out - ignoring the always present possibility of "it does whatever the writers need it to at that moment, internal logic be damned" - is this: You can change the details, but not the ultimate outcome, of destiny (or Peter Petrelli's unfortunate shaving accident, it seems) through time travel. Charlie will still die; she'll just have met Hiro six months earlier and been happier. There will always be a legend of Takezo Kensei, but he may end up being Hiro instead of a refugee from a JJ Abrams spy drama... and no matter how many cheerleaders you save or viruses you stop crashing against a vault floor, the future of Earth Heroes will always be dystopian, New York-centric and in need of the kind of help that only comes from the Peacock Network.

If true - and it's something that makes the similarities in Future Claire and Future Peter's appearance between "Five Years Gone" and "The Second Coming" - then it presents a couple of problems for the writers of the show. Firstly, it suggests that we're probably going to continually have some level of time-travel or change-the-future plotline throughout the entire series, never mind the entire season, and secondly, it kills a lot of the dramatic tension if we find out that no matter what the characters do, we're still all going to end up completely screwed by 2011. Have the writers written themselves into a corner, or will we end up seeing the rules of Heroes time travel clearly explained in such a way as to allow for a non-gloomy future sooner rather that later? Only time, ironically, will tell. Just let me know if I end up having to be get my Shanti innoculation.

While Beeman - who directed last week's second episode, and has been with the show since the beginning - doesn't point out the major flaw in last night's "One of Us, One of Them" (That would be the "Hey, Sylar's a good guy now! Look, he put on a funny accent and ordered that asshole cop around! Ain't he a card?" turnaround, which didn't just stretch what little credibility the show had as much as just gleefully shred it while giggling and telling the audience not to think too much, just look at Zachary Quinto in a suit - Seriously, people, WTF? You couldn't have at least tried to put some effort into that plotline?), he's happy to share some behind the scenes gossip about Claire's showdown with her mom and Hiro and Ando's moviegoing experiences in Germany:

The first draft of the script, from a production standpoint, was very big. It had the bank robbery more-or- less as it currently exists. It also had a Claire/Meredith scene, which currently occurs in a cargo container. This scene originally took place in a deserted warehouse where Claire was surrounded by fire. The Hiro/Ando/Daphne scene, which currently occurs in a German movie theatre, originally took place on a train traveling through India, complete with Hiro and Ando on the roof of the train and Ando nearly falling out the side of a baggage car.

Personally, I loved the first draft of this script. It was a great, incredibly exciting read. I loved the way the bank robbery was written, and the idea that Sylar was to become HRG’s new partner blew my mind. The entire component parts were great – but, collectively, it was also, obviously, too big to be affordable. Beyond that though, the choices we producer’s faced of how to get the budget down became very subjective. The bank robbery was the obvious thing that had to stay because it drove the central story and the key recurring stories for the series– For me, the scripted moment where time freezes and future Peter appears was a key event (it sent a chill down my spine when I first read it.) So the Claire story and the Hiro story were what had to be attacked.

Not that the bank robbery escaped entirely unscathed:

There were changes made to reduce budget in the bank scenes as well. Most noteably – at first Jesse’s power was Earthquake-stomp (Like Gorgon of the Inhumans from the Fantastic Four comics) But this power implied cracking floors and walls and all manner of damage that would be expensive to produce. At the last minute we changed him to a Sonic scream (like DC’s Black Canary) – this was easier to accomplish but was a bummer too us because we already had Echo from the online webisodes with sonic power – Oh well…

The biggest bummer for me was the death of the villains (Well, three of the four) so quickly - Not only does it kind of make me wonder what the point of pretending that they were a big deal in the first place was if they were going to be written out after a botched bank robbery (Also, what was the point of the "hidden Peter" plot at all?), but I'm depressed that Weevil's death robs me of any more potential Veronica Mars reunion moments. But what did the rest of you think?

Season 3, Episode 3 [Beaming Beeman]

According to Entertainment Weekly's Michael Ausiello, the two fanboys are going to "cross paths with (and perhaps serve as advisors to) one of the Heroes." No mention of which Hero it would be, but my fingers are crossed that it's not the already-geeky Hiro. Instead, why not show someone with imagination teaching Peter what he can really do with all those powers of his, or teach Sylar that, with great power, comes great responsibility?

Exclusive: 'Heroes' Geeks Out Over Seth Green, Breckin Meyer [EW.com]

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• They've given man-bags to all the guys on the show, except Sylar. Is that the hot new hero fashion accessory of the year?
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• Sylar might include an alternate pointing "let me open your head up" finger-hand, as well as a "shards of flying glass" accessory hand. Oh, and a baseball cap.
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• Claire would come with alternate "injured" body parts that you can swap out, featuring "regularly occurring forehead injury" head.
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• Peter in a double-hoodie wearing outfit, and would have extra "radioactive" hands that look like he stuck them in boiling water. Ouch.
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• Hiro comes with "Ando's sword" covered in blood (what?) and his alternate "constipated" power-activating head.
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• Mohinder comes with a tiny version of his dad's Activating Evolution book, complete with his picture on the back cover.
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• There will be a special "Flying" Peter figure, who basically looks like he has a swooshing coat, at a retailer to be named later.
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• Mohinder was going to come with a set of his files, and an urn containing his father's ashes. Which would have been weird. Does he carry that urn around on the show?
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• Of course, raddest accessory ever: Sylar comes with a brain.
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Images from the March 2008 Issue of Toyfare Magazine, Issue #127.

• Is Sarah Michelle Gellar's new movie Possession science fiction? Her character's husband and brother-in-law both wind up in comas, then the brother-in-law wakes up thinking he's the husband. Telepathy or mysticism? We'll find out in February. [Shocktillyoudrop]
• The Russian trailer for Cloverfield showcases some previously unseen sequences of soldiers fighting the monster, plus women with fake sweat on their chests. [BloodyDisgusting]
• Similarly, new clips from Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem show battle scenes in a sewer, a hospital and a pool party, plus a soldier doing the whole "you go on without me" martyr dance. [IESB]
• Coming (eventually) in Heroes: more of "badass" future Hiro, Hiro's dad's secret powers, the long-promised Jessica Collins super-spy, and a cop and crimelord in New Orleans. Oh, and Monica will dress up as Saint Joan, that cheesy comic book character, more often. [Ohnotheydidnt]
• Screencaps from the Torchwood season two trailer reveal Martha Jones in bondage! [FreemaAgyeman]
• The new KITT from the Knight Rider relaunch has all-wheel drive, laser weapons, a "mini-KITT drone" and other features that the original lacked. But no grappling hook. [Popular Mechanics, via SFSignal]
• Chuck has two more episodes in the can, which reveal more backstory on Adam Baldwin's character. [SpoilerTV]

In Saving Charlie, fans will discover why Hiro has gotten more action on the show than the hormonal Peter Petrelli. The plot features Hiro's missing six month time-travel adventure with Charlie the cute waitress, when he went into the past to try and save her from Sylar. While he ultimately had to let her die in one of those "it was meant to be" moments, they did fall in love.

The novel is being put out by Del Rey Publishing, and is written by Aury Wellington, who seems to be best-known for her novelizations of teen angst drama The O.C. . It also features one of the dullest book covers we've ever seen. But we're trying not to judge. We need our Heroes fix.

Why did the company keep the deadliest virus in the universe on ice for 30 years? I know they're evil, but how dumb are they? Also, what exactly is that virus? Is it just another derivation of Mohinder's sister's blood, or something else?

How exactly did Sylar lose his powers, and how does he think Mohinder can help him? Was it just Hiro's samurai sword, or did Sylar get the Shanti virus and somehow not die? How on Earth did Sylar get from the bunker in the middle of the jungle to the roadside in the Mexico desert anyway?

Is Claire a robot or an alien after all? Who stole her damn car? More importantly, how exactly can she blow the whistle on the Company without confusing the heck out of everybody?

What exactly was Mohinder and Noah's plan to bring the Company down? Are they still carrying it out, or did Mohinder really switch sides?

Why did Angela Petrelli try to take the fall for the murder of George Takei and the others? Was it just to keep regular folks from knowing all about their mutant superpowers, or was there something else?

What did Adam get up to in the 400 years between the Kyoto stuff and the present day? Once Hiro was gone, why didn't he just go and conquer Japan after all?

What exactly were those pills the Company was giving Peter when they had him locked up? Did they actually negate Peter's powers? If so, then why does the Company need to work on a "vaccine" for superpowers? Why doesn't the Company just dose every mutant it comes across? If the pills weren't negating Peter's powers, what were they? Downers?

Whatever happened to those ipods that were supposed to be in Peter's shipping container?