Hate Myself for Watching You?

I'm beginning to feel a bit like Joan Jett on Monday nights¹. Is anyone else out there still watching Heroes (addendum: Ok, I know Danielle and Marni are watching--unless they've given up recently--but anyone else)? I just don't know what to think any more. Do I really want to spend time watching this when all I'm really going to do is pick it apart as soon as it's over? I just can't help feeling that they have forgotten to have anyone proofread their scripts. Just a quick rundown of some of the things that have gone wrong:

-We're on potential/alternate future number 5 or so now. Whenever the writers are in need of a new threat, they just send someone back from the future to tell us all about the danger that is coming. With all the different versions of Peter and Hiro (as well as other characters) we've encountered, the show is rapidly approaching pre-Crisis DC comics level².

-Mohinder and Peter seem to operate simply by doing the first thing that comes to mind, no matter how stupid (or at least they seem to be the two biggest offenders). For example, Peter determines that his brother revealing his abilities causes dystopian future B and he must use his time travel abilities to prevent this. Rather than going back to any point prior to the revelation and rationalizing with Nathan, he goes to the press conference where the secret is revealed and shoots his brother. I realize that sometime characters do things because they need to for the plot to progress, but the writers seem to be taking it to extremes. I think Mohinder tends to be the more annoying of the two, because while Peter is projecting his spittle everywhere with his screaming, Mohinder shows up for long winded speeches. 

-Dead people don't stay dead. Whether they died on screen or before the start of the show, dead people keep popping back up.

-Mohinder's scientist dialogue seems to have been written via Mad-Lib. It's as if there were blanks in his lines that just said (science noun) or (science verb). It's one thing if the science is silly and unrealistic³, that's to be expected in a not even remotely based on fact sci-fi show. The words they put in Mohinder's mouth don't even go together and when they do, they contradict things that he (or everyone else) said in previous episodes.

-As if having Ali Later on her 4th character/personality isn't bad enough, the explanation she was recently given doesn't even help. She was one of three superpowered identical triplets, Niki, Tracy and Barbara. What about Jessica? She wasn't just an alternate personality (like Gina), she was Niki's twin who was killed by their abusive father. Was she the fourth triplet or just an adopted sibling who looked an awful lot like her? Her entire plotline makes my head hurt.

-Nathan had a wife right? The one who was in a wheelchair but then was healed by Linderman? Where'd she go? And shouldn't she be upset that her husband is sleeping with every version of Ali Larter that walks by?

-We've only had two true villains who have had any development (unless you want to count people working for the Company, but we really don't know where they fall on the sliding scale of evil-doers yet). One of these villains has been seen in the future living a peaceful life and making waffles for his kid⁴. The other (ignoring for now that he was a Japanese legend despite being British) is motivated by the fact that someone thought he was dead and stole his girlfriend...400 years ago. Is this Pearl Harbor? At least Ben Affleck didn't hold a grudge that long and even when he was angry he didn't think it reason enough to try to destroy the world.

-My favorite scene in recent episodes was Noah Bennet telling the Hatian (you know, the guy who makes everyone else's powers useless) that he was keeping Sylar around only to find his weakness and then he'd kill him. At this point, Sylar was standing in a cell, trapped with a man who negated all his powers and an armed man who wanted him dead. Yeah, can't find his weakness. Did no one question this when it was written? (Which is not to say that I wanted him to kill Sylar. At this point, he is one of the few interesting characters.)

-Now it seems that not only do the writers not seem to be paying attention, but they clearly are not talking to each other. We have writers saying that Sylar lost all his powers from season 1 and had to start again from scratch, followed shortly by him demonstrating multiple powers that he had learned in season 1. Then we had Mohinder doing a scene-by-scene re-enactment of The Fly, which the writers said was intentional. Shortly after this, another writer complained that just because it was similar doesn't mean it was taken from The Fly and that there was no intent to replicate it. If the writers can't even agree on things, it's no wonder that the show seems to be a mess.

So, why am I still watching, you ask? Well, I'm asking myself the same thing. There are two competing reasons I keep coming back. First, I know that there is potential there. I want this show to get better and to use the ideas to build the show to what it should be. the second reason is that I'm waiting to see what idiotic thing they do next. The problem is that with each passing week I'm moving away from the former reason and more toward the latter. Either way, I can't get myself to just give up and stop watching.

¹ Actually, Ennis del Mar would probably be more accurate, but that quote has beaten to death don't you think?

² For those of you who don't know. DC comics had so many alternate worlds and alternate versions of characters that in 1985, they had Crisis on Infinite Earths which destroyed many alternate worlds and made things as least a little less confusing.

³ Fringe, I'm looking at you.

⁴ Which was pretty out of left field and didn't make much sense, even if it was kind of fun.