Villains

Heroes has started to cheer me up by being slightly less bad! Yay! I hear Brian Fuller (whose Pushing Daisies, I hear, is sadly on its way out - a charming, offbeat show) may be back on the writing staff at Heroes. And what about Joss Whedon? Can he come write the female characters?
Anyway, this week's episode, which actually added human dimension to characters rather than spinning them through mystifying plots in all directions (clones? alternate futures? dead Linderman?) felt satisfying, and most of all, I felt that there was something at stake during the episode. They made clear-cut bad guys (like HRG's former boss) ambiguously good, while HRG himself seemed ambiguously bad, creepy even. They tied random bad fire dude from level five back to the cheerleader's biological mother - they are brother and sister. ("Remember what Daddy told you? God gave you a big sister instead of a brain.") This is something they always say in writing classes - there's got to be something at stake in the poem or fiction piece, or else, who cares?

Anyway, not enough to get me out of my chair to cheer, but definitely a positive direction.