AVERAGE

In the beginning, Heroes looked promising.

Styled in the vein of a comic book where the chapters didn’t neatly follow TV seasons, the show portrayed a great number of ordinary people discovering that they had superpowers. Among others, they included the cheerleader Claire (Hayden Panettiere) who could throw herself off buildings and walk away unharmed; Japanese Hiro (Masi Oka) who time-traveled; and Matt (Greg Grunberg), a cop who could read minds. You can’t have a hero without a villain though; the central one was Sylar (Zachary Quinto) but there would be others over the years.

As the show turned increasingly convoluted, one never got the feeling that paying attention was worth the effort; shrinking the size of the cast would’ve helped.

2006-2010:U.S. 77 episodes. Color. Created by Tim Kring. Cast: Hayden Panettiere (Claire Bennet), Jack Coleman (Noah Bennet), Zachary Quinto (Sylar), Masi Oka, Milo Ventimiglia, Ali Larter, Adrian Pasdar, Greg Grunberg, Sendhil Ramamurthy, Cristine Rose, James Kyson Lee, Noah Gray-Cabey (06-08), Kristen Bell (07-08), Robert Knepper (09-10), Leonard Roberts (06-07), Dania Ramirez (07-08), Deanne Bray (09-10).

Trivia: Followed by a miniseries, Heroes Reborn (2015).