I know when I first started this blog, I really ragged on Heroes in comparing it to Smallville and I still maintain the fact that Smallville in its Ninth Season is much more consistent in quality than Heroes. However, I cannot get up on my soapbox without admitting that Heroes is getting better. If you haven't followed Heroes, it's a show that has had a strange past based on the show having the best first season in maybe all of Television history even getting an Emmy nomination for best drama. Then the Writers Strike hit causing Heroes to ride off the rails on a crazy train in it's 3rd season with the introduction of a new villain played by Robert Forster that had lines which made him sound like the Wicked Witch of the West and the use of plot lines so chocked full of characters that it could cause your mind to explode.
In the second half of this season Heroes became less complicated by the show going back to the character-driven stories that made the first season popular from the start. Although, the decision to have one of the Heroes use his mental abilities to permanently brainwash the shows main villain Sylar to shape-shift into and believe he is Nathan Petrelli a Hero who was killed during the 3rd season finale still left a bad taste in my mouth about the show.

The guy on the left is now the guy on the right? That's seriously confusing.

With the current fourth season Heroes the show seems to be getting better for one of two reasons. The first reason which was given to me by a friend of mine is the fact that Heroes has been so bad for such a long period of time that our expectations have been lowered to the point where the show appears as good. However with being an optimist, I want to go with the second reason which is the writers of the show finally realizing that Heroes is a drama about people who happen to have superpowers rather than an epic race to save the world. This has been proven by the introduction of a story line about a deaf woman named Emma whose manifesting powers and interactions with the other Heroes on the show have been used as a plot device to get her to take on the challenges caused by her disability.
The writers have also realized that Heroes is about people who have superpowers through the addition of a new villain named Samuel played wonderfully by Robert Knepper that is like the X-Men character Magneto in the sense that he wants the Heroes a.k.a people with superpowers to have a place in the world but he goes about it in the wrong way.
Despite these great storytelling decisions Heroes still has some bumps in the road with this season's arc including continuing the plot line of Sylar being transformed into Nathan and having fan favorite character Hiro travel back in time to undo a decision he made in the first season but these more unfavorable story threads including a few from the past are being phased out by what currently seems to be character deaths in order to establish Peter Petrelli as the show's protagonist surrounded by a cast of supporting Heroes.
Normally, character deaths bother me but in the case of Heroes, I don't mind them as long they are a step towards making the show compelling like it was in the first season. With all that being said, even though this post is helping me assure myself I am still bracing myself for the show to disappoint me like the second half of season three where it became good again only to let me down with Sylar being transformed into Nathan. However, if Heroes remains on its present course, it will keep me watching and maybe avoid the threat of cancellation.

Check out Heroes Mondays at 8/7c on NBC or online and I strongly recommend checking out the first season on DVD.