TVSquad

Not that Heroes is overflowing with lesbians now, but one of the plots that might be coming up this season is Claire getting romantically involved with her new college roommate, played by Rachel Melvin.

Michael Ausiello reports that, yes, Claire and the show are definitely going in that direction, though it's impossible to say how far the storyline will go. We all remember what happened when they hinted that Claire's first season best bud Zach was gay.

Can this be considered a power? It could lead to a whole new tagline for the show: Save the lesbian cheerleader, save the world.

Kristin over at E! Online has confirmed something that Ain't It Cool News reported earlier today: Heroes producer Bryan Fuller has left the show (again)!

A lot of buzz surrounded Fuller's return to the show last season. After Pushing Daisies was canceled, Fuller returned to the NBC show that he produced during the first season. Many fans credit Fuller with getting the show back on track. It did indeed seem that the show was a little bit more focused and engaging when he returned.

And no, this doesn't mean that he's going to be working on a big-screen adaptation of Pushing Daisies. Sorry fans.

Update: Here's why Fuller left.

So...is Heroes back? Is it as good as it used to be? Beyond repair? Has it always been good and people are just too picky? Seems like fans (and non-fans) of the show all have opinions.

So does Bryan Fuller. He came back to the show after ABC canceled Pushing Daisies, and while I have always liked the Heroes, you can tell that the show has turned a corner in the past couple of episodes. The pace isn't break-neck anymore, the time traveling stuff has calmed down, and the storytelling is tighter. Fuller is interviewed over at SciFiWire, and he talks about how he, as a fan, was frustrated with the way the show was going. He also drops a few spoilers for fans and explains his plans for what's in store for the last episodes of the season.

As if Heroes hasn't had enough bad press lately. Here comes another controversy to deal with.

The makes of the Icelandic film Astropia are demanding an injunction against the NBC show, saying it has violated copyright laws. Remember the scene in the most recent episode where cheerleader Claire went to the record store to interview for the job left vacant when Aquaboy went on the run? The producers of Astropia say that the scene is very similar to one that they had in their 2007 film. Both show girls going to a comic book store job interview.

This is the second time that the show has been accused of lifting material from another source. A lawsuit came up during the show's first season.

The two scenes are after the jump. The first clip is from Heroes, the second clip is from Astropia. You be the judge! Is Heroes just taking stuff from other sources or is this just a superficial similarity?

As Bob wrote the other day, NBC has assured fans that Heroes will be back next season. Isn't that great? Well, no, not to me. I would like to assure NBC that I have had it with Heroes. I'm exhausted and fed up. Do you feel like me? Do you have Heroes fatigue?

The changes have been detrimental to the original premise, ruining what was once the most exciting new TV show on the air since Lost. Quite simply, I don't like the new "book"; I don't like the characters that have been mangled beyond recognition; I don't like all the story lines that were dropped in favor of this new paradigm that has the government hunting down Matt and Peter and the other familiar heroes and treating them like terrorists. At the end of the last episode, I just felt bad about Heroes. What have they done to my show?

OK, OK, SPOILER ALERT!

There are still a bunch of episodes left in this third season of Heroes, but producers and writers are already working on the fourth season (the show was renewed by NBC for another season earlier this week). There isn't much being disclosed about specific plots or what is going to happen to specific characters or what characters are going to make it out alive from this third season (though I would assume The Hunter will be gone). But there is one big clue as to who won't be the major character that is going to die at the end of this season, and we'll discuss that a bit after the jump.

This isn't a real surprise (to me anyway), but NBC has confirmed that Heroes will indeed return for another season this fall.

There's been endless talk about how the quality of the show has declined since the first season, and viewer numbers have been dropping this past season, but it's still a good show that draws a core audience and NBC understands this. It still has a certain amount of buzz associated with it, and NBC needs to hold on to what loyal fans the network has, especially since we don't know what the hell is going to happen with NBC's schedule when Jay Leno takes over 10pm Monday through Friday.

By the way, the Day One show mentioned in the article linked above is a new drama from Jesse Alexander, one of the producers of Heroes who was let go this season. It's about a group of residents from an apartment complex who have to band together after some sort of catastrophe. It could air on Monday nights too.

Look, I've stuck with Heroes all the way through. I even defended it during the second season and the first half of this season, when fans were insulting it and running off in droves. I'm still going to stick with it, but I'm closer to not watching the show than I've ever been before.

Last night's episode had the usual mix of the good and the bad. I like the whole Sylar/Luke story. It gets Sylar away from the rest of the heroes and gives him his own story/quest. I'm sure his story will intersect with the rest of the heroes towards the end of the season, but I'm glad he's not up against them right now. I like the whole "screwed up buddy picture" vibe he has with the kid and the adventures they could get into on the way.

I also like Claire being back at home (though I don't see how or why her mom and brother didn't flee long ago), helping the comic book guy run from her dad and the other agents. Promising ending with HRG being drugged, too.

But Hiro. Oh, God, Hiro.

One of the Heroes is going to die this season. And not just one of the disposable ones that aren't important to the plot, but one of the main characters.

That's the news being reported by TV Guide and others. So which one will it be? There are even rumors going around that both Ali Larter and Hayden Panettiere want to leave the show, so they are both possibilities. Here's a quick analysis on each main character. Let's see if we can narrow down who could be the hero to kick the bucket (and I'm assuming it's really kick the bucket, not Heroes kick the bucket where they could still come back to life).

Brett already told you earlier today about the casting of John Glover as Sylar's father on Heroes. But there are many more changes coming to the NBC show.

Pushing Daisies creator/producer Bryan Fuller is back at the show. He worked on the show in the first season, and now he's coming back to work on it again starting with episode 19, a few episodes into the "Fugitives" chapter. In this interview over at Entertainment Weekly, Fuller acknowledges that the show has had several problems the past year. He's well aware of them, and he has some ideas on how to fix it.

Everyone seems to have an idea on how Heroes can be improved. I think it's still good, but ratings are down, fans are fleeing, and it's probably not a show new fans can get into. Now creator Tim Kring has an idea.

For next season, he'd like to see more self-contained episodes instead of a long continuing storyline over the entire season. He talked about what he intended to do with the show and what the future might hold at the Creative Screenwriting Expo last weekend. He wanted to give NBC a show like Lost or 24, one with a serialized storyline that would have fans coming back each week. Now he says he's not sure if that was the right decision, describing those shows as "an absolute bear to do." He thinks that the way that people watch TV nowadays is a lot different than just three years ago, because of DVRs and online viewing and all that, and that has changed how viewers watch serialized dramas since they don't watch them live every week.

So the big Heroes backlash now has two victims.

NBC has fired two producers that have been with the show since day one, Jesse Alexander and Jeph Loeb. The show has been getting a lot of negative press lately (actually, ever since the strike-shortened second season), including this Entertainment Weekly cover story on what's wrong with the show and how to fix it. Sources say the two were let go because Universal is unhappy with the direction and cost of the show.

Look, is Heroes as good as it was the first season? No, it's not. But I think that's because of two reasons. One, it's not new anymore. Two, way too many characters, and when you have too many characters it affects the structure of the show. Now, the show has always had a lot of characters and storylines going at the same time, but now they have more "extra" characters on the show we have to follow (and often follow them in two different years, heh). So that criticism of the show is accurate.

And thousands of Heroes fans around the world say "well, duh."

Heroes creator Tim Kring admits that there might be a little bit too much going on in the show's universe. At a NATPE LATV Festival panel discussion, Kring says that there might be so much content going online -- and so many employees working on the online content -- that it sort of takes away from the experience of the show and the storyline, especially if you have a creative team working online that really isn't close to the team that works on the TV show. Sounds like he's referring (strongly) to the much-maligned second season of the show.

He also thinks that all of the product placement and corporate sponsorship that the show has doesn't help either.

While many think television was built on a combination of electronics and imagination, I personally feel that a good portion of it has been constructed on a fine bed of catchphrases. From the earliest mention of "How sweet it is!" by Jackie Gleason to "That's what she said" from The Office, there probably hasn't been a year that a catchphrase hasn't graced the lips of the international viewing populace.

I'm sure many of you know those catchphrases well. But, do you know when they were first used, or by whom? If you do, then AOL Television's latest trivia quiz will be right up your alley.

So, you've heard so much about this Heroes show, but you didn't watch the early episodes and you're afraid to jump in because you're afraid you'll be lost? No fear, the Sci-Fi Channel is here to help you.

The network is going to run an all-day marathon of the show starting at 9am tomorrow. The only problem I see is that it seems like they're not running the shows in order, which seems like an odd decision. For example, the first episode at 9am is "Homecoming," followed by "Six Months Ago" and "Fallout." Huh? I think watching the shows out of order like that might be more confusing than jumping into the show sight unseen in episode 20. Not to mention the fact that all of the reveals and cliffhangers will be ruined.

If you're interested in seeing the pilot, it airs tomorrow night at 11pm. The season finale airs Monday at 9 on NBC.