TVSquad

When you want to up the ante on a drama, create a great villain. To this day, the best James Bond movies have always been the ones with great villains. Fox's sci-fi drama Fringe is buying into that theory, because they've gone out and hired an actor who excels at playing evil. Fringe has cast Sebastian Roche in a recurring role as a new nemesis.If you saw Roche on General Hospital, you know he's brilliant.

His Fringe character doesn't have a name yet -- and least not one that they've released -- but the storyline is that he's from another dimension, not entirely human or android, and he's on a mission. He's a soldier who's supposed to collect data to open a "stable door to the other side."

Could it be an alternate universe? A parallel dimension? Some kind of time warp? The possibilities are wide open when it comes to Fringe.

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.

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.

Zeljko Ivanek is one of those actors you know by the face but you probably don't know what his name is. You've seen him as a guest star on Lost, 24, The Practice, Oz, Bones, Shark, Numb3rs, John Adams, Law and Order, The West Wing, and a ton of other shows, plus he just won a Best Supporting Actor Emmy for his work on Damages. He was also the killer in the series premiere of The Mentalist. Now he's about to become The Hunter.

That's the name of a new character that will be introduced midseason on NBC's Heroes. The Hunter will, presumably, hunt several of the heroes in the next chapter of the saga, "Fugitives." This chapter will start when the current chapter, "Villains," ends in episode 13. "Fugitives" will begin in January or February.

NBC is set to debut the trailer for the new season of Heroes on August 30th as part of the big "NBC Primetime Preview." But since most of us grew up with MTV, we don't have the patience to wait for that. Luckily, it's already online, and embedded after the jump.

I'm one of those that had some issues with the last season. It felt like Maya, Alejandro, Micah, and Monica were all part of an elaborate scheme to make me put my head through a wall. And man, I was ready for Hiro to be done with ancient Japan about three weeks before he was. However, I do believe Tim Kring when he says he understands what they did wrong, and that the next season will be better. That, combined with the new trailer, has me as excited as ever about the show.

The first reality show contestant I learned to hate was Puck from the San Francisco season of MTV's The Real World. This was actually before people went on reality shows just to be on television and become some sort of celebrity. Oh, what innocent, fun times those were (and I'm serious - the first few seasons of The Real World were quite good).

Puck was actually OK for several episodes, but then he started with the hateful talk, not getting along with his roommates, and the battles with Pedro (though I have to admit that the thing I disliked most about Puck wasn't any of those things, it was the time he stuck his fingers in the peanut butter - gah). Now TV Guide includes Puck in their list of the top 10 reality TV villains. You can probably guess a few of the others. Spencer Pratt is on there (I had never seen or heard of this guy until Letterman's interview last night), Survivor's Jonny Fairplay, and, of course, Omarosa of The Apprentice.

Anyone missing from this list?

(By the way, it actually hurt a little bit to check the "celebrities" category for this post.)