[CJFusco]

My brother insisted that I HAD to at least watch the first couple episodes of last year's sleeper hit "HEROES". I was unsure; I don't watch a lot of TV, what I do manage to see I usually judge to be superficial crap. The only shows I've watched regularly over the past 5 years or so were ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT and THE OFFICE.

Well, on my brother's insistence, I checked out HEROES.

I was hooked after two episodes.

Luckily for me (kinda), I have been sick lately, so I've been spending some time at home over the past few days. Baseball is winding down, so watching a TV series on DVD wouldn't be a huge waste of time.

Talk about an addictive TV show: I flew through the entire season in a 6-day period! And that includes going to work every single day except Thursday, which I spent at Fenway Park.

In short, the show is incredible. It is very carefully crafted, with details beginning in the first episode coming back to bookend with the last. The characters are among the most carefully-crafted of any dramatic series I've seen in years. For example, the main villian, "Sylar", is despicable, but by the end of the show you end up pitying him as much as hating him... and man, do you end up hating him. He is undoubtedly the most easily-hatable villian in recent memory.

When I say that the story is well-crafted, I mean it. My education is in literature, and it is clear to me that the writers for the show understand intricate construction in a way that the writers of "24" could only dream of. Actually, at first you start to question the credulity of so many disparate plotlines coinciding with one another... until you begin to realize that the overlapping plotlines are anything but coincidence. Suddenly, a show about super-powers has "X-Files"-like conspiracy paranoia. Add to this a "watch the characters from all over the map slowly come together" sense of expectation like "The Stand," and all of a sudden you are hopelessly hooked on HEROES.

Season 1 was an effective self-contained story, although it left quite a few loose ends for another season. For example, the little Walker girl's unnerving assertion that there is someone out there worse than Sylar...

The show is great. Consider this my official endorsement. I can' t wait to watch the two new episodes (last week's premiere and tomorrow's new epsiode) tomorrow with my brother...