The season finale of Heroes is tonight.  I am relieved.

Do you have this problem?  You’ve been watching a certain show for a while.  When it first came on, you were excited.  It was really good.  You wanted to spend time with it.  You couldn’t wait to see it again.  You hoped it felt the same way about you.  Then, after a season, you’re still kind of interested, but a couple of shows in you’re starting to notice all of its flaws.  The show is starting to get on your nerves.  You’re not sure what you saw in it in the first place.  But you keep watching.  Then, at some point, maybe season three or four, you realize you’re in a rut.  You’re watching, but you don’t care anymore.  It just doesn’t do much for you.  You actually find yourself hoping for a reason to skip it.  You let episodes languish on your DVR more than three days after the original airdate.  You remember when you used to be unable to even wait until the show was done to watch it.  You’d start only 18 minutes in, knowing that you timed it wrong and you’d catch up and you’d have to watch the ending live and maybe even see commercials.  You sigh.

OK, so that’ s where I’m at with Heroes.  But the problem is that I don’t know how to break up with TV shows.  Once I’ve invested some time into a show, I’ll watch it until it dies either of natural causes in the loving arms of its creator or more often thrashing violently as it is strangled lifeless by network execs.  Particularly the serialized shows — I’ll keep watching until they expire.

I’m not sure what I expect.  Maybe I think they’ll get their mojo back.  Maybe I’m just loyal to a fault.  It doesn’t matter.  It is what it is.

So, Heroes.  This is like season three or four (or maybe five).  I grooved on the show the first season.  Sure, it was a massive rip-off of The 4400, which was another show I liked (and suffered the aforementioned abrupt strangulation before it told its full tale).  But it had some life and its spin on comic book superheroes was fun and the characters were well drawn.  Then, season two sort of crashed and burned and there was a writers strike somewhere in there.  You know, I don’t even remember.  I just fell out of love.

OK, so let’s bring in Lost here.  Hey, don’t give me that look.  You both knew I wasn’t monogamous when we started these relationships.  No, I have never lied to you.

Anyway, Lost is probably my favorite show on TV right now (although Big Love was quite good this season).  I trust Lost.  I can’t wait to watch the next episode.  And I’ll be sad when the season ends in a couple of weeks.

In the few minutes that I’ve thought about this (mainly while typing this blog post), I decided there are two reasons these series differ.

1)  Character Consistency — Say what you will about Lost.  It’s confusing.  It’s complicated.  It’s too sci-fi-ey.  One thing that it has going for it is great characters.  And they have been consistent through the life of the series.  Their quirks and their predilections were there on day one and have informed every action they’ve taken since.

Heroes, not so much.  One character - Suresh - started out as an idealistic scientist tracking down people with superpowers.  A bit naive but a good guy.  Since then, he’s been an evil henchman, a complicit torturer, a greedy bastard, a desperate idiot, a guy who has superpowers that turned him into some sort of insane monstrous insect, a guy with superpowers who suddenly was no longer a monstrous insect, and then back to an idealistic scientist.  I mean, come on, there have only been a handful of seasons.  The actor’s got to have whiplash.  Come on, writers, this is not a soap opera.  You’ve got to at least pretend that I’m paying attention.  And this has happened with many of the characters.  Which brings me to …

2) The Writers Know Where They’re Going - On Lost, I believe that the writers know what they’re doing.  It feels like they went into the series knowing where it might end.  And they stuck to their plan which makes me believe that even when something feels odd that it will circle around and make sense down the road.  And so far, Lost has always delivered.  I believe they will fully explain the smoke monster.  And the numbers.  And the giant statue with three toes.  And why the mothers all die in childbirth.  And the Black Rock.  And why there are polar bears in the South Pacific.  And who the heck Jacob is.  Hmmm, writing all of that makes me nervous.  Because if they mess this up, I’ll never forgive them.

Heroes is already a disappointment to me.  This is a show that seems to be completely different each season.  Actually, in a way that’s kind of how comic books are.  Now, my knowledge of comic books is about 30 years old, but as a kid there would be multiple Superman titles and none of them related to the others.  In one, Superman might be dying while in another he’s chatting up Wonder Woman (’cause I’m pretty sure something was going on there).  But I digress.  Look, maybe the biggest flaw with Heroes was that it let itself have characters who traveled in time.  This gave the writers a huge safety valve.  And they used it.  It seems that at least two seasons ended with someone changing events in the future or the past and therefore wiping the slate clean.  Who needs continuity when you’ve got time travel?  The problem is that I lost interest when I didn’t think anything mattered and no one had to actually die.

And yet I still watch Heroes.  And I will next season too.  And I will right now for the season finale.

But I’ll be glad when it’s over.