Has Heroes jumped the shark?

You may recall that when the TV show Heroes first hit the airwaves, I was agog. A compelling, mysterious science fiction story with so many homages that it was geek heaven — complete with casting original Star Trek actors and frequent comic book references.

The show hiccuped and seemed to lose its way during the truncated second season, but you could chalk that up to the writers strike. The parameters of a great cross-generational heroes vs. villain epic were there, but it had to be squeezed into 11 episodes because the writers shrugged.

That doesn't explain the confused muddle of the third season to date. In this year's arc, titled "Villains," the gang is again faced with the goal of preventing a sordid future, but those we once considered evil are showing signs of goodness and those we once considered good are flirting with their inner demons. Toss in some new characters and the fact that the show thrives on withholding bits of the puzzle anyway, and it's hard to keep it all straight.

The jump-the-shark moment came early for me, when level-headed but naive scientist Mohinder threw his instinctive caution to the wind and injected himself with a serum that could turn him into a superhero. No. 1, the guy we spent the first two seasons with never showed any sign of doing something impulsive and stupid — and he always wanted to study the heroes, not become one. No. 2, the serum started turning him into Jeff Goldblum in The Fly.

Last week the show revisited its opening moments and showed those incidents from a different angle, and some of that first-season magic seemed to come back. Behind the scenes word came that a couple of lead producers were fired and the remaining team was given the task of reviving the show, which has lagged in the ratings. There was some sense that everyone knew what was wrong — Mohinder has apparently been de-insecticized, for example.

Monday night was a step backwards, as the muddle returned for a visit. And in another jump the shark moment, Hiro — whose childlike enthusiasm for his powers has provided much of the delight in this program — has been robbed of his last 18 years of memory and thinks he's 10. For now he not only has childlike enthusiasm, he is a child as he rediscovers his powers, playing pranks with his time-freezing powers and using his newly rediscovered teleportation powers to jump into the comic book shop. I'm not loving it.

The power of that first season was such that I'm still drawn to Heroes, but all of this heroes-and-villains flip-flopping has made many of the characters less appealing, less attractive and most of all — even though the intent was the opposite — less real. They may yet tie up all the loose ends into a boffo payoff at the end, but here's the trick of the first season: As confusing as it was, they made you care. At the moment, I'm not sure I care anymore. Heroes teeters at the brink.