Heroes Marathon on NBC Tonight

Remember the days of Heather Graham's Emily's Reasons Why Not? That was the show ABC pulled after one airing. But that was oh, so last season. It seems the networks are taking a little more time to help series build their followings -- giving them at least two episodes before moving them around the primetime schedule.

For example, NBC's Kidnapped has already been moved to Saturday nights and FOX's Vanished has gotten a coveted Friday night slot after the World Series.
But tonight NBC is re-airing episodes of one of its best TV dramas to debut in years: Heroes. The show premise is simple. Ordinary people wake up to discover they each have super powers.

We were a bit skeptical about the show at first after the success or X-Men and the unsuccess of other superhero films like The Fantastic Four. And the show was a bit slow coming out of the gate -- a little too much on character development and not enough plot or action -- but it's finally beginning to pay off.

So far, our favorite hero has got to be Japanese time-stopper Hiro Nakamura (played by Masi Oka of Scrubs fame). Like the other heroes, he and his buddy are on a road trip of sorts to find his destiny (stopping in Vegas, of course). A close second is cheerleader Claire Bennet (Hayden Panettiere) who cannot stay dead. And her own daddy is a pretty shady guy -- kinda like the X-Files Smoking Man.

LAist also has to give kudos to NBC for the color blindness in casting. There are different races and ethnicies headlining this cast. And there're even people of different colors dating each other, sleeping together -- kind of like real life!

So we're hooked. We're kind of curious where this show will take us next. We'll even forgive the lame tagline from last week -- "Save the cheerleader...Save the world."

Heroes is on NBC, Mondays at 9 pm.