An example of these lowered standards is how I read the show LOST called “cerebral” somewhere. Yes, cerebral when compared to other TV shows, but not when compared to anything in text form.

What I want to know is: why does TV benefit from these lowered expectations?

- The fact that you see what she says as bitterness. The fact that see it as a crusade… Finding other faults in the show haven’t been construed in this matter, so what makes this different?

- The fact that you INSIST you understand because seeing those shoes is just as good as walking in them

…Just proves your complete and utter cluelessness in this matter.

more reasons why i don’t watch TV any more. I made an exception for the first season of hero’s because everyone was talking about it and watched them all online. this time I won’t bother.

Beyond that, the show was tedious, cliche’, confusing and far too long. I don’t care about Syler. He’s annoying. I’m sick of the whiny cheerleader. I’m tired of the forced “intrigue” that’s not at all intriguing. I am kind of hoping the world does end and we’re all put out of our heroic misery.

My last complaint, I promise. Who thinks it’s a good idea to bounce subtitles around on the screen? Reading subtitles in my fluff tv is bad enough. Make it easy, for heaven’s sake!

In season 3 they have 5 really horrendous bad-ass dudes break out of the Company vault. And at leats two of them are men of color. This doesn’t bode well, considering the trend, and one of them is already actually PresentDayPeter trapped in someone’s body, but they might be able to turn it into something interesting. Otherwise it’s just “the worst of the worst of us are some colored people — surprise!”

I don’t see what would be wrong with giving a person of color a character that was E.V.I.L. In real life, people of all colors, creeds, ethnicities, etc. can be good, bad, or more than likely a mixture of both. But right now, the balance shows purity of character (good and bad) as white guys are evil, people of color are bad only by association, but turn their lives around once they come into contact with Claire or Peter.

Maybe the point of the story is most people want to be good, but something always derails these intentions. Give me a character like Papa Doc or Idi Amin, the Khmer Rouge, Pablo Escobar, etc. Let somebody with a gift for playing bat-sh*t insane bad-guys roll with it. And for god’s sake, don’t give us the sultry Asian dragon-lady. She is completely cliched.

So yes, I can see that many are sucked into the vortex of Peter, Claire, and Sylar, with many women and people of color being the main sacrifices, so I agree with Tempest on a lot of this. But hell the forces of evil on this show are exclusively white people! That’s pretty lame.

For a show that started off with edgy details, a drug-addled psychic painter, an enabling hospice nurse, a philandering politician, a family man who kidnaps people and murders people all around the world, it’s slipping hard. It’s boiled down to convoluted plots and hackneyed characters.

I read (and have read for some time) Tempest’s columns and her other postings for the content, not the crusade. I got that message ages ago, oh, say a few humdred railings back. Heck, being raised in bayou Louisiana in the 60′s and 70′s I fully understand where she’s coming from. But when she colors a column with so much of the same, however appropriate, the bitterness comes out and takes away some from her message — Heroes, Season 3 opener, sucks.

So, yea, I get her message. I got it to the point that in an episode of Medium once when they singled out the only black doctor in the show to take the fall for rich white lawyers I had to blog my annoyance. I got pissed enough so that at home my wife got on my case — what does it matter, she asked me. I told her, it matters — but then I shut up. I shut up because, and Tempest being a writer and an editor will know this, in a story if all a reader reads is the same over and over again, the reader loses interest — no matter the seriousness of the subject.

So, without knowing me, you can interpret what I say however you wish. But I am one who doesn’t care a hoot about color, never have, never will. I don’t care if you are black, arab, asian, indian, gay, alien, whatever. Each time I see a picture of Ms. Bradford I think she’s a hottie, in fact — I see intelligence, and intelligence is incredibly sexy.

Tempest’s anger is righteous, and that is how what I said was meant. And I’m fully expecting her to hate Fringe, and find evil things to say about CSI: NY, and I fully intend to read her opinion on these shows — if she chooses to comment on them — and be just as interested there as with anything she writes about.