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Monday, Monday, So Good To See That A More-Focused 'Heroes' Returns

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By WALT BELCHER

The Tampa Tribune

Published: September 19, 2008

At last, our long hot summer of reruns and reality claptrap is almost over.

After the "60th Primetime Emmy Awards" on Sunday, the fall season officially gets under way on Monday.

Fox has already gotten a jump-start on Monday nights with that double adrenaline rush of "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" and "Prison Break."

These two addictive action thrillers have been pretty good so far.

But here comes "Heroes" on Monday with a lot of questions.

Foremost: Can NBC's big-ticket item get back the buzz and excitement of the first stunning season?

Even the core of loyal fans was tested by the second season's meandering plotlines. The main characters were scattered in various tedious adventures. And then the season was cut short by the writers strike.

Creator Tim Kring and the cast echo the same refrain: The strike actually helped creatively because there was a realization that the series had wandered off-track.

Supposedly, this third season will be more focused.

The theme is "Villains," and the characters will get back to the basic mystery of how and why they have special powers.

New cast members include Bruce Boxleitner as the New York governor; Robert Forster as the father of the Petrelli brothers (Adrian Pasdar and Milo Ventimiglia); and William Katt ("Greatest American Hero") as a newspaper reporter.

Old villains such as Sylar (Zachary Quinto) are back, along with newbie baddies played by Francis Capra ("Veronica Mars") and Jamie Hector ("The Wire").

Ali Larter's split-personality character of Jessica and Niki takes on a third persona, and several major characters are bumped off early in the season.

The two-hour debut beginning at 9 p.m. picks up after the attempted assassination of Nathan Petrelli (Pasdar). Elsewhere, Sylar desperately wants the regenerative powers of cheerleader Claire Bennet (Hayden Panettiere), and Peter Petrelli (Ventimiglia) returns from the future to stop the Earth from cracking in half.
Hiro Nakamura (Masi Oka) is back from the past and gets involved in an almost comic battle with a super-speedy thief (Brea Grant) over a doomsday formula.

WORST IS BEST: CBS' Monday comedy block returns next week with the usual goofy stuff on "How I Met Your Mother," "The Big Bang Theory" and "Two and a Half Men."

New to the group is "The Worst Week," a laugh-out-loud slapstick sitcom based on the BBC's "Worst Week of My Life."

You have to check out the first episode at 9:30 if you see nothing else.

Newcomer Kyle Bornheimer plays a hapless young klutz who can do nothing right whenever he gets near his girlfriend's humorless parents.

Through an endless series of mishaps in the first half-hour, he shows up in a diaper, ruins the family dinner and sets a prized possession on fire.

Kurtwood Smith, the cranky dad on "That '70s Show," is equally cranking here.

HAPPY FEET: The seventh season of ABC's "Dancing With the Stars" also revs up on Monday with perhaps the weirdest cast yet.

Among the celebrities on the dance floor are former Tampa Bay Bucs defensive star Warren Sapp, 82-year-old Cloris Leachman, soap siren Susan Lucci, reality show pinup Kim Kardashian, former 'N Sync boy band member Lance Bass, sitcom veteran Ted McGinley, pop singer Toni Braxton and "Hannah Montana" co-star Cody Linley, who at age 17 is the youngest ever to compete on the series.

TUNE IN TONIGHT

The Dog Whisperer, 9 p.m., National Geographic

Cesar Millan celebrates his 100th episode with a reunion episode that looks back at many of the dogs and owners he has helped during the four seasons of the show. Millan, dog trainer to the stars, says there is no such thing as a bad dog. And he gets a visit from a special dog, Lassie.

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