Heroes comes to the end of the half-season cycle called "Villains" next week, providing an opportunity to take stock and see if the barrage of criticism the show received early this season has had any effect at all.

The reaction to this season's slow start from many critics and even some fans was unusually harsh. Those who loved the comic book thrills of the first season seemed almost offended by the way Heroes had become confusing and meandering, with characters existing in different timelines and appearing to be good one week and evil the next, and nothing in the way of permanent stakes or a concrete goal as memorable as "Save the Cheerleader, Save the World."

There are a few signs that Heroes is recovering some of its mojo, albeit more fitfully than Sylar recovered his diminished powers. The firing of producers Jesse Alexander and Jeph Loeb might have been scapegoating on the part of beleaguered executive producer Tim Kring, but it was a sign that NBC is finally taking the public outcry seriously. And two recent episodes, the Robert Forster-centric one of a month ago that ended with Arthur Petrelli accosting Hiro, and last Monday's hour, showed some of the combination of fun and menace that has been in short supply for the last 18 months.

Sure, the concentration on eclipses as the source of the heroes' abilities was sort of medieval, but the climax of the most recent episode contained the best scene of the season thus far: Hiro time traveling in and out of the Bennet home in order to get Sylar and Elle out of the way, and to take Claire back to the day she was handed over to Bennet originally. Having a couple of comic book nerds figure out the way for Hiro to get his memory restored -- and having those nerds played by Breckin Meyer and Seth Green -- was a throwback to the debut season in the best sense.

Heroes still needs to solve its biggest problems, however: a cast that has gotten too bloated and an overarching mythology that has become way too difficult to keep track of, largely because it seems to get amended on a week-to-week basis. The most recent example of the latter issue was the show's apparent confusion over what it wanted to do with Sylar.

Having saved Sylar from what looked like a vaporizing at the end of the first season, the producers had themselves a dilemma, because his powers were so widespread that it seemed he couldn't possibly be defeated. So we had some experimentation earlier this season with Sylar as a reformed bad guy, which at least had the possibility of setting up an intriguing internal struggle: the man who has known ultimate power trying to put aside his megalomaniacal ways in order to work for the greater good, or at least land a hot girlfriend. But the climax of last Monday's episode appeared to show that Bad Sylar is back again. Good for him, and possibly good for Heroes. But isn't this where we were two seasons ago?

As far as new cast members go, Heroes is suffering from Lost disease: bringing new bodies on with great fanfare, trying intermittently to get us to care about them and their backstories, and then ignoring them or killing them off. The best example of that so far in season three is Flint, the firebug ex-prisoner who was later revealed to be the brother of Claire's biological mother, Meredith -- herself a peripheral character. Time spent with those two is time not spent with Claire, a character fans still care about. In fact, the Level 5 bad guys who allegedly gave the Villains cycle its name have been an afterthought of late.

The most universally welcomed new cast member of the last two years, Elle Bishop (Kristen Bell), does not appear long for the series after the events of last Monday. While this isn't a huge surprise -- given her budding film career and tenure as the star of Veronica Mars, Bell never seemed like an ideal second-string ensemble member -- it isn't going to be greeted very warmly by an already restless fan base either, even if Elle's departure was necessary for Sylar to again become the embodiment of evil.

Heroes may soon get a shot in the arm in the person of first season executive producer Bryan Fuller, who originally left the show to run Pushing Daisies, where production has apparently ended for good. Fairly or not, many have dated the decline of Heroes to the departure of Fuller, but he has said he is open to returning. If nothing else, Fuller was the writer of the best-ever Heroes episode, season one's "Company Man," and the series could always use another first-rate writer on staff.

Assuming Fuller sticks with the show, the coming off-season should be devoted to figuring out exactly where Heroes goes from here. Deciding how things are going to eventually end is essential to plotting the fourth season and any subsequent seasons. The producers never really thought ahead to what would happen if Heroes made it past its initial year, and that failure has been staring us in the face ever since.

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