‘Heroes’ without powers

Oh, “Heroes.” Once the crowning jewel of television during its impressive-yet-overrated first season, horrible writing caught up with it, and now the program is nothing more than a washed-up hero trying to save people without powers.

Fans want to like the show, but it keeps letting them down.

After the train wreck that was season two, “Heroes” brass decided to split season three into separate volumes with the hope of making storylines tighter and more exciting.

Alas, season three’s first volume, “Villains,” is an exercise in atrocious writing and plotting, as characters switch allegiances once per episode, die but don’t die and storylines are rehashed over and over, like Hiro going into the future and seeing something bad.

If you’re brave enough to wade through those first 12 hours, you will notice a slight improvement in quality during volume four, “Fugitives,” mostly because Adrian Pasdar’s Nathan gets more to do and things make more sense.

Horribly written and poorly acted on most fronts (save Pasdar and Zachary Quinto), “Heroes” no longer has the charm it once did.