Chuck is a great show, one that hasn’t found a strong audience but is more than deserving. While maintaining the high caliber action scenes a spy-drama needs, the show manages to develop personalities for their characters, keeps up an ongoing will-they-won’t-they-of-course-they-will-but-not-for-another-couple-seasons relationship without cockteasing the audience too badly, and also have really sharp dialogue and stories packed with geek references. There’s a lot to like about Chuck and the minor annoyances that any given episode offer up are just that: minor.

Of course, I wouldn’t title this post “The Death Spiral Continues” if I were extolling the wonders of a show. I merely take the time to discuss Chuck to contrast it with the increasingly dreaful show that follows it Monday nights on NBC. This week’s episode of Heroes continued to disappoint and downright offend as Parkman’s inexplicable prophetic painting continues to repeat a story that was overplayed and poorly executed when they did it the first five times. And when Rebel gives them useful intel, Matt and Peter finally start thinking and they double up on the mind powers to help them get past security. A smart idea and they got a couple good scenes out of it. Of course, why they wouldn’t at least cover the security camera in the room — leaving the others wondering who it could be — is one of many questions that are aroused by the idiotic behaviour in this episode.

Indeed, while in “Building 26″, Matt and Peter get ahold of video surveillance and Matt’s first plan is to leverage that information to get Daphne back. “One life at a time” he says, as though that makes sense. If your plan is to chip away at the problem until it’s been fixed and then suddenly you’re given material capable of destroying the very foundation of the bricks you’re chipping at, a change in stratagem might be in order. And then, when Peter escapes with that information, instead of bringing the information immediately to all the news outlets and uploading it to Youtube and posting to dailykos under the username LoveIsTheAnswer about the abuses of the Executive Branch and how horrifying the rounding up of these superpowered-Americans is for the freedoms of all Americans, he calls up his totally trustworthy brother who’s never betrayed him before and makes a deal to exchange all the incriminating evidence he has for Matt and Daphne. Even Nathan is astounded! It’s the stupidest deal ever. If you release the information to the public, Matt and Daphne would be ultimately freed, along with everyone else they’d illegally imprisoned. That’s what TNC would call “stepping over dollars to snatch up nickels.”

Oh but the stupid is strong with this episode. That’s just one of three equally stupid and repetitive stories. Claire is protecting Aquaman and, while he’s less annoying than West from last year, the story comes across virtually identical. They’re on the run and the guy saves her with his power somehow. Meanwhile, they discover that they’re not alone, that they have someone to share this part of themselves with. It’s just boring and Claire’s ongoing self-assuredness in the face of her obvious inadequacies is exasperating. And Sylar rediscovers his dad. Turns out his dad sold him to his uncle. Who knew?! The scene where Sylar relives that memory was played as though it were new astonishing information when it’s been known for at least a couple episodes now. The closest thing the scene has to a twist is when Sylar’s dad kills Sylar’s mom via some good old fashioned head-slicing telekenesis. Which, much like last week’s reveal of Mohinder’s pseudo-complicity, doesn’t make sense. Sylar obtained his telekinesis through his real power, the ability to understand complex systems intuitively and “fix” them, so to give telekinetic powers to his dad makes negative sense.

I’m feeling more and more angry with Heroes each new episode. I truly want the show to be good. I don’t like abandoning shows, especially not shows with sci-fi and comic book trappings, but Heroes is not entertaining for me anymore. Other shows are much better. Chuck, for example. Watch them instead.