I remember when LOST jumped the shark. It was the episode dedicated to the mystery of Jack’s tattoo. It was an inane episode, one that existed entirely to buy time for the writers, while simultaneously keeping a popular character on screen for the majority of an episode. The episode could have been good – after all, LOST is all about those weird coincidences and strange meanings of every day occurrences. By this point in LOST’s evolution though, we had enough mysteries. We wanted answers. We got a tattoo.

With Season 4, LOST jumped back.

Heroes has continued to impress since returning from its December/January hiatus, consistently delivering episodes that have answered important questions while ratcheting up the serialized tension.

For any other series, last night would have been a season-ending clifhanger of epic proportions. But in an example of why Heroes is such a damn good show, they don't play for the cheap, easy shows that end up stretching out the story's continuum for years on end (like say, LOST). Instead, they take us to the future -- five years into the future -- and show us the consequences of not saving the world.

With the exception to LOST, broadcast TV hasn't been kind to speculative fiction. Science fiction series died by the bunch last year, with only Invasion surviving long enough to have a full season run … and not being renewed. Before LOST, Fox killed off Firefly, the most promising SF series in years without even trying to find it an audience.

And now we have Heroes, a superhero series that inherits almost a decades worth of superhero momentum, and tries to do something amazing with it. There are two big questions: is it any good … and will NBC let it survive long enough to thrive?