Now six episodes in, Season 3 of "Heroes" continues to chug along at a nice pace. Certainly its snappier than Season 2, with endless scenes featuring Maya and Alejandro's south-of-the-border adventures, Peter stuck either in Ireland or the future, and Hiro gallivanting  around feudal Japan. In hindsight, it was pretty dreadful. So this season's constant narrative surge is appreciated - there has rarely been a dull moment so far. But it also still feels slightly off, and last night I figured out why: I don't particularly like most of these characters. And I don't remember that being a problem in seasons past.

I realized a while back that I'm tired of Hiro and his bumbling idiocy. When you think about it, he's a character who has made almost zero progression over three seasons. Peter has become a rageaholic nutbag. I grant you that it's part of the storyline (he has-or rather, had-Sylar's powers, and also inherited his "hunger"), but it's not particularly fun to watch. Mohinder has gone to the spidery dark side. Claire is behaving like a brat, refusing to listen to what anyone tells her to do (again, makes perfect sense given that she's a teenager, and an indestructible one at that, but it's getting tiresome). Nathan barely has a character at all (and is the worst politician ever - does he work at all?). I liked Nikki, but Tracy has yet to really exhibit anything resembling a personality. It goes on like this.

About the only characters I do like are Claire's two moms, one kick-ass and biological, the other sassy and adoptive. They had a meaty storyline last night when confronted by the very creepy Puppet Man, a character who exhibits powers not unlike Fantastic Four villain the Puppet Master (although the "Heroes" version doesn't need effigies to control his prey). It was tense for a while there, leading up to him forcing Claire and her moms to play a game of Russian roulette. But then the solution to the scene became painfully obvious, and all of the drama evaporated. Nice try, folks, but we're a little smarter than that.

One character that I couldn't stand prior to last night was Daphne the speedster. I still think the actress portraying her is kind of awful, but we saw some progression last night when she started to see some of the "benefits" of working for this new, evil company. The look of horror on her face as a newly revitalized Papa Petrelli sucked the powers out of Peter was pretty good. Maybe there's hope for her yet. Except she's getting partnered with Parkman, the most useless character on this or any show --yes, even more useless than Maya-- so I wouldn't hold out much hope for the poor girl.

Speaking of Papa Petrelli, that's a villain I can get behind. I've always suspected that he wasn't really dead -- just as I've always suspected Mohinder's dad is off somewhere, cooking up new superheroes or whatever -- and having him played by Robert Forster kicks all kinds of ass. It seems he has a power like Rogue from the X-Men, where he can siphon the powers or life force out of another person. That should make for a pretty tough opponent for the heroes, and it looks like he's already taken Peter back to square one in the abilities department (good; he was getting overpowered). He'd better stay away from his wife, though. I love that lady.

Did anybody get a good look at the other three bad guy faces African Isaac painted? I only made out Papa Petrelli's. I'm curious who else was there.

I'm certainly sticking around for the show; it's not bad, it's simply lost some of the heart it used to have in years past. Here's hoping it can get it back.