Fall is here and all those TV shows I had forgotten about enjoying are starting again. Looking for jobs can’t take up all the time in a day, so I find myself streaming pop culture into my house from Hulu.

The third season of Heroes premiered last night. Heroes is to X-Men what John Legend is to Gil Scott-Heron; good enough to enjoy, but certainly not timeless. That said, I’m a sucker for the fantastical, and I like the way the genre uses analogy to raise questions about human rights.

So it should be a perfect vehicle for getting beyond the crappy portrayals of women and people of color that we see almost everywhere else. I mean, where the hell is Benjamin Sisko these days? Don’t get me wrong, Heroes isn’t terrible, but it’s not challenging, and it damn well could be.

Oh and then there was the scene where Mohinder had to discover his newfound power. So what clever plot device did the writers use? Two black guys, one gun, one botched mugging. Are you serious?! That is the best thing you guys can come up–and within minutes be talking about teleportation and time travel as if it’s no big deal? You want me to use my imagination, dare I ask the same of you?