Heroes vs. Lost

Now I love both shows, a lot. But last night's episode of Heroes illustrated a big difference between it and Lost.

For the first few episodes of both shows a whole truckload of mysteries were introduced. 55+ episodes into it's run and Lost still hasn't answered the vast majority of those questions, while still shoveling new questions onto the pile. But last night Heroes actually went out and answered a lot of the mysteries they had spent the previous nine episodes laying out.

We know who Sylar is. We know how Eden hooked up with Clare's father. We know how Nathan Petrelli's wife was crippled. We know a little more about the whole Nikki/Jessica situation.

Were all of the mysteries solved? No, but they cleared the field enough to keep things workable. Lost, as much as I love it, just keeps shoveling new mysteries onto the massive pile of unsolved ones. (sidenote - a great list of the 50 biggest Lost questions can be found here) Tim Kring and crew looked at that great, steaming pile of questions and saw an impediment to the average viewer.

So, to abuse a metaphor, Heroes is the sidewalk that gets shoveled regularly during the winter, you still see the snow but it doesn't impede your progress. While Lost is the monstrous mountain of snow sitting in the mall parking lot that will probably still be there in April.