We've talked before, more than once, about the incredible, world-historical suckiness of the second season of Heroes—so it's no surprise that the ratings were way down for the third season premiere. SF Signal, io9, and Ezra Klein all rightly panned the episode, which was very much a creative disaster. In addition to going back to the "Bad Future" illusion-of-plot gimmick—again—the show reminded me of nothing so much as a comic book with a new creative team: a hurried attempt to establish a new status quo and story engine as fast as possible and damn the logic of any of it. Heroes continues to borrow the very worst of comics, in other words, their disposability and their triviality—and takes nothing of the best.

For those who missed it, this was a real scene from the episode:

HIRO'S DEAD DAD (ON DVD): Hiro, there's a safe in this office. Never open it.
HIRO: I'm gonna open that safe.
HIRO'S DEAD DAD (ON DVD): Okay, so you opened the safe. But don't lose the piece of paper inside!
HIRO: [loses paper] Whoops!

Really, really, really very bad.

Gambling site BetCRIS is taking bets on the identity of the last Cylon. Here are your odds:

* Aaron Kelly: 5-4
* Diana "Hardball" Seelix: 33-20
* Tom Zarek: 23-20
* Anastasia Dualla: 4-5
* Felix Gaeta: 3-2
* Brendan "Hot Dog" Costanza: 2-1
* Margaret "Racetrack" Edmondson: 9-4
* The field (any other character): 2-7

I've already given my top picks, none appearing above: Billy, Cally, or either Cain or Shaw.

The disconnect here seems to be that the BetCRIS oddsmakers don't really have a good sense of how to tell a story. (A character no one but battlestarwiki editors could name, next in the line of command after a person who was already one of the Shock Cylons of 2007? I don't see it.)

Of course, it could be that the BetCRIS bookies are right and I'm wrong—but if so we can only conclude that the writers of Battlestar Galactica don't really know how to tell a story, either. Via io9.