New Season Turns Heroes Into Victims

24 takes top honors, followed by Lost , Friends

(NEWSER) - Jack Bauer doesn't even have to torture you to keep you glued to your couch, reports the Daily Telegraph, scoring nearly a fifth of the votes for most addictive show in a survey of some 3000 couch potatoes. “Although crime doesn't pay, as our list reveals, it most certainly pulls in the viewers,” says a LOVEFiLM exec. The list:

1. 24, 19%
2. Lost, 17%
3. Friends, 10%
4. Heroes, 9%

A few good jokes, but show's aim seems off

(NEWSER) - The Goode Family, an animated series about an eco-obsessed, passionately politically correct family that airs tonight on ABC, is fairly funny, but leaves reviewers scratching their heads:

• It “feels aggressively off-kilter with the current mood, as if it had been incubated in the early to mid-’90s,” writes Ginia Bellafante in the New York Times. "Who really thinks of wind power—an allusion to which is a running visual gag in the show—as mindless, left-wing nonsense anymore?"

Critics, fans, brace for last episode tonight

(NEWSER) - After 15 seasons, viewers will make their final trip to County General Hospital tonight in the series finale of ER. Critics and fans are reflecting on the groundbreaking show:

• Mixing “medical triumph” with “personal angst,” ER “may have begun as a show about salvation, but it became a show about the near impossibility of salvation—a show less about healing than about damage,” writes Neal Gabler in the Los Angeles Times.

(NEWSER) - The "zeitgeist-tapping, blockbuster event" that was Heroes has fallen in both ratings and creative zeal, Jeff Jensen writes in Entertainment Weekly. Here's his five-point plan to fix it:

1. Hang up some tights: Telepathic policeman Matt Parkman, last seen wandering the African desert, must go. So too Suresh and his turn aping The Fly.

You'll spoil it for others—and yourself: Daniel Carlson

(NEWSER) - If you've ever had a television show spoiled by live-tweeters, you'll probably appreciate Daniel Carlson's directive: "Step away from the keyboard," he begs viewers, because "live-tweeting ruins everything." Yes, he's annoyed at plot spoilers—but more importantly, he points out on Pajiba , tweeting while watching the show "negatively affects the way you experience the story." He doesn't even check Twitter while watching Breaking Bad, he points out—not to avoid spoilers, but simply because he's engrossed in the show. More»