I'm relieved to read that Alan Sepinwall feels the same way I do about Heroes at this point -- namely that he's about done with it: "I have a feeling I'll wind up tuning into 'Heroes' volume 3, whenever it debuts, but I won't be happy with myself for doing it."

Exactly.  I want to love the show, and it does certain things well -- not least sensing somehow when I'm about to get truly fed up and kick it off the DVR, then coming across with an exciting, touching episode in the nick of time -- but it just does them too slowly.  The Hiro/Kensei plot dragged on too long initially, then wrapped up a bit too quickly on the Adam end.  The Maya/Alejandro characters served no purpose that I can see, other than to 1) keep Sylar treading water onscreen until the writers could contrive his return to New York, and 2) bug the holy hell out of the majority of the audience with Maya's wide-eyed, breathy whining and black-eye-gunking.  The Monica character, same problem -- cool enough power, but didn't move the ball forward, and in the climactic scene, she...didn't even use her power.  I have zero issue with Niki getting killed off -- I've never liked her -- but they should have found another way. 

I love the Bennets (including Mr. Muggles), I love Ando because he says what any of us would in the same situations, I love seeing Tobolowsky on my screen every week, and I'm that lone contrarian who likes Parkman; I see enough Sean Blumberg in him that I still have hope.  But I had many of the same issues with Lost -- the writers didn't seem to have a plan; the pacing was inconsistent at best; the episodes tended to focus on characters (Kate, mostly) I didn't care for; I gave it two seasons, it didn't pay off, and I booted it off the season-pass list and have never regretted it. 

I'm willing to concede that, as Sepinwall mentions, this season of Heroes may have been timed oddly because of the looming strike, but that only explains the rushed quality at the end, not the lethally slow (and repetitive) episodes at the start of the season.  Writing series TV isn't easy, God knows, but if you know you have 22 episodes and you know you have a certain arc you want to complete, it does seem like you might write to that task a bit better, and not make the same mistakes you made pacing-wise in the previous season.

But I'm getting the feeling that this is...just how the show is.  Overly laborious set-ups; occasional sparks/twists in the middle; unsatisfying payoffs; too much focus on certain characters while others stay out of sight for episodes at a time.  If you're going to kill off a Petrelli, you kill Peter, not Nathan, my God.  Peter is self-righteous and super-slow on the uptake, for starters, and for another thing, and Adrian Pasdar is the man.  Put that guy in a "you killed my brother, prepare to die" vengeance subplot and you're going to be cooking with gas all season long.  Put Ventimiglia in the same one, and...not so much.  He tries really hard, and he looks good with his shirt off, but he's not a nuanced actor, and if the pacing is going to be this slow, I need something else to interest me.  He doesn't qualify.

It's so CLOSE, the show, which is why it's so frustrating, but when it comes back, it's got three episodes to show me it's learned its lesson, and then I'm out.