Against my better judgement, I’ve been a fan of Heroes (BBC Two, Monday, 11 May, 9pm). I don’t know how it did it, but it reeled me in… I mean, it’s a sci-fi show fercryingoutloud! What on earth am I doing letting a science fiction, geekoid comic book thing past my defences. I don’t like flights of fancy, especially when they involve emo like inner turmoil and people who can fly. I like dumb things with guns and swearing… but c’mon! Heroes takes the piss, right? Of course it does. However, this series has pushed its luck too far and now it’s over, it’s time to reflect.

Related: Our Heroes Section

The first two seasons of Heroes were great fun. It had me by the short and curlies, in much the same way that many fell squarely for Lost. It took the cryptic crossword clues of Lost and spliced them with X-Men and Stargate, melding it all together in one bit pot drawing on ancient mythology, action, personal journeys, mystery and downright silliness. Heroes then kinda tripped up thanks to a writer’s strike in North America, which saw viewers taking stock of Heroes and deciding what they wanted for themselves, without the aid of those that penned the show.

The message was loud and clear: Stop piddling about and give us some fighting.

Sadly, the makers of the show agreed. They demanded that Heroes went ‘back’ to what it did best. Now, bearing in mind that the first season of Heroes was brilliantly baffling, keeping fans on meathooks while it taunted you with half-truths and dead-ends, what the dimwit producers actually meant was ‘play it dumb’.

So while the previous outings gave out false endings, spiralling stories that arced in and out and time-travel, this latest outing merely went from Point A to Point B in the most perfunctory way possible. Basically, we followed Sylar as he clawed his way toward the top so he could Be The Most Powerful Man Who Ever Lived! and all that hackneyed old claptrap. Basically, the show turned Sylar into Hugo Agogo from Batfink.

The final two episodes of the current series aired together last night, to give us closure on the whole Becoming The Most Powerful Man Who Ever Lived! thing, which in essence, meant Sylar pretending to be the president of the United States of America. What would he do once he got there? Would he hold entire countries to random before blowing them up, Death Star style? Um. Don’t ask me. The show never got ’round to telling us.

This tool was used crudely. Basically, the only reason I could figure was that the show wanted to have Sylar versus The Petrellis fighting in a posh office for the close. That’s it. In fairness, they got that and, although they didn’t let us see the scrap (spoilsports), we were given a nice shot of Nathan Petrelli getting his throat sliced open and tumbling out gunky blood like a Bubblicious Burst being squeezed.

For a twofer, remarkably little happened. When you consider that it was supposed to be a climactic ending to a whole series worth of action and brow furrowing, it was a little worrying. I mean, Ando and Hiro squabbling over his super-hero name and Matt Parkman whining has no place at the business end of a series like Heroes.

There was no quickening of the heart, no whitening of the knuckle. Even the bits that saw Sylar talking to his re-imagined mother (who was played by the woman from The Little Shop of Horrors) felt a bit… pointless. Ironically enough, the premise of this story thread was a voyage of self-discovery for Sylar… the irony being that Heroes doesn’t have a clue what it’s supposed to be anymore.

With a new series looming, I can only hope that the makers and writers go for broke and really pull out the stops. The recent outings have been generic pap, designed to give a cheap thrill as opposed to drag you in and abuse you like a cult leader. It needs bigger goals, bigger themes and, most of all, bigger balls.