I’m a sucker for anything involving super powers and implausible coincidences. So I was all psyched and ready to grab the promised free download of the Heroes pilot from the iTunes Store on September 1, but that never quite worked out. Let’s hear it for cross promotions that backfire! Anyway, in this post-Lost world, I fully expected some homages — but not outright stealing. The first shot was a closeup of someone’s eye, for crying out loud. Young mop-headed “special” kid who reads comics? Check. Entire scenes carried out in Asian languages with subtitles? Check. Rusty-screen-door sound effects? You know it. Mysterious plot involving the end of the world? Hey, why not?

All that being said… well, I’m a sucker for super powers. And the aforementioned plot has promise, even if the sight of two grown men flying around an alley holding hands was kind of a tough sell. NBC will probably rerun the pilot a couple dozen times this week, so catch it if you can.