With Heroes currently undergoing a ratings tailspin that even a concentrating, constipated-faced Milo Ventimiglia can do nothing about, one would think that creator Tim Kring would be trying to hold onto whatever fans he had left. Not so much! The Washington Post reports that at a recent Creative Screenwriting panel (where Kring attended solo sans two of the promised guests: Heroes executive producers that NBC recently fired), Kring complained that the Heroes downturn was less his fault and more the fault of people who actually sit down in front of the television on Mondays at 9pm (8pm central):

Writing a serialized drama is "an absolute bear." It is also a "very flawed way of telling stories on network television," because of the advent of DVR and online streaming, for example, Kring said, according to the report. Serialized dramas work only if people sit in front of their TV sets on the night and at the hour the network broadcasts each episode. But now, you can watch a serialized drama whenever and wherever you want and almost all of those other means of watching episodes "are superior to watching it on the air." Sooooo, the only people watching a show — "Heroes" perhaps — at the time it's being broadcast by a network — say NBC — are the "saps and [expletives] who can't figure out how to watch it in a superior way."

Try as we might, we can't use our special powers to divine the expletive Kring used (every time we focus really hard, all we see is the word "Sheetzucacapoopoo"), but we do find it novel that he's essentially dissing the early watchers who are the sole source of next-day water cooler buzz. Let's face it, Tim, the only good way to watch Heroes isn't online or through a DVR: it's on mute, so viewers at home can redub every earnest Peter Petrelli line with dialogue from a superior Milo Ventimiglia production: Poolside Nachos — Uh-Oh! [Photo Credit: AP]