Looks like the series is defying expectations. Alan Sepinwall previewed the pilot:
"Pluses: Given the resume of creator Tim Kring (Crossing Jordan, Providence), this is much more interesting than I was expecting. Just as Friday Night Lights appealed to the sports nut in me, this played to my inner comic book geek. The idea of "What would happen if people got super powers in the real world?" has been done plenty of times before, from Watchmen to Unbreakable, but Kring has a nice spin on it: not nearly as solemn and pretentious as "Unbreakable," but serious enough that it doesn't seem like camp. I particularly liked Masi Oka as the Japanese hero (named Hiro, of course) and Sendhil Ramamurthy as an Indian genetics professor obsessed with proving that humans can evolve into superhumans. Also, director David Semel finds a way to shoot certain scenes as if they were comic book panels without cribbing the visual style of Ang Lee's Hulk.
Minuses: It's a huge cast (Grunberg and a few other castmembers aren't even in the pilot) and, like Surface before it, so sprawling that I'm not sure what a typical episode might look like. Despite the avoidance of spandex and other comic book tropes (though Panettiere's cheerleader uniform sort of qualifies as a costume), you really have to be a geek like me to appreciate it, I think."
