I was skeptical about the "Heroes" pilot given its premise and some of the cast members, but boy, was I wrong. It doesn't mean a thing if they can't follow it up with a second episode that sustains the momentum, but the first installment narrowly beats out the "Studio 60" pilot for the best so far of the new season. I can't point to any one thing that made the show so enjoyable. It just worked. While a lot of the new serials that have premiered so far this fall seemed rushed and incomplete in introducing their large casts, "Heroes" managed in only a single episode, and several mostly self-contained stories, to make me care about every cast member. I even found it charming that they've named the Japanese hero "Hiro," probably because Masi Oka is so guilelessly enthusiastic in the role.

"Heroes" is really well-cast, and with a lot of people you've seen before and probably didn't think that much of. Who knew Ali Larter could act? Who knew the Disney Channel's own Hayden Panettiere was capable of such angst and pathos (and could sell such devastatingly gross special effects)? The big surprise is Milo Ventimiglia. I still have a residual bit of wanting to punch him in the face for hurting Rory, but he's so sweet and believable in the "Heroes" pilot that it gives the second of the two big shock twists in the episode deluxe extra kick.

"Heroes" is about genetically mutated humans who discover superpowers, which, given, is the premise of "X-Men" and for that matter the watchable cable show "The 4400," which has a somewhat more well-articulated starting point. The show at least for its first hour illustrates the old truth that material doesn't necessarily have to be original so long as it manages to be compelling for reasons independent of its source material. In this regard "Heroes" has a lot of things going for it. For one thing, at this point, I don't care what contrived rationale it takes to gets actors of East Asian and Indian descent on TV. Whatever it takes. "Heroes" seemingly has excellent parts for Oka and for Sendhil Ramamurthy, who seems like he's being set up as the Professor X of the group, but it could go quite differently. Indeed, the pilot doesn't really tell you a lot about the specific powers of each of the characters. A few leads don't demonstrate any superhuman abilities at all. What's interesting is that while you can easily criticize a number of the other serial pilots of this season for keeping too many things hidden in their first episodes, this complaint just kind of melts away for "Heroes." It's interesting in and of itself, you're sold on each of the characters whether or not they can fly, and all in all the cryptic clues dropped as to how the plotline will progress seem more like good storytelling than cheap conjuring tricks just to get the viewer to tune in next week.

The other thing I really liked about the "Heroes" pilot was the way it managed to maintain a consistent tone even while tackling several different genres in the individual set-up stories for each of its principals. Larter is in a modern horror film (only an actually scary one). Panettiere's story is more of a traditional silver-age comic book origin tale, with a random John Waters influence in her character's show dog trainer mother. And the minor detail that the seemingly indestructible Claire Bennet has become obsessed with killing herself. "Star Trek" fan Hiro's story is light fantasy, and give the show's producers credit for thinking highly enough of their audience to play comedy in subtitles. (It works fine, thanks to Oka's expressiveness and James Kyson Lee's universality as Hiro's straight man.) It's also certainly not the first time it's ever been done, but having a character within a sci-fi show who reads comic books and watches "Trek" and therefore "knows the rules" is an effective device. Watching Oka's dreamy Hiro almost will himself to superheroism is one of the pilot's many minor joys. Ramamurthy's character, meanwhile, moves from an Indian university to driving a cab in New York in a Da Vinci Code-like quest to vindicate the work of his geneticist father. Mohinder Suresh has file folders with the powers we expect to see matched up to the various other characters in due course of time marked on them. How did he get them? From scientific deduction, or are there other forces at work here? Of course there are, and their major CSM-style actor has a surprising connection to yet another cast member. C'mon, I'm a sucker for stuff like this if it's well-handled.

The other major storyline in the first episode is a nicely drawn little family story about the conflict between Ventimiglia's Peter and his slick politican brother (Adrian Pasdar). Pay attention to Pasdar's performance in the pilot, because he completely snookered me -- I thought he was more stock than the Steven Weber character on "Studio 60," but watch what happens. This crosses over with the darker story of Isaac (Santiago Cabrera), a heroin-addicted artist whose paintings tell the future. Wait until you see what he paints at the climax!

There's nothing industrial-strength original about "Heroes" but the material just works. It's shot well, the special effects are (correctly) imperfect enough to give that comic-book feel, and I really like the way that it manages to juggle subgenres within the sci-fi/fantasy universe all in the course of one episode. NBC is already airing self-congratulatory promos informing us that the pilot won 25 million viewers. I hope all of them and more return for the second episode, which airs next Monday night. This show deserves to tell its story, which is more than I can say for "Jericho" or "Kidnapped." More on the latter later.