Well, this is the sweeter side of Sylar (think of Gabriel Gray/Sylar as Clark Kent's geeky duality meets Norman Bates' mommy issues with a side of Hannibal Lector), if that's more your speed:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfTDs44-n5c
Even if you can't root for the morally ambiguous characters (gee, Sylar, Noah, Angela, Danko and Nathan are like the who's who of Heroes moral ambiguity--the first four, especially), I guess you can actively root against them. Noah and Angela are almost as bad as Sylar sometimes and Danko is just a less competent villain than Sylar.
And you got to love when Sylar doesn't even want to be the villain. What rocks about HRG is that he still manages to be one of the most badass people on the show (even against Sylar) and about the only power he has is "the power of bad eyesight" (Jack Coleman's words). LOL.
I like a fair amount of morally ambiguous characters, so that probably helps in watching Heroes. But rooting for more heroic but out-of-the-ordinary characters like Spock is equally cool with me.
In fact, Spock is a good example of character expectations being turned on their ear. The fact that network executives, when first seeing Star Trek, thought Spock looked too much like the Devil says it all (topics like "fear of the 'other'" and "don't judge a book by their cover" come to mind). The whole appeal of Spock is that he's as prickly as cactus on the outside and nice, sweet cactus candy on the inside. He's a hero that's earned it, not because he looks or acts like a hero, but because of his actions.
Similarly, people who watch Heroes thinking that they are just going to see a bunch of Superman or saving-the-girl-on-the-tracks antics are probably going to be disappointed. In fact, having superpowers on Heroes isn't even presented as a wholly good thing (being 'different' is hard). The very existence and need for "the Company" in Heroes says it all about the way the show treats the idea of people getting superpowers--the possibility of both superheroism and supervillainy. And some of the powers suck (Gabriel's "intuitive aptitude" "hunger" being one of the worst--Peter has a similar power as a good guy and he almost blew up NYC because he came in contact with Ted Sprague--another good guy with a really sucky power).
