Two ways to tell that a TV show is in trouble: 1) its producers get fired and 2) the show is so terrible it makes people want to vomit tears.

And that spells a big uh-oh for Heroes, because both of those apply equally to it. The latter has done since around the end of the first season, but the former has only just happened. Heroes co-executive producers Jeph Loeb and Jesse Alexander have been given the boot by NBC in an attempt to make the show decent again.

There’s no word on who’ll replace Loeb and Alexander on Heroes, but we think it’ll be us. We have a three-point Heroes resuscitation plan raring to go, and it’s unbeatable. 1) Reduce the cast down to a key core of characters, 2) ditch all the time travel, and 3) bring in a new character who’s a cartoon time-travelling giraffe who speaks in rhymes like a rapper and has magical sunglasses. Kids still like rap, right?

Remember when everyone liked Heroes? You have to cast your mind back quite a way, but they did. When it started, Heroes was like Lost, except that it answered questions instead of wallowing around examining its own navel all the time.

Public opinion about Heroes has changed a little since then – it’s now like Lost except that nobody watches it, none of the characters are good, the stories are all rubbish, the acting is weak and all in all sitting through an episode is so pointless that you may as well spend an hour trying to push a goose up a badger’s bottom. Generally speaking.

It’s clear that Heroes needs something big to happen to change and, since NBC appears to be ignoring our calls to turn it into The Hayden Panettiere Rides A Mechanical Rodeo Bull In Slow Motion In A Swimsuit Hour, it’s decided to give the shove to a couple of co-executive producers instead. Variety reports:

Big shakeup on the staff of NBC’s “Heroes” came down on Sunday with the axing of co-exec producers Jesse Alexander and Jeph Loeb. Both had been with the show since its first season. It’s understood that Alexander and Loeb were let go because of Peacock execs’ frustration with the creative direction of the show.

It’s absolutely right that NBC should be concerned about the creative direction of Heroes. If the show continues to slide in quality at its present rate then we expect the entire second half of this season to consist of nothing but Mohinder waffling endless half-sentences about destiny and God and genetics to a photograph of a duckling. Actually, we take that back – we’d much prefer to watch that than Heroes as it currently is.

But, hey, if anyone can turn Heroes around, it’s the network executives. Give them a few million dollars to focus group the problem and we’re sure they’ll get Heroes back on its feet.

Well, it won’t be Heroes as such – it’ll be a new show set in space, and all the characters will be kung-fu girls in bikinis, and the end of each episode will be decided by text-vote, and it’ll be called Heroez and afterwards there’ll be a real-life reality show all about the dramatic ups and downs of Hayden Panittiere and Milo Ventimiglia‘s relationship called Heroez: Unzipped – but kids like shows that have a ‘Z’ instead of an ‘S’ at the end, right?