I begin this week with a complaint: although I’m as much of a sucker for reading spoilers as the next guy, I like to have the option to read them, not have them thrust upon me as has been happening in the previews for the following week’s episode of “Heroes.” Yeah, I know, the whole point of the preview is to tease you about what to expect, but the ones for “Heroes” seem to give away major surprises and developments instead of just offering the teasing lines immediately before the surprises and developments. Like, the whole “save the cheerleader, save the world” thing was given up long before future-Hiro uttered the line at the beginning of this week’s episode. It just pisses me off, that’s all I’m saying. But, then again, even the fact that we saw someone shoot into the air in last week’s preview didn’t damage the sheer coolness of Nathan shooting upwards, into the clouds, and – it sounded like – breaking the sound barrier in the process; that was definitely still very much a “holy shit” moment. (By the way, did I miss it last week when they revealed that they’d taken Nathan rather than Niki? All I heard Claire’s dad say was “take one of them”; I never heard him say which one…but the show acted as though we were supposed to have known that he’d taken Nathan.)
So Alias Boy…sorry, I mean Matt…more than makes up for his brief appearance in last week’s episode by, if my calculations are correct, getting more screen time this week than any other character. Surely his wife’s gonna get pissed off when she finds out that he really IS getting inside her mind. (Is it me, or does she look like an older Katie Holmes?) Based on his mother of a headache toward the end of the show, it looks like Matt’s gonna end up crazy sooner than later if he doesn’t figure out how to reign in his abilities.
By the way, the subject line is partially a reference to that, but also to Claire feeling a bit of remorse for running the QB’s car into a wall. She finally opens up to her dad…sort of. About the rape, not about her abilities. Well, if nothing else, we’ve confirmed that no matter what his ulterior motive in all this turns out to be, he’s clearly still got a lot of love in his heart for his adopted daughter…or else she’s so crucial to his endgame that he’ll do anything to protect her. And Niki…sweet, sweet Niki…doesn’t get much forward motion in her arc ’til the end of the episode, except to discover that she had hot monkey sex with Nathan and doesn’t remember a thing about it. Oh, well, she can always order a copy of the DVD…
So exactly when did Hiro learn all that English? Finally, he gets Ando to help him with a phone call to Isaac, but, still, when he’s chatting with Nathan at the diner, it’s clear that he’s fluent enough in speakin’ American to be able to get his point across to Isaac…so why did he insist on speaking solely in Japanese when he called him? Nerves…? As long as we’re talking about the dynamic duo from the land of the rising sun, dammit, we were thisfuckingclose to seeing that Niki / Ando romance kick off…and, by God, I’m not giving up hope yet; there was a spark, I tells ya! As far as Hiro’s new buddy, I have to say, I never would’ve thought that he and Nathan would meet up so soon, let alone that Nathan would be amused with him rather than annoyed by him.
I noticed this week that at least one of the supposedly big reveals of the episode was pretty anti-climactic, that being when Peter finds Isaac’s painting of Claire; I mean, it’s not like we didn’t witness Isaac painting it last week…but they played it like it was something we’d never seen before. Rule of thumb, people: if it’s not a new revelation, it’s not cut-to-commercial worthy…!
If it was me, I think I would’ve ended the episode with Niki’s husband creeping around the corner…but, overall, it was a solid episode with lots of new info.
Funniest line: “That hurt more than I thought it would.”
Most chilling line: “Hollow him out; take everything.”
