I can’t believe I’m saying this, but…tonight’s episode of “Heroes” was really good.
I’m not even going to limit my praise to calling it the best episode of the season (although it was), because it deserves more love than that; it was legitimately enjoyable across the board, with only a few moments which gave me pause.
Hiro and Ando: Clearly, we knew Hiro hadn’t really killed Ando, but doing a flashback which showed Hiro visiting a joke shop was pretty funny. As aware as Papa Petrelli and his secret society of super villains are, it wouldn’t take them long to figure out that Ando isn’t really dead, but since Ando doesn’t have super powers, then the only person who’d really care about it one way or the other is Knox, and his ability isn’t one that lends itself to him finding out the truth. It was a nice touch that, when Daphne left, Ando pointedly released the breath he’d been holding. Why was it so nice? Because it showed that someone behind the scenes at “Heroes” finally realized, “Hey, the fans are actually noticing stuff, so we’d better start covering our asses a little better.” If Ando hadn’t released that breath, someone would’ve said, “Didn’t Daphne notice he was still breathing?”
When Hiro and Ando tried to catch Usutu the precog in Africa, it was a little bit like watching Austin Millbarge and Emmett Fitz-Hume at work, but, c’mon, who didn’t laugh out loud at the caption of “One minute before Hiro got hit”? The sequence was funny, but the writers actually had fun with the notion of Hiro going back in time…and, again, I have to think that was in response to all the moaning about FuturePeter not choosing a better time to go back in time to change the past. If I didn’t love Usutu already, watching him smack Hiro over the head with the shovel would’ve cinched the deal. His otherwise Zen-like manner makes him my favorite new character of the season, so it should be interesting to see how things go when the villains attempt to make him for them.
