HEROES
Season 3 Episode 2
Volume Three: “Villains”
Chapter Two: “The Butterfly Effect”
Written by Tim Kring
Directed by Greg Beeman
(WARNING: SPOILERS)

“You have no idea of the fire that you’re playing with. You don’t screw with time.”
-- Mama P

Say what?! (In reaction to Mama P’s big cliffhanging reveal, and not the quote above.)
Urrrr… this better be some cockamamie scheme on Mama P’s part, ‘cause if not, why are we dipping into hackneyed soap opera territory? (Wasn’t Peter’s amnesia last season bad enough?)
And while I’m happy to see a bigger role for Mama P, given that she’s now in charge thanks to the Company’s chain of command, I am terribly disappointed that Bob has now suffered one of those thankless Heroes deaths: blink, and the character’s history. (And it happens off-screen to boot.)
And now poor Elle’s out of a job… but only after she inadvertently causes the escape of about a dozen powered lowlifes from Level 5 (when she lets out a massive electrical discharge as Sylar is cutting her head open, she causes the power grid to go down, and presto, escaped supervillains).


That escape gets Mr. B out as well, and he runs off into the night, but only after ensuring Sylar’s confinement (which Mama P looks about to rescind, thanks in part to the reveal that, gasp, he’s her son!).
Sigh.
As I said though, maybe this is Mama P trying to manipulate Sylar into doing her bidding, by giving him a mother figure by claiming to be his real mother.
Gods, I hope so.


So Mr. B heads back home, to have a brief reunion with Claire, and is set to go off again, to take down the Level 5 escapees.
But not before he brings back Claire’s pyrokinetic bio-mom Meredith, to keep his family safe.
Hurrah!
And I say that without sarcasm, as, honestly, this was one of the few high points of the episode. I just hope that Meredith is on the level here, ‘cause she did seem a tad mercenary the last time we saw her…

Oh, and one of the Level 5 escapees, Jesse Murphy (played in a little bit of stunt casting by Veronica Mars alum, Francis Capra), is where scarred Peter-from-the-future “put” the real Peter. (Does Future Boy feel like such a d!ck now, or what? Is a portion of Volume Three basically just cleaning up the idiot mess he caused by gunning down Nathan, while the other is cleaning up Hiro’s idiot mess?)
So now Capra gets to share screen time with Milo Ventimiglia in the role of supervillain on the lam (does Capra get half a paycheck then?)
Jesse’s power: sound manipulation.


And my mention of The Fly in response to Mo’s totally irresponsible “oh, I’ll inject myself with an untested compound because I am so conflicted and tortured right now” moment?
Well, what do we have here but a scene straight out of Cronenberg’s remake, where a shirtless Mo is hanging off the rafters, then does some wall-climbing? He then makes the moves on Maya, who succumbs to his shirtless charms, and ends up in bed with him.
Of course, he wakes up in the middle of the night, and, well, he seems to be… flaking. Or something.
You know, he’s looking in the mirror, very Fly-like, and there are some odd looking patches of skin on his back that are coming off.
Sigh.
So we’re raiding soap operas and sci fi remakes.


Meanwhile, Nathan’s Linderman appears to be a figment of his imagination.
Gods, Nathan is certifiable.
Either that or Linderman (who is supposed to be dead) is just invisible to everyone else, but that’s just plain silly, right?
Heh.
Nathan, by the way, takes the offer for the junior Senator seat, provided Tracy-who-looks-exactly-like-Nikki will be on his team.


Oh, and Tracy-who-looks-exactly-like-Nikki? Well, she apparently has the power to instantaneously deep freeze anyone she touches, and of course, when a human insta-popsicle falls to the ground, the body shatters, leaving itty bitty bits of bloody ice all over the place.
Ick.
(The poor sap who gets the messy death? The Greatest American Hero himself, William Katt! Stunt casting, hurrah!)

And Parkman?
‘Ported to Africa, where he meets Usutu (Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine), who knows Parkman’s name, and claims that he shouldn’t be there, and that this is not the future he painted.
Another Isaac?
Oh, and Usutu is apparently the one who painted that cracking globe symbol which Parkman saw in the previous episode.
(And why hasn’t anyone wondered what happened to Parkman? Has no one noticed that’s he’s gone missing?)


Hiro (I’m the idiot who’s responsible for that dangerous half-formula being stolen by some super-speedster, and can’t I see that how I’m treating Ando could very well turn him against me?) Nakamura on the other hand, has a plan to track Daphne the super-speedster and catch her before she steals the other half of the formula.
Fine, let’s see how that pans out, though why do I get the feeling that won’t work out too well either?


Claire, meanwhile, realizes that she now can feel no pain, which troubles her deeply since, despite her extraordinary regeneration, what kept her grounded and human before was the fact that she could still feel pain.
Now, while I admit that’s an interesting turn of events, the “attempt #7” scene is curiously lacking in the emotional weight department. I’m not sure if the greenscreen is totally to blame (as such shots always seem to be bereft of any genuine tension due to their artificiality), but it certainly doesn’t help any.

Meanwhile, Mama P has a disturbing (and rather comic book-y) dream where some of the heroes are shown being defeated/killed by a bunch of baddies, which include Nikki (or whatever the hell her name is) and Parkman Sr.


Well, I can’t say that that was significantly better than the first hour, and I have to say that this troubles me a bit.
After the largely slapdash and compromised affair that was Volume Two, I had hoped that this third volume would waste no time and from the opening, immediately detonate at ground zero and recapture the glory of the golden age of Heroes (back in Season 1, when Bryan Fuller was still in the house).
Sadly, that didn’t happen.
There are still too many characters running about, and worse, some of them are acting rather idiotically, apparently just to kick-start some subplots.
And then there’s that whole Sylar-as-long-lost-Petrelli-son reveal.
Urg.


Well, hope springs eternal, and there’s always next week for another shot at redemption…

Parting shot: In the lag between the time the premiere aired, I got to see it and wrote this review, and today, when I finally got to post the review, news broke regarding the “letting go” of Heroes co-executive producers Jeph Loeb and Jesse Alexander. (Details here and here.)
As much as this came as a shock, how this will affect the show is also at the forefront of my mind.
It has already been indicated that Kring will be “simplifying” the storytelling, and “refining the tone of the show.” There’s also a bit about—thank Heavens—“emphasiz[ing] character development more than plot twists.”
I imagine the exact repercussions of this sudden shake-up will become evident sometime in the second half of the current season, during Volume Four (reportedly titled “Fugitives”).
Though it does seem like Loeb and Alexander have been shafted—and who exactly did the shafting is up for debate—this does present yet another opportunity for the show to clean up its act (if Loeb and Alexander were indeed the problematic pieces in the Writers’ Room).
Like I said, hope springs eternal. Let’s see, shall we?

(Images courtesy of comicbookresources.com, gregbeeman.blogspot.com, and eonline.com.)

HEROES
Season 2
Volume Two: “Generations”
Chapter Eight: “Four Months Ago…”
Written by: Tim Kring
Directed by: Greg Beeman
(WARNING: SPOILERS)

Okay, for an episode designed to answer most of the questions that have piled up since the season kicked off, this one still feels a tad scattershot—and this, with only two scenes of the Wonder Twins, an obligatory intro for Monica and Nana, and no Claire, Mo, Hiro, or Parkman—but hey, I’ll take it if only to get it out of the way, so we can forge on to the end of this volume.

And, in keeping with the spirit of getting things out of the way, we first see the Wonder Twins at Alejandro’s wedding, as he gets married to a girl who’s only too willing to cheat on him on their wedding night.
Already unhappy and suspicious of Alejandro’s blushing (yet skanky) bride, Maya catches her getting hot and heavy with someone other than Alejandro, thus triggering the first disastrous outburst of her power: everyone at the reception dies, except for Alejandro. Maya then runs away, saying she killed them all.
When next we see Maya, she’s become a nun, and Alejandro’s found her after months of being on the run. Everyone thinks she’s poisoned the wedding guests, and Alejandro’s actually turning her over to the policia, when her power kicks in. Alejandro does the “calmate” thing, and he realizes that, as Maya asserts, this is about the both of them, so, off the Wonder Twins run.

From the smallest portion of the episode, to the largest: Peter, and how he ended up amnesiac, in Ireland.
Kirby Plaza: Nathan zooms up into the night sky with a Peter-about-to-go-nuclear. Nathan’s already getting bad burns, and Peter—after a quick explanation as to why he suddenly can’t fly—makes his brother drop him, just before he explodes, blasting Nathan even further.
Before Toasty Nathan can go splat though, Peter (who can now, conveniently enough, fly) catches him and brings him to hospital. Guess who’s there: Bob, and Elle, who zaps Peter unconscious.
When Peter regains consciousness, Bob tells Peter he’s a friend of the elder Petrellis, and that he’s here to help Peter: 30 years ago, they discontinued work on a vaccine to eradicate powers. Now though, they’ve started the research up again, and Bob offers Peter the chance to live life without fear of harming anyone he loves ever again.
Peter bites.
After getting a haircut from the sociopathic Elle (who likes to get kinky with some jolts of electricity), Peter’s kept in a cell, given regular doses of a cocktail designed to suppress powers. One guess as to who’s the occupant of the adjacent cell.
Ding! Adam/Kensei! And wouldn’t you know it, but they’re actually able to communicate with each other! (Given how dangerous Adam is, shouldn’t he have been in solitary confinement? That’s bad enough, but to actually put anyone in the cell next to his! Gross criminal negligence. And they didn’t have the cells wired with surveillance equipment?! Man, I thought Bob was smart…)
So Adam gets to chit-chat with Peter, eventually winning him over and convincing him that Bob’s a baddie. And what seals the deal is when Peter makes a request to see his family, and Bob flat out refuses. To sweeten the get-away plan, Adam says he can cure Nathan’s burns with a small amount of his blood.
So Peter goes off his meds, and five days later, uses D.L.’s phasing ability to walk into Adam’s cell, then to walk on outta there with Adam.

Meanwhile, Monster Face Nathan’s confined to hospital, where Granny P is his constant companion.
Then, in a great scene (perhaps the best of the episode), Heidi—who’s now walking, thank you very much, the late Mr. Linderman—visits, and has an exchange with Granny P in the hall.
Nathan’s told her everything, about the powers, about the plan to let New York go ka-blooey, everything, so Granny P does spin control, and feeds her the same lies she told Peter, about the mental illness that runs in the Petrelli family, and that, quite obviously, Nathan’s got it too.
That scene between Cristine Rose and Rena Sofer blows everything else in this episode away. Granny P’s like this alluring black widow, spinning her web, hypnotic as she gets Heidi to tow the line. There’s such simple, yet awful menace in the way she touches Heidi’s arm…

After the breakout, Peter and Adam pay Nathan a visit, and Adam injects a syringe of his blood into Nathan’s IV. Immediately, Nathan’s burns begin to heal.
But the escapees have to book.
Adam has just given Peter the plane ticket to Montreal, when Elle and the Haitian catch up to them.
Elle zaps Peter in the back, setting his shirt on fire. Elle gives chase to Adam, while the Haitian goes after Peter.
Peter shrugs off the flaming shirt, and runs into a whole bunch of shipping containers. The Haitian corners Peter in one, easily overpowering him, since the Haitian nullifies any powered individuals in his vicinity. And since Granny P helped him once, now the Haitian does his best to return that favour: it’s his attempt to give Peter a new life, by taking away the memories of his old one, and leaving him shirtless, handcuffed, and amnesiac in an otherwise empty shipping container. (Oh, and he places his necklace around Peter’s neck.)
I guess he mush have a lot of faith in Peter, ‘cause, who’s to say that, shirtless, handcuffed, and amnesiac, he wouldn’t have starved to death in that shipping container?
And, since we don’t see any more of Adam, we can only assume he managed to get away from Elle. Or, gasp! The sociopath let him get away.
Also, whether or not Elle is Bob’s daughter is still up in the air.

In another Kirby Plaza aftermath scene, D.L. is saved from the gunshot wound of Season 1’s climax.
Concerned about their lack of medical insurance (Michael Moore, where are you now?), Niki is surprised to learn all the bills have been paid, by… Michael Moore?
No.
Bob.
Bob, who claims to be cleaning up the mess left by Linderman, and who offers Niki the chance to voluntarily enter a facility while she undergoes chemical suppression of her powers. At this point, Bob makes an interesting comment regarding how some people react to the reality of these powers: those unable to cope with the mental strain end up creating other personalities, as with Niki.
Niki’s hesitant to leave her family, but Bob warns the meds have some side effects. So Niki’s a lot logy, and when she can’t even smile at Micah’s 11th birthday—what’s the design on Micah’s cake? The 9th Wonders St. Joan cover!—she stops taking her meds.
And just when she’s about to start a new job at a car dealership, another personality pops up: Gina, who takes over and high-tails it to L.A.
Meanwhile, D.L. takes a job to make Micah proud: fire fighter! (Which was, I guess, preferable to D.L. over Micah’s birthday wish: for his family to be the Fantastic Four Minus One.)
There’s a minor tease at this point, as the audience is made to think, oh, is this how D.L. dies? In the line of duty?
But no.
D.L. tracks “Gina” down, and finds her in a club, where he takes her away from some scuzzy lowlife clubster, who shoots D.L. down in cold blood.
At the wake, we have the New Orleans crew making their brief appearance, where Nana offers Niki her help.
Bob also shows up, and exchanges a Meaningful Glance with Niki.

Okay, let’s see. Other than a few present day scenes: Nathan arriving at the pub in Ireland, the now-virused Niki being released back into society, and Peter and Adam in Montreal (which bookends the chapter, so that ostensibly, the entire episode is Peter using his power to heal the broken synapses so he can remember the past four months; of course, how he is also “remembering” things concerning the Wonder Twins and Niki is beyond me), that’s pretty much the episode.
So, while it does address some questions, it also quite obtrusively, ends up being a narrative bump, off-setting the momentum that Chapter Seven managed to build, as we’re made to sit through an hour of catch-up.
Yes, I absolutely loved the hospital scene between Granny P and Heidi, and yeah, Elle sure is one sick puppy, but the entire scenario of how Adam got to Peter and flipped him (and how Peter ended up in that shipping container) got way too incredulous for me.

But, like I said, now that that’s out of the way, let’s get back to the story as we rush on up to the last three chapters of the volume, and that alternate ending we’ve all been hearing about; see Afterthoughts (22).

(Behind the scene images courtesy of gregbeeman.blogspot.com; TV Guide Heroes cover art [3 of 4] by Michael Turner, courtesy of tvguide.com.)

AFTERTHOUGHTS (24)

24.1 So talks regarding the WGA strike are set to resume next week, after the Thanksgiving holiday.
Here’s hoping the networks and studios don’t decide to play Scrooge, so this mess gets resolved before Christmas.

24.2 It’s official: Cloverfield is indeed the title.
And as much as I’m glad they stuck with it, I can’t help but wonder whether this was the real title all along, or whether they went with it since that was the title most people had already associated with the movie.
At any rate, the official one-sheet is out, as well as a trailer attached to prints of Beowulf.
And regarding the last two images above, witness the sinister might of Slusho!
The provided captions for the photos are as follows:

MATT PARKMAN ATTEMPTS TO MINDBEND SLUSHO – AN ATTEMPT THAT WILL BE DOOMED TO FAILURE!

and

MATT TRANSPORTS SLUSHO TO SAFETY

(Cloverfield OS courtesy of bloody-disgusting.com; Cloverfield images courtesy of blackbookmag.com and filmz.ru; Slusho! images staged by Greg Yaitanes, under the supervision of Joe Pokaski, courtesy of gregbeeman.blogspot.com.)

HEROES
Season 2
Volume Two: Generations
Chapter One: “Four Months Later…”
Written by: Tim Kring
Directed by: Greg Beeman
(WARNING: SPOILERS)
(SERIOUSLY…)

“The sun rises on a new dawn, yet few of us realize the debt we owe to those responsible for this. To those who dwell among us, anonymous, seemingly ordinary, whom destiny brought together to repair, to heal, to save us from ourselves.”

So Season 2’s first salvo opens with a VO by Mo, and a montage of scenes from episodes past and presumably, future. (The final shot with Nathan is a doozy.)
Dang.
There goes my fervent wish that Season 2 would open with a shot of Claire finally doing some actual cheerleading…

As we play catch-up with our gang, Mo is doing a meagerly attended lecture tour, where he discusses the virus that took his sister’s life and almost did away with Molly as well, a disease that sounds like the Legacy Virus which first reared its ugly head in the X-Men comics and was showcased in the sad and sorry X-Men: The Last Stand.
At his Cairo stop, he is approached by the Company, who offer to fund his research. Here, we are introduced to perhaps the most intriguing new character of the episode, Bob, played by Stephen Tobolowsky (seen recently on HBO’s Deadwood), who apparently has the Midas touch.

Meanwhile, Parkman—having survived the four bullets of season 1’s finale—at long last gets his detective’s shield (utilizing his gift to help him pass his final test). He’s divorced now (I’m gonna miss Mrs. P, who should still be pregnant, wherever in the world she is; and as we discovered in “Five Years Gone,” Baby Parkman has some sort of power…) and playing Two Heroes and a Little Lady with Mo and Molly, the trio living in Mo’s apartment.
As all this domestic bliss is going on, Molly is having nightmares of that Sauron baddie she mentioned at the tail end of Season 1. (Said baddie even utters the oh-so-Sauron line, “I can see you…”) She’s drawing creepy kiddie pictures of eyes and that Heroes “godsend” sigil, and Parkman (and Molly’s teacher) are understandably worried.

Meanwhile still, while Daddy Sulu and Ando conduct a vigil at Kirby Plaza, waiting for Hiro to return, someone sends a death threat to Daddy Sulu.
Granny Petrelli also gets a similar death threat, right after she confronts a boozed-up and bearded Nathan—I knew that figure Ando bumped into seemed familiar—who apparently survived the Peter explosion, only to be left by his wife and kids. So he’s drowning away his sorrows, while seeing himself scarred and burned horribly in mirrors. (I guess with Niki in absentia, someone had to do the mirror thing…)
The subplot has a great scene between Daddy Sulu and Granny P atop the Deveaux building, and ends with Daddy Sulu apparently going splat on the sidewalk, without displaying any sort of power at all. (He says if he’s to fight, he would need a sword, which Ando dutifully scurries off to find, only to arrive just as the Mysterious Hooded Figure Known To Daddy Sulu pushes Daddy S off the rooftop. You’d think though that Daddy S would have been better prepared and have some sort of sword near him at all times… Or at the very least procured one on the way from Kirby Plaza to the Deveaux building.)

And meanwhile even more, the Bennets (now the “Butlers”) have moved to Costa Verde, California, where Claire has her first day of swimming in “the shark-infested waters of 11th grade.”
She’s told by Daddy B to keep her head down and to be completely anonymous and ordinary, understandably a very difficult thing, not just because of what she can do, but also because of her age. That sense of wanting to be the individual she so clearly is, but needing to appear mundane and mediocre (a “robot” instead of an “alien”) because the family is still on the run, is conveyed beautifully by Hayden Panettiere, and her scenes with Jack Coleman are some of the best the episode has to offer.
Daddy B is also bored and uppity at Copy Kingdom, where he’s no longer the Boss of himself, though he quickly addresses that concern…
We also get to see Lyle, Mrs. B (yay!), and Mr. Muggles (double yay!), himself also suffering in anonymity; in Costa Verde, no one knows he’s a champion. Poor Mr. Muggles…
As it turns out though, Mo’s lecture tour was designed to attract the Company’s attention, and the plan Mo and Mr. B have to bring down the Company kicks into gear when Mo takes the job offer.
But, unbeknowest to all, West (Nicholas D’Agosto; Election and Rocket Science), Claire’s classmate who seems to have an interest in our favorite Indestructible Cheerleader, can (gasp!) fly! Exactly the power Claire’s currently Boozed-Up BioDad has. Coinkydink? Hmmm…

All that, and we’re also introduced to siblings Maya (Dania Ramirez, from, hmmm, X-Men: The Last Stand) and Alejandro Herrera (Shalim Ortiz), who are apparently wanted for murder in San Cristobal, Honduras. They’re evading the authorities and trying to make their way to the United States, Papa Suresh’s book their only hope to help Maya, whose power seems to be uncontrollable and fatal, leaving corpses that appear to have bled from their eyes.

Oh, there’s also the Hiro subplot, which picks up—unlike the present, which does a four month leap forward—right where Season 1 left our lovable time- and space-bending geek, in feudal Japan, as he comes face-to-face with his hero, Takezo Kensei (Alias’ David Anders).
Sadly though, Kensei turns out not only to be a gaijin, but also a saki-swilling mercenary despised by the swordsmith’s daughter Yaeko (Eriko Tamura) who is supposed to be his One True Love.
Very quickly it becomes apparent that Hiro has to turn this lout into a hero and cause love to flourish between the two, or risk the integrity of future history.
Unfortunately, this subplot is the one that seems the most extraneous of this episode. I suppose that’s because, a) it doesn’t seem explicitly connected to all the other events unfolding, and b) it feels like familiar ground, the time traveler turning the historical figure into the one people will know in the future, as opposed to the fallible, and less-than-heroic schlep he finds.
I’ll give this subplot some leeway though, as a) hopefully, this will all connect with everything else later on, and b) I’m hoping they’re going to turn that familiar riff on its ear.

Of course, all this is going on, and we still haven’t seen hide nor hair of Micah (whom I miss) and Niki and D.L. (whom I don’t). I just hope that when they come on-board, the writers can juggle all of those plot balls without things getting too crowded.

Oh, and the cliffhanger?
It comes as no surprise (given that Milo Ventimiglia’s name was in the opening credits) that Peter—whom everyone thinks is dead—is actually still alive.
Of course, he apparently has amnesia (gasp!), got a haircut (double gasp!!), and lives chained up in an otherwise empty cargo container in Cork, Ireland. He’s also taken to wearing that snazzy Heroes sigil around his neck.
Repeat after me: Hmmmm…

Parting shot: A breakdown of this season’s schedule: the first 11 episodes in a row, then a month long break, the next 7 in a row, a 3-week break, then the final 6 episodes, followed by Heroes: Origins, the 6 episode spin-off which will introduce us to a half-dozen new characters. Origins episodes will be brought to us by such established names as Kevin Smith, Eli Roth, and Michael Dougherty. Boo-yah!
Also, when Origins was first announced, the intent was to do an American Idol, and get viewers to vote for their favorite character, who would then go on to become a Heroes regular in Season 3. I’m not certain that’s still exactly the way they’re gonna go with Origins, but that’s an interesting idea…

(Behind the scenes images courtesy of gregbeeman.blogspot.com.)

HEROES
Volume One
Chapter 22
(WARNING:
SPOILERS)
“Landslide”

“… episode 21, 22 and 23 are three parts of one story. In fact, it’s less of a trilogy, and more like, Act one, Act two and Act three of a film.”
-- Greg Beeman
Director, “Landslide”

So here we are in the second act of the final story of Volume One, and all the plot threads move quite nicely towards that final shot of Sylar above the NY cityscape, his hands crackling with the nuclear energy he’s stolen from poor Ted. (I’m gonna miss the schmo.)

And in all of this major plot motion, it’s the small moments that stand out, particularly Candice’s, as she finally becomes a real person to me, with the intimation that she’s not actually the hot Missy Peregrym, but quite possibly a lonely, overweight social pariah, who’s helping Linderman because he’s promising to change the world and its prejudices.
And it’s in this plot thread where we also see what Linderman really wants with Micah. So that was it. I actually thought he wanted Micah for, like ICBM missile control or something, in case he needed a contingency plan for the Big Boom.

A bunch of covergences in this chapter as well, as all the major players are in New York. And where people meet and collide, there are bound to be casualties. I’ve already mentioned Ted, but we also lose Thompson (good riddance), D.L. (though I’m not 100% certain on that, cause didn’t he move a little in that last shot of Niki cradling him?), and, most surprising of all, Linderman. (Come on! He can’t die like that! Please tell me that was Candice covering for her boss. And even if it was her, I’d still feel like we were losing a lot of potential by icing her. Kind of like Eden all over again; except I really love Nora Zehetner, and I’m only kind’a warming up to Candice at the moment.)
Still, I hope that wasn’t the end of Linderman… (And if it was, at least he healed Mrs. P before he bought it.)

And, in the Hiro plot thread, we hear Daddy Sulu sing the same song Linderman did, about trying to save the world and people losing their way. So really, who lost whose way?
Presumably though, Daddy Sulu’s one of the “good” guys, as he’s willing to help stop Sylar, while Linderman is one of the “bad” guys, as he’s all too willing to have the city blown up so he can have a man inside the White House. (Of course, he claims to be doing it all for the greater good, so is that justification, or does he really believe his own press?)
Then of course, Grandma P. knows about Linderman’s plan and is all for it, so what does that make her? “Good”? “Bad”? (And what would Peter think if he knew that his mother was in on that plot? I mean, Peter is her favorite son; or so she claims.)
Oh, and Linderman confirms that Daddy P. did have some power or other…

Also, among the cliffhangers of this chapter, Ando most unwisely going off to face Sylar with a purchased katana (please don’t kill Ando!), and Mo and Mr. Bennet in a Mexican stand-off, Mo pointing his gun at Bennet, Bennet pointing his gun at poor little Molly Walker (can anyone say “trauma” and “therapy”?).
At least these are cliffhangers that will take a week to resolve.

Onward ho! Final chapter!

Parting shot 1: “Mr. Claremont,” huh? Gee, I wonder who he’s named after… (And appropriately enough, something to do with samurai swords...)
On top of getting Kirby Plaza last chapter.
Sweet.

Parting shot 2: The scene with Hiro and Nathan was just heartbreaking. The sense of betrayal Hiro feels is nearly palpable, and given that past Hiro-Nathan scenes have always had an element of comedy, this one’s all the more potent. (And it’s a play on their previous “billen” scene as well.)

(Image courtesy of comicbookresources.com.)

HEROES Season 1 Episode 16 (WARNING: SPOILERS)
“Unexpected”

Okay. I’m officially annoyed with Isaac now.
As appropriate as this episode’s title is, it could very well have been called “The Three Noodges.”
Noodge 1: Mohinder, who is currently doing a Julia Roberts and sleeping with the enemy, unwittingly leading Sylar right to his victims. C’mon, Mo! You’re a smart guy! You gotta see through the mask, dude!
Noodge 2: HRG, who does the big boo-hoo, I never meant to hurt your mother, Claire, I just wanted to protect you. Yeah, bang-up job, Mr. Bennet.
Noodge 3: Isaac. Not only does he lead HRG to Claude, but he pulls an Ana Lucia and plugs Simone. (Dumb a$$. When Heroes started, I really didn’t care much for either Isaac or Simone, but the characters grew on me. And when Simone finally bought into the whole “people with powers” thing, I was genuinely jazzed. And now she’s bleeding all over Isaac’s floor and he’s holding the gun. I repeat: dumb a$$.)
Meanwhile, I’m so happy for Claire, finally getting to unload on dear old Dad in the hospital. Of course, Ted and Matt and the instant e-mail lady have to bust up that party. (You know, I kind’a thought it would take them awhile to actually get down to bidness, but there ya’ go. Now all the Bennets are in deep doo-doo.)
Actually, you know what? Make that “The Four Noodges.”
Noodge 4: me. It only sunk in when Peter first displays telekinesis on the rooftop: he is the most powerful character at the moment. What’s he got? Flight, invisibility, invulnerability, precognition, one-way telepathy (is there a better term for it?), TK, and presumably, control over the space/time continuum—since he already met Future Hiro—and also, whatever other powers Sylar’s managed to suck up. Man, he can kick major a$$!
I should’ve seen it earlier, but there you go. Been too busy getting distracted by the other subplots.
This episode was written by Jeph Loeb (read Superman For All Seasons. Now.) and directed by Greg Beeman (who, in another timeline, is busy directing episode after episode of the hit TV show about Aquaman, Mercy Reef, but in this timeline, is doing a brilliant job on Heroes).
Great episode that amps things up nicely.

Parting shot: If Ando really is heading back to Japan, I’m gonna miss him. And is it just me or have we had enough Stan Lee cameos already?

Parting shot 2: Heroes got 5 nominations at the 2007 Saturns: Best Network Television Series; Best Supporting Actor in a Television Program or Series (Greg Grunberg and Masi Oka); and Best Supporting Actress in a Television Program or Series (Hayden Panettiere and Ali Larter).
Winners will be announced on May 10, 2007.

(Originally posted 022107)