Heroes image from "Unexpected" which airing Feb. 19 on NBC
© NBC

Mania Grade: A-
Stars: Hayden Panettiere, Masi Oka, Ali Larter, Sendhil Ramamurthy, Milo Ventimiglia, Jack Coleman, Leonard Roberts, Greg Grunberg, Adrian Pasdar
Produced By: Adam Armus, Jeph Loeb, Tim King

Related Links

1

"Heroes: Distractions"

Wow am I tired of the poor marketing for this series.  The ads said in this episode “she will meet her dad…” speaking of Claire meeting her biological father after finally finding her real mother.  Well needless to say, that didn’t happen at all, but while Claire didn’t meet her father, we did and so ends another fantastic episode of Heroes. 

The thing I found most interesting in this episode is the beginning of Peter’s training.  I’ve often thought that he’s the most powerful member of the heroes and we are finally beginning to see that here.  His new friend, who I like to call The Invisible Man, is jaded, and based on hints from Mr. Bennett, he may have been in hiding for fifteen years, and even thought dead.  He tries to convince Peter that he won’t be able to control his powers until he lets go of all his connection to his loved ones.  He does this by showing Peter that his girlfriend is having dinner and an intimate moment with her previous boyfriend Isaac.  He follows that by throwing Peter off a building.  When Peter crashes on a taxi he instinctually thinks of Claire and uses her power to save himself.  It’s only then that he understands that Invisible Man is wrong, rather than forget those around him he must remember them and even care about them.   It’s interesting that Peter’s powers have worked out like this as he was a caregiver prior to gaining his abilities. 

Claire and Zach work out a plan for a stealthy trip to Kermit where her biological mother lives in a trailer park.  We don’t see much of their meeting other than Claire demoing her powers to her mother and her mother showing Claire that she can make fire.  The big zinger of this meeting, and in fact of this episode, comes when Claire’s mother contacts Claire’s real father, Nathan.  There were some great guesses on the web, and in the comments for my previous review but no one guessed this.  Even I was expecting it to be Linderman.  This does validate the strong feeling that Peter has had for Claire. 

This week featured the coolest transition from Nikki to Jessica in the series so far.  Nikki’s doctor finally brings Jessica out and is killed for it, and then inexplicably Linderman buys Nikki out of prison.  Back home everything seems ok until Nikki goes into the bathroom and it’s revealed that Jessica has taken over and Nikki is trapped inside revealed by her trying to break free from the mirror image.  This was a simple but very effective scene. 

Everybody’s favorite character Hiro found himself treading water this episode and now that I think about it he was mostly treading water last week too.  The writers need to slow him down; they don’t want him getting his powers back until just the right time.  So in this episode we find Hiro arguing with his father about returning home.  A little maneuvering on his part pushes his sister to the forefront leading his father to understand that his sister is truly the one most qualified to take a place at her father’s side running the company.  There was very little of interest here and Hiro and Sulu, uhh I mean his father, were entirely underused. 

Overall this episode didn’t feel as much like a build up as other episodes have.  It was more focused on character development, mostly for Peter and Claire.  While this isn’t a bad thing it does stagger the momentum just a bit.  No questions were answered this week but a new intriguing story arc has been set into motion regarding Claire’s heritage. As I said at the beginning of the review, this was still a fantastic episode, just not quite as strong as previous entries. I would like to have seen more meaningful development for Hiro and better use of George Takei, but you can’t win them all.