Review:

Following on immediately where "Collision" left off, "Hiros" does its best to maintain the pace and intensity of the previous episode, and very nearly succeeds.

In places, this episode rocked. We have characters realizing their destiny and adjusting to their power. We have story threads intersecting and relationships developing. We have a ton of cool superhero moments and hilarious in-jokes.

But there's also a portion of this episode which slows the whole thing down. There's Mohinder turning into a jaded, sarcastic cynic. There's Matt reading his wife's mind to fix his marriage. There's Isaac turning from obsessive and delusional to repentant and broken in the space of one episode.

As with "One Giant Leap", what drags this episode down is the sheer amount of material it tries to cover. There are so many story arcs running concurrently that someone inevitably ends up losing screen time and character focus because of it. This week, Claire's arc practically grinds to a halt. Five episodes in, Niki's dual personality is still to be resolved, and her power is still to be established. And Matt, as always, is left with the remote chance of another token scene arbitrarily thrown in.

So all in all, a mixed bag.

The episode returns to the scene at the end of "Collision": Peter's on the New York subway trying to figure out why time has frozen and why there's a bearded dude pouring coffee out of a thermos who isn't moving. Like, if Peter now tried to take the thermos out of the guy's hands, would the coffee stay stuck in mid-air, or would it move with the thermos? Would it still be hot fluid, or would it coagulate?

And I know I'm not supposed to be wondering about that stuff, but it interests me.

See, simple thoughts. I need those before another Mohinder voice-over. Aw, here we go ...

"When a change comes, some species feel the urge to migrate. [Following it so far, though how it ties in with the episode stumps me right away.] They [meaning every species which migrates?] call it "zugunruhe", a pull of the soul to a far off place [you mean the birds think about this spiritual stuff too?], following a scent in the wind [huh?], a star in the sky [it started out about migration, then it turned all metaphorical, now it's astrological. Am I the only one finding these voice-overs difficult to follow?]."

"The ancient message comes, calling the kindred to take flight and gather together. [Uh, are we back to the "birds of a feather" part?] Only then can they hope to survive the cruel season to come. [Homeward Bound! I got that! Or is it Bambi? Disney is the coolest.]"

We see the scene from a slightly different angle. The camera follows Future-Hiro as he approaches Peter. The scene plays out again, although it's not identical; a couple of lines have been edited out, and somehow the whole FUTURE-Hiro thing has lost a big part of its impact.

Future-Hiro tells Peter that he's "risking a rift just by coming here." Way to put the nervous guy at ease! Throw in the whole time-paradox destruction-of-the-space-time-continuum concept! Great idea. You're not Emmett Brown. Knock that cryptic stuff off.

Nah, Future-Hiro's in a groove. He doesn't care if he's not making any sense.

"The girl. You have to save her!"

What girl?

"The cheerleader. It's the only way to prevent it."

What?

"Everything!"

Why can't anyone from the future ever make sense? Seriously, Future-Hiro risked a temporal rift for this?!

Future-Hiro tells Peter to go back to Isaac. And this time, it's Eye-zak, as opposed to Eeezuk. Hiro's obviously going to relocate (or at least teleport on a fairly regular basis) when he gets around to donning the samurai sword.

Peter's all, "What the %*@# is happening here?", even though he likes the thought of being "the one" who will save the world. It's just the cheerleader part which strikes him as a little absurd.

Future-Hiro walks off and everything goes back to normal. The lights come back on. People on the subway start moving around and chattering. The subway continues along the tunnel. Peter's standing in the middle of the carriage shouting, "Hiro! Where are you? I don't understand!" Dude, that's so totally ... humiliating.

We cut to Claire, who's being led on a stretcher through ER. There's a lot of blood, but it doesn't seem like she's suffered any real injury. Or if she has, she superhealed pretty quick.

The medics have put a respirator on Claire, although she's not exactly gasping her last breath while she insists that she's fine and just wants to go home. Mommy Bennet appears. Surprisingly, sans Mr. Muggles. She offers words of sympathy while Claire turns her blood-crusted neck towards Brody on the other side of the room. It's unclear whether she's upset because she nearly killed him or because she didn't succeed.

Mommy Bennet gets on her cell and tries to get in touch with Daddy Bennet. He's otherwise occupied, leading Nathan into a car park at gunpoint and all. On his other arm, Nathan is flanked by Anonymous Power Inhibitor. Oddly, neither Daddy Bennet nor Power Inhibitor are distracted by the fact that Adrian Pasdar's wearing only his pajama bottoms. You'll note that they also decide NOT to drug him, presumably because they realize that dragging such a buff and well-toned body unconscious would rob us of this miraculous next scene.

Mommy Bennet's call gets through. Daddy Bennet, unprofessional bozo that he is, takes a personal call during work time. Nathan's all, "Man, you stoopid!" and kicks the hand with the gun so hard that it flies up to Daddy Bennet's head and cracks his glasses. Power Inhibitor gets a quick jab, and ...

Suddenly ...

Topless Nathan running barefoot across a parking lot!

Now THAT'S entertainment.

It's also "entirely unnecessary," as Daddy Bennet points out. So, an unnecessary sequence involving light action and a topless buff torso.

Ooh, it's gratuitous semi-nudity!

Usually, I'd harp on about the way this show is beginning to display the trademark signs of selling out by relying on uber-hot cast members running around in their pajamas. But you know what? This next part is so amazing that I'd forgive anything. Even S&M outfits and a contrived plot involving spells and magic and superpow-

Oh, wait, that is a relevant comparison to draw here, isn't it?

Daddy Bennet tells Power Inhibitor to "put him down." Nathan's as baffled by this as we are, but he doesn't much like the sound of it. So he launches into the air and flies away.

Just take a moment to savor that moment. It's "Waffles, Woo-hoo!!" Moment #1.

It's the kind of moment which Smallville could be using as its staple dramatic vehicle for the plot on a weekly basis if it would only ditch that "no flights, no tights" garbage. Gough? Millar? Are you listening to me? Because THIS is how it should be done. Not a load of excuses about budget constraints and creative restrictions from DC Comics and a sequence so slow and clumsy and blatantly computer-generated that it loses any sense of intensity, but this: a smooth, realistic, beautifully-crafted launch into the sky, at a point in the story where it makes sense, but where it also happens so suddenly that it comes as a shock.

Like the rest of us, Daddy Bennet and Power Inhibitor just gawp. This was one of the most breathtaking sequences the show has come up with. And on this show, that's saying something.

Cue the opening logo and a mini-recap in which we get flashes of the various story threads: Matt strapped to an operating table in a lab, Hiro and Ando KO'd, Nathan zipping across the sky, Isaac painting, Claire lying on a hospital bed, and Niki sleeping.

Read that again and decide which you think is the weakest link. And sure enough, we get a whole scene devoted to Niki waking up in Nathan's hotel suite and acting all, "Whuh? How? When? The WHAT?"

Nathan's Anonymous Advisor barges in and asks, quite candidly, "What'd you do with Mr. Petrelli?" Evidently, he's not yet seen the recording. Dude, get with the program. At least half a dozen people have already seen it. Heck, even Hot Power Suit Lady has checked it out, and she's mightily impressed by Niki's moves. "Admirable work, Ms. Sanders." Oh yeah, HPSL is totally in awe of Mirror-Niki.

On the subway, Peter tries to explain to Mohinder how Hiro froze time. Mohinder paraphrases the denouement: "He teleported away?" Mohinder's voice is filled with disbelief. This in spite of the fact that a few episodes earlier, teleportation was one of the abilities which Mohinder cited during his lecture in Madras as the result of variations in our genetic code. Suddenly, he doesn't believe his own theories. He isn't believing any of it. Especially the part about the cheerleader. "It sounds mad!" he tells Peter. Peter says to give the story a chance by returning to Isaac's apartment with him. If it doesn't provide the plot development which Peter's aimless story thread so desperately needs, Peter says he'll drive Mohinder to the airport himself and watch him fly back to India.

"Will you fly me there yourself?" Man, that's harsh. Funny, but harsh. You were supposed to be the one who brought these characters together. Now you're just another sarcastic non-believer. When did THAT happen? After one embarrassing encounter with a congressional candidate and the delivery of your father's ashes in an urn? That's enough to spark this off? Or was it just one too many days scoffing macaroni and cheese with Nora Zehetner? Because that'd make most of us a little cynical too.

In another story thread: Matt's wife is Very Worried. Matt has been gone for a day and no one at work knows where his assignment with the FBI took him. She'd never guess that a covert organization drugged and kidnapped her husband so that they could run tests to determine the extent of his telepathic ability.

She'd also never guess that her husband would keep something like this from her, or use his ability to climb into her head and manipulate his way into repairing their broken marriage.

OK, that about covers this sorry story thread, doesn't it? Can we now get back to the other stuff?

It's not that Greg Grunberg's not doing a terrific job portraying the character. Actually, it's almost the opposite: it's saddening to see a likeable character with a potentially great superpower wasted like this.

To be fair, Elizabeth Lackey does an equally good job playing the scared-out-of-her-wits wife who doesn't know whether her husband's lying in a ditch or eloping with some alternate-personality online stripper. When she tells Matt that she was awake every hour that he was gone, wondering whether something had happened to him, the actress brings a wonderful honesty and vulnerability to the character.

On any other show, it would make for great drama. The problem is that next to Nathan flying and Future-Hiro freezing time to tell Peter that his destiny awaits him, there's really no way that a B-plot about a guy using his power to preempt his wife's latent desires can compete. It's intriguing to see how these characters adjust to their powers differently, but domestic drama in the midst of temporal rifts and superheroes breaking the sound barrier just doesn't maintain the same momentum, and it's why this episode feels horribly disjointed.

From a basic moral standpoint, the premise behind this story thread is also fundamentally wrong. It implies that it's alright to ingratiate yourself with the person you love by getting inside her head, listening to her thoughts, then giving her exactly what she wants. Which would creep her out, and rightly, but also makes her think you're this incredibly sensitive and intuitive guy when you're really not. There's something deceitful, and just plain objectionable, about that.

Meanwhile, somewhere on the outskirts of Las Vegas, it's time for big laughs. A lot of you in the forums compared this Hiro with Future-Hiro, and half-lamented the fact that at some point we're going to lose this resolutely upbeat kid to the solemn, composed, samurai-wielding Future-guy. I mean, it is kind of sad that we're going to go from waffles and "vroom-vroom" Nissan Versas to epic disasters and friends with humongous disfiguring scars. The idiotically naive shtick begins to show signs of wearing thin this week, but at the same time you hope we won't see Hiro lose his cluelessness and infectious optimism for at least another season.

Anonymous henchmen dump Hiro and Ando on the road. They're kind enough to have allowed them to carry their luggage, and to keep the matching gray suits.

Ando's still riffing on classic movie dialogue, shaking his fists and bellowing, "You b*****ds! You don't know who you're messing with!" Indeed, when it's coming from one part of the duo who can freeze time and teleport across the globe, you wonder how this scene can be happening at all.

Fortuitously, Hiro has no need to resort to teleportation in order to get help. The henchmen have deposited Hiro and Ando outside a diner. They enter the diner and sit at a table, and Star Wars allusions abound as Hiro reminds Ando how his friend corrupted him into using his powers for personal gain. "That's the Dark Side," he points out.

And at this point, you realize that this duo is effectively a modern-day homage to R2-D2 and C-3PO. Hiro's the chirpy, adventurous one; Ando's the weak-minded gambler, but he's also the pragmatic, skeptical conformist, the one who always tries to blame his counterpart for his misfortune.

Ando abandons Hiro to go searching for xxxNikki4u. Hiro undoes his tie and the top button of his shirt, telling anyone within earshot that he'll "probably save the world faster now." Uh, Hiro? Buddy? You could teleport to Meester Eeezuk and warn him about the explosion RIGHT NOW. Has the narrative in the comic book ended? Because if it has, if Hiro's choices aren't being dictated by the story in the comic, and if Hiro's now making the journey alone, you wonder why he doesn't just save himself the trouble by teleporting straight to his destination. If he's worried about jumping forward through time, you have to figure that it's either a case of shortening the distance, which is now significantly less than it was in Tokyo, or of practice, which Hiro's got ample opportunity for.

Either way, it's a gaping problem in the plot, and it needs to be addressed.

Hiro idly stares out the window of the diner and sees Nathan streak across the sky and come skidding to a stop.

"Waffles, Woo-hoo!!" Moment #2.

And the show even tries to make the flight believable. Nathan doesn't just land. He skids. He doesn't just cruise to a stop and start walking. He cries out in pain as the friction burns his bare feet. Nice attention to detail. Well written, well directed, WELL THOUGHT OUT.

Conveniently, no one else at the diner notices this spectacle. Hiro, however, looks like he's just won the lottery.

Nathan enters the diner, much to the delight of everyone receptive to the sight of a hunk like Pasdar. Hiro looks more delighted than anyone, although whether that's because Nathan can fly or because he draws even more attention to himself than Hiro does is anyone's guess.

No one wants to offer Nathan their cellphone, although Anonymous Waitress lady makes her "Fly By Night" T-shirt look so hot that Nathan can't resist asking for one. Forced humor, but in a scene which is filled with so much good humor, none of it feels forced.

Unlike, say, Matt ordering takeout and telling Janice to call in sick so that they can have a day unwittingly based around mind-reading and deception. And now that he knows (for that, read "crawls into his wife's mind and extracts") that she thinks he's lazy and doesn't listen and mopes ... Well, darn it, he's going to change all that!

Janice gives this nervous laugh at the way Matt seems to be reading her mind. You wonder how she'd react if she knew he really WAS reading her mind. It's a no-brainer, and Janice would be absolutely right to be furious.

But Matt's intentions are good. And apparently, good intentions justify what amounts to an invasion of privacy.

Uh, yeah. Whatever.

Much to the dismay of adoring fans everywhere, Nathan puts on a T-shirt. Hiro, undeterred, continues to gawk. The guy is so bowled over by the "flying man" that there are traces of steam appearing on his glasses.

Hiro skitters over to the counter where Nathan is sitting. Nathan tries to be polite (no, really!), but Hiro's all, "Tee hee, yessun. Bery nice t'meetu – flying man!" Nathan looks as if Hiro just suggested a visit to Texas where they'll save a cheerleader to save the world, but Hiro's on a role. "You fry! I see you! Whooosh!" Nathan gives his best dirty-politician's smile and candidly tells Hiro that he doesn't know what he's talking about. Hiro does his best to reassure Nathan: "It's aw-kay! I kip shee-cret! I bend time and space! Teleport-a into future! We are both special!"

Nathan's all, "Yeah, no kidding. Special is right."

But you know, this IS special. I mean, this is the guy who, not two days earlier (in this story's timeline, anyway), couldn't string an English sentence together beyond, "Hello," "Meester Eeezuk," and "Wazzup!" Hiro's English has improved dramatically.

Not that it helps him to persuade the listener. Hiro, adorably, thinks that Nathan's buying into this, and continues: "I go to New York. I see future ... Beeg bomb goes-zer. But for many people, POOKA!"

Then, even more adorably after this emphatic gesturing, Hiro needs to readjust his glasses at the tip of his nose. Masi Oka nails the role week after week with perfection, but he excels in this scene beyond even the usual impeccable standard, to such an extent that I really feel like I HAVE to convey every piece of dialogue and every mannerism by the actor.

Nathan humors Hiro by telling him he can see why the beeg bomb "would be a problem." Hiro again is at pains to placate his new friend: "Don't worry," he tells him. The same resolute expression that he had at the end of "Don't Look Back" appears. "I stop it! I'm a hero!"

Nathan, finally revealing how entertained he's been by this narrative, allows a grin to surface. "Lucky us!" He finishes his coffee and gets up to go to the car which has arrived outside the diner to collect him.

But Nathan finds the whole scene as hilarious as we do, and he can't help indulging Hiro by asking him to expand on the part of the story which involves Nathan winning the election with a "land-o-slide-o." Nathan gets this look that says, "Yeah, buddy, RIGHT ANSWER! Maybe I won't call the cops and have them throw your ass into a mental institute! You need a lift? What the heck."

This scene represents the show as a whole. It reflects everything that's brilliant about the characters, the premise and the writing. Hiro's exuberance is played for laughs throughout, but Nathan's deadpan reaction only spurs it on further, and it makes you wish that Pasdar and Oka would get a scene like this every week.

On the most obvious level, it was done with such flair and such flawless comic timing by both actors that it was easily the funniest scene of the show so far. But beyond that, it also brought every amazing aspect of the show to the surface: Nathan's casual attitude towards his ability to fly; Hiro's indomitable hope that he can stop his vision of the future from taking shape; both of the characters' perspectives on what it means to be a hero, and how they should use their powers to undertake the hero's role.

On every level, this scene was a masterstroke.

At the hospital, meanwhile, Claire breaks down because of the guilt she's feeling for becoming an attempted murderer. And please, none of this stuff about reading the online comic and realizing that Claire only meant to scare Brody. She meant to kill him. Period. And the show is sharp enough to realize that turning one of its central characters into the vengeful type who'll dish out punishment any way she wants to isn't without consequences.

Daddy Bennet shows up and is all, "Me? I've not been flying around the country, locking people up, holding them to gunpoint. Come 'ere, ClaireBear. Give your Daddy Bennet a hug."

As in previous weeks, Hayden strikes a remarkable balance between heartfelt and subtle, revealing that she intentionally rammed the car into a wall because of what Brody did to her. You can see that tears are forming in her eyes, but that Claire really doesn't know how to convey the trauma inflicted on her.

Equally, this scene is a wonderful moment for Jack Coleman to showcase the complexity of the character he's playing. Coleman brings out a seamless transition from deep concern to intense anger to gentle comfort. He's playing Daddy Bennet as this sinister member of an underground operation studying every superhero it can locate, but at the same time Coleman plays the character in such a way that we can buy into his warmth and love for Claire.

Then, stop the press, we get a scene with Isaac. Get it while it's hot, it's rarer than a scene with Matt at the moment.

Peter returns to Isaac's apartment, which, as usual, is wide open to anyone who wants to enter.

Peter asks Isaac if he's "doin' OK." Like, between the heroin and being dumped by Simone, or maybe just KNOWING Simone is enough to drive you insane. I'm not sure. There's a lot of ambiguity there.

Isaac plays it cool. "Go away, man." Like, YOU'RE part of the reason my life's so screwed up. Just do me a favor and stay away. Peter gets the most ironic line of the episode, telling Isaac that he needs his help. Isaac sees the humor, but doesn't laugh. He just stares out the window into the night as the rain pours down.

Does anyone remember last week? When Isaac was insisting to Simone that his gift was going to help him save the world, and when he went all glazed-eyed and was painting the future? This is a rather big shift in tone. I'm not saying it's not believable, because it is. Isaac realizing that his life is falling apart because of his drug addiction works in the story, and it's likely part of what will make it possible for him to be written as a "reformed" hero.

But Isaac's remorse at the way he drove Simone away and abandoned his comic strip needed to be bridged by an introduction. This felt like it came out of nowhere. It's basically the same problem as the way Mohinder was written last week and this week: a shift in disposition which, though plausible, feels horribly abrupt and lacking in creative justification.

But, we get one very cool hint at how things will play out: one of the pictures depicts Hiro and Ando underneath a banner which says "Homecoming". Which is likely a subtle hint that at some point they'll reach Texas and visit Claire's high school.

Nathan gets driven back to the Montecito. He doesn't seem too worried that the guy with the horn-rimmed glasses and the gun might still be waiting for him. Instead, he's content to advertise the fact that he returned to the hotel by encouraging Hiro to shriek at the top of his lungs, "VOTE PETRELLI!"

Hiro gets in a nice Superman reference with the "up, up and away" line, then lugs his suitcase back to the car park and hops behind the wheel of his [PRODUCT PLACEMENT] Nissan Versa.

Vroom-vroom! Expansive storage space for even the largest suitcase!

Vroom-vroom! Central locking!

Vroom-vroom! Robust, long-lasting, effective windshield wipers!

Vroom-vroom! Instructions ALL IN ENGLISH! (Which is a bummer for the Japanese kid who seems to have suddenly become so dumb that he can't figure out the keys go in the ignition and the pedals on the floor make the car stop and go. But it also means you'll never need to use an instruction manual divided into five identical sections in a language besides your own.)

Hiro's English seems to be inversely proportionate to his common sense. One of them gets better and better this week. The other just evaporates.

Nathan and Niki meet at the hotel and try to figure out what happened the previous night. Nathan delivers the compliment that would delight Hot Power Suit Lady by affirming that, yes, it was "one of the best night of [his] entire life." You'd better believe it.

Niki expounds on how she wants to be someone "good." Nathan responds by telling her that the person he met last night was undoubtedly someone "good," but the word sounds so wrong coming from him that the inevitable conclusion we're supposed to draw is that Nathan will never be "good."

He'll always be funny, though.

Perhaps surprisingly, Ali Larter has an obvious chemistry with Adrian Pasdar. The implication by the end of this scene is that Nathan will never trust Niki enough to go near her again, but the two actors brought a strong dynamic to their scenes; you got the impression that they connected, and it translates onto the screen, even giving Niki's story thread a gravitas which hadn't been there before.

In the land of mind-reading, Matt prepares an elaborately-set table at which to eat takeout. He's wearing a shirt and tie and pouring wine to go with the salad. For a moment, it's almost possible to forget that everything he's doing is based on a thought or an idea he's gotten from searching through his wife's thoughts without her consent.

Almost.

Janice suspects that the sudden effort is an attempt to mask an affair. Matt overcomes this suspicion by again channeling her thoughts and telling her that this will be the first of many surprise dates. Janice, totally taken in, straddles him.

Way to go, Matt! How did you ever make the marriage work before you figured out you had the ability to read minds? Oh, right. YOU DIDN'T. The marriage was falling apart. And now, by violating your wife's thoughts, you can be everything she wants and give her everything she needs. There's nothing questionable about that.

At least not from where you're sitting.

Then a much more complicated and compelling predicament: how to resolve the "Brody being a rapist and Claire being an attempted murderer" story thread.

Daddy Bennet shows up next to Brody's bedside and tells him that Claire is more in touch with her humanity than Brody will ever be.

Good!

Daddy Bennet tells Brody that he should kill him.

Good!

Daddy Bennet, the guy we'd been alternately terrified of and creeped out by, is suddenly the moral arbiter passing judgment on the villain.

Good!

Daddy Bennet brings in the Power Inhibitor, who, it turns out, also has the power to erase and rewrite memories. And he's going to make Brody ... a nice guy?!

Well, OK. I was hoping for something a little more dramatic, like Brody being nailed to a train track or plunged into a vat of boiling acid or hacked to pieces by vultures on a barren rock in the middle of the ocean ... but I guess wiping the guy's memories and allowing him a second chance is the merciful thing to do. If nothing else, it allows Daddy Bennet a chance to demonstrate his forgiving side, and it avoids turning this into a situation where Claire's attempt to kill Brody directly leads to Daddy Bennet killing him on her behalf.

But it's also a neat twist to the plot when the guy who was ostensibly the bad guy (or at least one of them) turns out to be the person we're rooting for when he's threatening to kill a high-school jock.

Back at Isaac's apartment, Isaac gets the epiphany he should have had a few scenes earlier, the one which explains his change in perspective: he expounds on how he tore his life apart, lost his girlfriend, and poured money and inspiration into a drug habit to fuel the creation of artwork with no obvious significance.

Which makes sense in the story, although it sort of undermines the idea that art should be a free and creative process rather than bound by meaning and logic.

Peter begins to put together the story which we'll likely see taking shape over the course of the season: Claire in the kind of danger she doesn't find herself in every week (i.e. the really mortal kind), Hiro and Ando trying to save her, and Peter doing all kinds of ... stuff.

Like painting! "You can paint?" asks Isaac. Well, on the strength of the stick figures three weeks ago, my guess would have been no. But Peter gets a vision of one of Isaac's unfinished pieces, the painting turns luminescent, and suddenly Peter feels like he can channel Isaac's artistic ability as well as his clairvoyance.

We're at a point where key words and lines are beginning to recur: almost everyone has now been described as "special", but there's also the repeating reference to everyone and everything being "connected." Here, Peter insists to Isaac that everything, from his paintings and Peter's flight to the life of the cheerleader and the fate of New York in five weeks, is connected.

So Peter gets the glazed eyes, changes from right-handed to left-handed, takes the paintbrush in his hand, and it's ...

"Waffles, Woo-hoo!!" Moment #3.

Peter's beginning to harness his power to tune into the heroes around him.

While this is going on, Niki returns home and finds a bunch of cops swarming the place. One of them shows Niki a photograph and asks her if it's her husband ... and it's Leonard Roberts! It's ... Forrest! It's ... Nam-Ek! No, wait, it's ... a guy who can "pull a Houdini" and slip out of handcuffs and evade police.

Yay for the character potential. Niki's story thread might now find some direction and gather some momentum.

There's a mildly comic intermission when Ando appears at the back door. Micah is forced to watch half a dozen cops aim their guns at an innocent guy, the guy they all expect to be Micah's father.

Micah whispers "Dad" very quietly, watching wide-eyed as the door opens, likely scared out of his wits that he's about to see his father get shot, sparking off a lifetime of hatred towards the authorities and scarring him for life with the memory.

This is the same kid who couldn't hear a discussion about whores last week, isn't it? And this week, he's kept around to watch the big men with guns take aim at the man they anticipated would be his father.

It's not like they SHOULDN'T have raised their gun at the intruder. My point is Micah didn't need to see it. He should have been in a separate room, or he should have been looking the other way. With a good seven or eight cops there, you'd figure one of them could have undertaken that responsibility. But no, Niki just holds him tight and lets him watch the cops take aim.

Ando puts his hands up, and is all, "Whoa, Niki! Kinky roleplay! You cop, me criminal, we play, yes?"

Now here's something that's good for a laugh: Niki establishes that Ando is "hugger-zee." That ring a bell? If you're ever watching the pilot episode, watch out for the name of the guy who's online when we first see Niki posing on her bed. The guy who begs Niki for a little more is Huggerz69.

Anyone remember that little exchange? xxxNikki4u told Huggerz69 that it'd cost him another thirty-nine bucks. And Huggerz69 called her a "b***h."

But look, that was all in jest, right? WRONG! If Ando is this guy, the guy who acted like a %*@# towards Niki online, you wonder why she isn't begging the cops to cuff the guy and sling him behind bars for verbal abuse and trespassing.

But hey, because Ando says that he and Niki "chat so much online," they obviously have the kind of meaningful relationship we haven't been privy to. One which doesn't involve him calling her a "b***h" when she doesn't want to pose for him free of charge. And because Ando makes with the puppy-dog eyes and doesn't get that Niki's only acting when she's online, it's played as an "awww" kind of moment, the kind of moment which is supposed to be in sharp contrast to D.L. standing in the other room, listening to his wife and son.

Then another thing you'll appreciate if you're the kind of nerd who values the show for its details: Nathan signs the invoice for his stay at the Montecito, and the total bill is ...

You ready for this?

JUST SHORT OF EIGHT GRAND.

$7,973.58.

For one night.

"One of the best nights of my entire life."

Yeah, no %*@#!

We return to the Matt story thread, which at least shows some signs of improvement after Matt finishes giving Janice EXACTLY what she wants and visits a convenience store for coffee ice cream.

Matt tunes into the thoughts of everyone in the store, among them a kid with a gun who's planning to hold the place up "for a couple of twenties" in the cash register. Thankfully, Matt doesn't try to order takeout and give the kid exactly what he wants. Instead, Matt puts the guy on edge even further by (1) telling the kid that he's a cop, and (2) reading his mind and spouting out the names of the people closest to him. Which turns out to be the way to reason with the kid, but you have to figure it could equally have pushed the kid even further the other way.

Still, this is hopeful. This is what Matt could be doing every week with his ability. This is how he could prove that he's a hero. Not by using his wife's innermost thoughts to make her wrongly think that he's in touch with his feelings and attentive to her needs, but by stopping crimes and using his ability to get through to people.

The would-be criminal pulls the gun out of his pocket, slams it onto a shelf and runs off, likely spurred on by the prospect of finding more twenties in a bank than he would in a convenience store.

Then, astonishingly, Matt demonstrates the kind of stupidity which could only have been produced by a day of reading Janice's thoughts. He finds himself in a not-too-difficult predicament, forced to decide if he should (1) tell everyone in the store that he's a cop BEFORE he picks up a gun, (2) remain where he's standing and tell the store owner to call a couple of cops who are actually on duty so that they can collect the weapon, (3) push the gun to the back of the shelf, cover it behind shampoo and hairspray, and hope the old lady standing next to him doesn't find it, or (4) grab the gun, look at it for a bit, then wave it around so that anyone who's curious enough to look his way can get a mighty big shock.

Yeah, let's go for (4)! That'll be fun!

Matt gets inundated by the collective fear and suspicion of everyone in the store, which is enough to bowl him over.

Uh, could someone put that coffee ice cream back into the freezer? I mean, it's going to melt otherwise. Geez, I'm just saying.

Ando returns to the car at the Montecito, where Hiro is waiting. The lights on the car are on, even though the ignition isn't. Way to kill the batteries, buddy!

Peter finishes Isaac's painting. Good God, it's bad. There's paint dripping everywhere. The colors clash horribly. None of it matches with the rest of the painting. It's just an upside-down girl bathed in red paint. What has this guy done to Isaac's work? It's ... just ... the work of a crazy guy!

But Isaac's all, "Whoa, how'd you do that, man?", trying to boost Peter's confidence.

Hiro calls for Meester Eeezuk. Peter picks up the phone. Future-Hiro can rest easy, knowing that Peter's the one guy gullible enough to buy into the story about the beeg bomb and the POOKA. Heck, he might even believe the story about the flying man.

Vote Petrelli!

It's "Waffles, Woo-hoo!!" Moment #4.

Overall, this episode definitely had its moments. The scene on the subway with Future-Hiro. Nathan flying. The scene at the diner. Daddy Bennet playing ruthless and sinister alongside compassionate and supportive. Peter and Isaac's artistic collaboration.

But it's mixed in with several problems, and several things slowing the whole thing down. Matt's arc just isn't working, at least not yet. Mohinder has had a change of heart so abrupt that it feels out of character. Isaac goes from wanting to paint so that he can save the world, to hating himself for his drug habit and the insanity of wanting to save the world, to believing that the painting of a cheerleader is the key to everything. It feels a little inconsistent.

Simone? No sign of her this week. Although you know she's going to reappear before long to whine about everything that's not to her liking.

But all in all, the stronger elements definitely outweigh the bad. The character arcs are still moving inexorably forward, several of the performances this week were exceptional, and the plot continues to feel as brilliantly well crafted as it has done since the start.

3.5 out of 5