Review:

Of all the criticisms you could level at this episode, I think the saddest -- and perhaps the most accurate -- is that it was good, but not as good as expected.

There's nothing especially wrong with "The Hard Part," except that it doesn't match "Five Years Gone." And given that this is supposed to be viewed as the first of a three-part finale, that's disappointing. It doesn't feel like the most well-paced episode to begin concluding a season defined by the pace of its story. It lacks pace, it lacks dramatic intensity, and it lacks the "Ooh, that's awesome!" factor which made last week's episode exceptional.

That said, there are a lot of neat character moments, and the episode tries to challenge the notion that its villain is as two-dimensionally evil and impossible to sympathize with as he's been for the bulk of the season. It doesn't entirely succeed, and given that the Sylar portion of the episode is the focal part, that's a fairly critical stumbling block. But we'll get to that.

If this is a character- and theme-oriented episode, though, the downside comes from the arcs and themes being crammed together and failing to cohere into a structured story. The ideas feel like they've been condensed into one episode when they could have lasted three or four, and it leads to some of the developments in the plot coming across as plain nonsensical.

Hence, we have the "Huh? He did WHAT?!" syndrome, and what we can this week refer to as the McEnroe "You cannot be SERIOUS!" plot development, in which a central character does something so absurd and impossible to reconcile with the backstory that you want to scream at your television.

We open on the Rooftop of Pigeonly Delight, where Hiro and Ando heave a sigh of relief after safely returning to their own time. "It's exciting!" Hiro says. "This is our chance to change the future!" It would have been more exciting if he'd taken the time to check five years of football results and fluctuations in the stock market. But there was never a good opportunity, so Hiro's left with the prospect of stabbing a guy to save a city. Hiro points out that the copy of 9th Wonders he's carrying contains no dialogue, but suspects that Isaac will know what the characters are saying.

At Petrelli Castle, Peter draws a sketch of burning skyscrapers and a "Vote Petrelli" poster. The picture of Nathan on the poster even conveys Pasdar's cheeky grin.

Rena Sofer returns. I didn't know she'd be in this one, so it was a pleasant surprise. Nice continuity, and nice that she took the time from making eyes at Jack on 24 to show up for a brief cameo. And even though it's been, what, eleven episodes? It's still cool to see the character in the story. It only seems like a shame that it was so brief; it's implied that she never meets Claire, but I hoped it would lead to a scene in which Nathan reflects on the decisions he's about to make. It could have made an effective parallel to Sylar visiting his mom and telling her he's going to kill millions of people. The irony would have been the way Sylar seems to feel worse about mass murder than Nathan does. Not saying that's the truth, but a scene where Nathan confides in his wife -- or at least expresses the burden he's under -- could have helped to clarify that.

Claire stands on the spiral staircase and looks at her stepmom and stepbrothers. Props to John Badham for directing this scene so subtly; Claire gets this sad smile, as if she's imagining the life she could have been a part of, but it's so momentary that it avoids coming across as self-pitying.

Why would Claire feel sorry for herself, though, when she's got a vacation in Paris ahead of her? Grandma Petrelli's psyched about the trip, and wants to talk about gloves. And Claire's like, "Forget that, Angela, let's talk about SOCKS!" She doesn't say that, but we wish she would, just to see what Grandma Petrelli's reaction would be.

Peter appears at the door to Claire's bedroom and tells Claire that she can't leave.

"You cannot be SERIOUS!"

"But Claire, it's DESTINY!"

"That I get blown up?"

"No, that you and I met and turned out to be related!"

Oh, do let's remind everyone about that at every available opportunity.

"Dearest uncle, my dad's about to be elected congressman and worries that an illegitimate daughter would cause a scandal."

"But the election's tomorrow! And it's going to be rigged by a technopath kid! What difference is it going to make now?"

"Err ..."

"Look, I explode, and you're a part of that!"

"Darling Peter, I'd really rather not be."

"What could be more fun than exploding?"

"Uh, Paris!"

"What's in Paris?"

"THIS!"

[Peter looks doubtful.]

"And THIS!"

[Peter looks uncertain, mainly because he knows he'd work the whole beret-and-bicycle-in-Marseilles better than the yuppie-Clio-in-Paris.]

"And don't think this vacation is just for me, Peter! I'm doing this for your mom! She needs THIS!"

[Then Peter looks like he understands.]

Claire finally acknowledges in dialogue that Daddy Bennet "sacrificed himself so that [she] could have a life." So she does get it? At least someone finally put it into the script so that Claire wouldn't seem like an ungrateful brat anymore. Kudos to Aron Eli Coleite.

Somewhere in St. Louis, Missouri: "Bennet, Parkman & Sprague." Now that's genius. Whoever came up with that caption should write them all. And come up with the names for alt-rock bands and law firms.

We learn that the SuperTrio are still headed to New York to shut down "the Walker System." As becomes clear, this involves stealing a car from a used car shop and driving up to the building where said "system" is located.

"They did WHAT?!"

If we can accept that "BP&S" (heh) are resorting to crime to protect the superhero population, I guess it works. But then, with hindsight, you know they're going after a little girl who's got no intention of hurting anyone and whose ability isn't even active. And whether Bennet knows that Molly's the tracking system or not, you know he'll never hurt her. So looking back, they're pretty much just stealing a car for the sake of the road trip.

Radioactive anti-freeze? Very cool.

Matt approaches a pay phone to call Janice. Plus points for remembering there's a pregnant wife who's still wondering where her husband is, and plus points for the reference to Sandra and Lyle. The way it's written here, it at least implies they're alive, and that Bennet hasn't totally forgotten about them.

Matt narrowly avoids this week's Dumb As Mohinder Award for making the call; it seems less that he doesn't realize his home phone is tapped and more that he just doesn't care. Given that Matt doesn't expect to come back from this road trip alive, it's understandable that he'd risk being traced to say goodbye to Janice.

Apartment of Clairvoyance. Sylar paints Ted with glowing hands, and realizes he's going to scalp the guy and use his ability to nuke New York. And this, we're given to understand, upsets Sylar so much that he immediately calls Mohinder for guidance.

"You cannot be SERIOUS!"

The premise itself almost works. The dialogue -- Sylar's protestation that the victims are "innocent" and that there'd be "no gain" in killing them -- supports the reaction from Sylar enough to make it plausible.

But Sylar actively seeks out super-powered individuals and takes pleasure in slicing off their scalps. And you'll recall that he's taken a bunch of non-super-powered lives along the way. I might be way off base with the psychology here, but my conclusion would have been that if someone can rip people's scalps off their heads and feel no trace of guilt, he probably wouldn't feel any guilt about causing the deaths of a few million.

The counter-argument to that would be the "Forgive me" scrawling all over Sylar's apartment in "One Giant Leap." Which not only ties in with the religious upbringing we glimpse from the Virgin Mary statues at Mama Gray's residence, but also implies that Sylar did wrestle with his conscience when he started slicing heads open.

The problem here is the show opened up an extremely complex discussion about the psychology of its villain and failed to explore it. Sylar "rationalizes" (my inverted quotes) murder as a quest to "take what others didn't deserve." But if the show was going to examine how Sylar has a selective approach to killing and how his conscience discriminates between murdering superheroes and murdering millions of regular individuals, it needed to devote much more attention to it than it did here. My feeling is this would have needed a "Company Man" level of focus, and if the show wanted to do that, it probably would have needed to do it earlier in the season. Preferably instead of the time the show wasted on Hiro's search for the sword and Matt's efforts to fix leaky pipes.

To be fair, Zach Quinto runs with the twist with amazing versatility from start to finish. The shock he conveys at the start rings true (even if the rationale behind it doesn't), and his sense of panic when he calls Mohinder and Mama Gray comes across convincingly. Calling Mohinder actually feels like a logical step for the character, because after the Montana trip in "Unexpected" and the way Sylar-as-Nathan funded Mohinder's research in "Five Years Gone," the conclusion we reach is that Sylar unequivocally trusts Mohinder. And ironically, even though they've tried to kill one another, Sylar probably still admires Mohinder and looks to him as a voice of authority when it comes to understanding his ability.

At the House of Superheroes, D.L.'s going postal at the prospect of Linderman using Micah "for a job." Oddly, Jessica doesn't seem too bothered about it.

"You cannot be SERIOUS!"

In the story's timeframe, it was about two weeks ago that Jessica put a spiked heel to the head of a thug who threatened Micah. And it was about one day earlier that Jessica vetoed any involvement of Micah in Linderman's machinations. So why Jessica isn't storming into the Corinthian right now and cracking skulls is beyond me. But D.L. vows to find Micah, Jessica looks guilty, and Mirror-Niki persuades her to help D.L.

Casa d'Illusion. Micah plays video games while Candice tells Linderman that the babysitting gig is a waste of her talent. Because, hey, she could be doing her best impression of Angela Lansbury. Or at least making us wonder if she is.

Candice morphs into Niki and does her best impression of Micah's mom. Ali Larter brought her A-game to this scene, because it must have been extremely weird to play. It's like she's playing Candice, who's trying to play Niki, even though she's never (as far as we know) met Niki, and even though she's trying to look like she's comfortable putting Micah in Linderman's care, which is something Niki would never do, and even though Ali obviously needs to convey to the audience that it's not herself she's playing, but Candice.

Which is confusing, yet brilliant, because Ali reflects all of it with a few lines and facial expressions. And though I'll harp on about the character's lack of development and the way her story thread has often felt tedious, I'll never have a problem with the way Ali plays her scenes, because she absolutely rocks at stuff like this.

Micah hugs his mom and gets the Doubtful Expression. Great twist, because it establishes that Micah really could tell that it wasn't his mom who sent him away with Linderman, and that he was just biding his time until he could figure out a way to escape. Smart kid.

The camera pulls out of the apartment and plummets about thirty stories until it's at ground level. Amazing shot, and reminiscent of a lot of the aerial shots of New York we got at the start of the season.

Can you imagine the tourist attraction that Kirby Square is going to become now? Eleven million people will want to visit Superhero Square.

Mohinder meets Thompson, calls The Company a bunch of "untrustworthy goondas," then tells Thompson to hand over all of their info on Sylar so that he can single-handedly save the day. Why? Because Mohinder's the one with the list (even though it's been destroyed) and because Mohinder's the one with the super-know-how (even though Papa Suresh's super-algorithm was destroyed). And Thompson agrees.

"You cannot be SERIOUS!"

If we're supposed to follow through with the Linderman-Thompson-Company link, apprehending Sylar is a priority because Linderman doesn't want a loose canon derailing the election. But then, at this point, it's become so convoluted that it's near-impossible to follow. The implication at the end of ".07%" was that Thompson wanted Sylar alive. It's unclear whether Linderman knows that Sylar will scalp Candice and Nathan and become president, or whether Linderman even knows about Sylar, but given the upward communication from The Company, one would assume so.

Company Medical. Mohinder learns that Molly Walker's suffering from a virus that's "destroying her nervous system." And that Mohinder's sister died from the same virus. And that The Company knows this.

So, The Company knew about Shanti. By extension, Linderman knew about Shanti. Sylar knew about Shanti. The only person who didn't know about Shanti until about a week ago was the girl's brother.

Oh, Mohinder. Why does the show do this to you?

Apartment of Clairvoyance. Ando's all, "Dude, are you ready to slay the mass murderer who scalps brains and culls supers and masquerades as the president?" And Hiro's like, "Yup, light, dark, blah, blah, a hero's gotta do some grim stuff to keep the world safe, let's stab him already!"

Hiro finds Isaac's corpse, as per "Don't Look Back," and observes that it's "just like before." Only now, it's a day before the election instead of a day after. And this time, Sylar's in the bathroom shaving, and combing his hair. Which is all kinds of bizarre and twisted, because you almost feel for the guy when he puts on this disguise to go visit his mom. For a moment, you wonder if he's not doing it just to fool her, but in fact to fool himself, and to pretend to himself that he can be the guy he was before Papa Suresh dropped a copy of "Activating Evolution" in his lap and told him he had a destiny.

Sylar exits the bathroom, and he's a spitting image of the guy we saw in "Six Months Ago." Where did he get the glasses, shirt and cardigan? Who knows. Who cares?! It's such a twisted pleasure to watch the psycho turn himself back into the mild-mannered watchmaker he used to be that you forgive it.

Now, here's the part that first appalled then delighted me. Hiro and Ando hide behind a canvas and fidget as Sylar leaves the apartment.

My notes here: "Superhearing? Sylar = the BDA, Heroes = SV."

And for a moment, I really did wonder whether Heroes was jumping the shark by having people sneak up on the guy with superhearing.

(For those who don't watch Smallville, it's become a running joke that anyone can creep up on Clark and surprise him in the barn or pwn him with Kryptonite.)

Nope, they didn't mess it up: barely a second after I'd made that note, Ando gulps, and Sylar picks up on the heartbeat. And at this point, the exasperating part of Hiro's arc surfaces. We get an amazingly intense and well-directed moment when the killer and the hero are on opposite sides of the canvas and Hiro's heartbeat is pounding like a rabbit's. And you figure that now would be the moment for Hiro to freeze time and lop Sylar's head off. Only Hiro decides he shouldn't veer too far from the scene-by-scene guide in the comic, so instead he teleports with Ando to a convenience store across the block.

The teleportation? Funny. The guy in the convenience store who pushes his way past the two Japanese dudes cowering on the ground? That's hilarious. But the fact that Ando now needs to start spurring Hiro on to embrace his destiny and kill Sylar? You. Cannot. Be. SERIOUS! Not after Hiro spent a quarter of a season looking for the sword he's supposed to slay Sylar with, not after Hiro just got done telling Ando about the "dark paths" he'd need to go down to save the world, and not after Ando just spent the better part of the season half-heartedly tagging along with Hiro and wondering why he was even here.

You could argue that Hiro's conviction wavers because his moral fiber prevents him from killing anyone. And that Ando's visit to the future has illustrated for him how important it is to change the course of actions in the present. But for Ando to now be the one advocating murder for the greater good, and for Hiro to be the one trying to find a way out of his destiny rather than embracing it, even after he's seen New York destroyed and millions dead and his Future-self dead; you can understand his hesitation, but this week, Hiro procrastinates with the mission which took him back and forth across the country all season. As Ando and Sylar both say this week: DO IT!

Hotel of Antiquity. D.L. phases through the walls, taking Jessica through the walls at the same time. Minor wit follows as Jessica expresses her discomfort from the experience.

My initial reaction was that this was incredibly cool. I still think it is, but it was only a few episodes ago that Niki was locked in a correctional facility and D.L. was trying to think up a way to get her out. Chances are Niki wouldn't have agreed to go home anyway, but the way it was written at the time, D.L. clearly didn't know he could do this. Suddenly, now, it's a standard part of his ability to phase other people along with himself.

Jessica and D.L. discover documents about themselves. They study photos, grade report cards and medical records, and D.L. comes to the only possible conclusion: they're part of Linderman's science experiment!

"He did WHAT?!"

My conclusion would have been that Linderman was researching them, but, OK, using them as part of a science experiment works too. Sort of.

Provided you can factor in Jessica double-crossing D.L. and putting him in prison.

And provided you can factor in Linderman sending goons after Niki to collect money she owed him.

But, hey, it's intriguing. And anything which brings D.L. into the plot and gives his story arc some resonance with the central story is a plus. The twist here felt sudden and overly elaborate, and it felt a bit too much like D.L.'s relevance to the larger story was being forced into the script rather than flowing from an organic sequence of events, but I'll take it.

Company Medical. Mohinder meets Molly, takes her blood, finds out that her ability involves locating anyone with an ability, and gets to show how great he is with kids. And as saccharine and cutesy as the smiles and giggles are in this scene, it's a rarity to see Mohinder smile or laugh, so Sendhil fans will love it.

At Petrelli Castle, Claire tells Nathan about RadioTed. And how her house got blown up by the guy. Then:

"You can fly? That's cool."

Nicely delivered by Hayden, and a nicely nonchalant response by Pasdar. It might be a throwback to Daddy Bennet's same line in "Better Halves" when he found out about Hiro on the subway, but even without that context, it's endearing to see Claire react to her dad's ability with enthusiasm. It makes you wonder what it would be like if these characters had met under better circumstances.

Nathan compliments Claire on her bravery, which might be the first compliment Nathan's ever paid any character on the show. I think that's part of what makes this scene intentionally uncomfortable, particularly when Nathan's blatantly deceiving his brother and daughter by failing to mention that a meeting between Peter and RadioTed is on the cards in Linderman's Big Plan.

But then, is it? Nathan immediately gets onto the phone to Linderman to tell him they "have a problem." It could just be that Peter's figuring out how the explosion occurs, and consequently that he's getting closer to figuring out a way to avert it. Or, it could be that Linderman doesn't even know who's going to explode, and that Nathan's the one filling him in on the backstory that involves a nuclear brother.

Sylar returns home to the Little Shop of Horrors (oh, come on, how could I not?). From the moment he gets to the front door, and from the moment we see the house numbers on the door and the drab colors in the corridor, the detail in these scenes sparkles. The soft piano in the background works, Mama Gray's obsession with snowglobes on the mantelpiece comes across as moving but never overplayed, and Mama Gray herself is perfectly portrayed by Ellen Greene as the disappointed and domineering mother who wanted her son to be more than a watchmaker.

Sylar brought a snowglobe from Texas? He took it to Zane in Virginia, then to Montana with Mohinder, then to Mohinder's apartment in New York, then to Isaac's apartment right before he killed Isaac?

"Naw, he did WHAT?!"

Sylar immediately notices that Papa Gray's clock is broken. Mama Gray writes it off as "junk," which suggests that Gabriel was pressured into becoming a watchmaker by his father and by family tradition, but not his mother.

And oddly, there's almost no mention of Papa Gray here. It doesn't seem like Mama Gray has any particular power, so I guess we're supposed to assume Papa Gray was the one with the ability. Although given that Gabriel's power to understand "how things work" was so unremarkable that it didn't even show up on Papa Suresh's monitors, we can assume that Gabriel's ability was inherited from the weak end of the gene pool.

Not that it saved anyone from getting scalped. Just saying, Papa Gray was probably a human microfiche or a walking metal detector.

Anyway, when Sylar defends Papa Gray's clock and says it's "a beautiful piece" and "just needs a little attention," you realize how awesome Zach Quinto is at playing his character. For an instant, it's as if Sylar's love for clocks and watches resurfaces, and as if he misses his old life. Which is bizarre, because he couldn't wait to get away from it. But the way Quinto delivers the lines here, you know Sylar's not putting on an act. Even after he's done chomping brains, he apparently still wants to pull out his clock repair kit and fix dad's work. Which is twisted and disturbing, but somehow strangely moving.

Mama Gray tells her son how proud she is that he got to travel the world. We feel sorry for her, because obviously Sylar's been lying through his teeth, but it also makes you wonder whether the serial killer would take the time to call his mother and talk to her when he's done slicing scalps. I think that's where the show's attempt to humanize the character becomes apparent. It's sad enough that Sylar decides to come home as part of a hopeless attempt to fight fate, but the way the show reveals his relationship with Mama Gray here -- the shades of his character it reveals -- underlines how tragic a villain Sylar is.

We get the moment which, like Papa Suresh showing up in "Six Months Ago," puts ideas into Sylar's head. Mama Gray tells him she'll never approve of her son being "a normal watchmaker," because if he wanted, he could be president.

"She said WHAT?!"

"You cannot be SERIOUS!"

So Mama Gray's the one who puts the idea into Sylar's head to scalp Nathan and masquerade as the president?

What is this show's issue with mothers?!

Between the kleptomaniac ice queen who helped to orchestrate the destruction of New York, the firestarting mom-on-the-run who sold out her daughter for $100k, and a dual-personality mom whose alter ego rips people in half and hires herself out as a hit woman -- heck, the only remotely normal mothers on this show are the ditzy dog-obsessed one and Janice.

And Janice hasn't even become a mom yet!

And she's annoying!

I don't think it amounts to maternal vilification, but there's definitely an emerging pattern here which needs to be addressed. And next season, could we please have some stable, sane, likable moms on the show?

Petrelli HQ. Peter and Claire visit Nathan to see if he can arrange for the FBI to apprehend Ted. Because that plan worked so well when AudreyClea tried it. Peter and Claire find Nathan and Thompson talking in an office. Claire freaks out. I think we all freak out a little, but it's offset by confusion as we try to make the connection between Linderman, The Company, Thompson, Nathan, then Angela protecting Claire, then Nathan protecting Claire without knowing about The Company, then Peter not knowing about The Co-

I needed, like, ten minutes just to figure out who's working for who here, and who knows who and how. This is way too intricate.

Thompson affirms that he's pro-nuking. And even though Nathan expresses great doubt, the association with The Company and Linderman's Big Plan brings Nathan a step closer to being "the face of evil."

Casa d'Illusion. Niki appears behind Micah, wrapped in a towel, and tells her little boy she's about to hop in the shower. Micah turns around and, I kid you not, totally checks his mom out.

"Hot nekkid mama!"

This episode has some seriously messed up stuff going on with the filial bonds. And I'm not talking about the Paire 'shipping or the Petrelli brotherly bonding. I mean, poor Micah! With a super-hot alternate-personality mom who wraps herself in a towel while her kid's trying to eat some cereal and watch cartoons, I wonder why he didn't make a run for it sooner.

"Put 'em up or I'll blow you to bits!"

Now that's too funny.

Micah technopaths his way past the lock at the door and runs in circles, repeatedly ending up in front of his TV and watching the same cartoon.

"NeCcida mama!"

"Micah?"

"I was trying for 'nekkid mama,' but all I could get from 'Candice' was 'neCcida.'"

"Huh?"

"Oh, what kind of a lame rip-off are you? My mom was way better at Scrabble than you!"

"Don't give me attitude, kid! I'll show you stuff that'll seriously mess you up for life!"

"What could be worse than an illusionist posing as my mom in a towel?"

"Your mom dropping the towel."

"You'd do WHAT?! YOU CANNOT BE SERIOUS!"

So Micah agrees to behave. And the cartoon shark has a knife and fork and looks hungry. And boy, this scene was all kinds of disturbing with the subtext.

At the Little Shop of Horrors, Sylar casually slips into the conversation that he could do something mighty special, but that it'd involve hurting a lot of people. It seems like Sylar might actually be hoping for Mama Gray's approval. Which I think is the point where the character breaks from the reality of clocks and sandwiches and investment banking and demonstrates why he could never go back to his old life.

The scene with the iced-water-spray snowglobe was incredibly well made. Everything about it was flawless, from the effect itself to the music to the confused delight Ellen brought to Mama Gray's reaction.

Then the whole thing spins out of control, Mama Gray gets injured by a snowglobe, and she runs to her bedroom. Sylar collapses at her door, tells her about his vision of the future, and starts knocking his head against the door. And it's unsettling, saddening, terrifying and tragic, because we know Sylar's inevitably going to kill her, and we know he's inevitably going to embrace his fate and want to blow up New York.

Hiro, meanwhile, decides he's not going to slay a guy who's asking for forgiveness, and he's not going to become the Future-Hiro who slits the throats of a hundred Homeland Security Guards and thinks nothing of it. Which makes for remarkable character growth, and highlights how far the character has come since "Better Halves," when Hiro was swinging an imaginary sword and imagining what it would be like to kill people.

That said, it also makes you wonder why we sat through a bunch of episodes while Hiro searched for his sword, only for him to now decide he's not going to use it, and -- worse -- for Hiro to watch his sword get broken in half.

Mama Gray tells Sylar that he's damned, they struggle with a pair of scissors, and Mama Gray gets the requisite Edward Scissorhands demise after enjoying the snow shower.

At this point, Hiro figures he might just have to step in, freeze time, and sort the situation out. Not before time.

I'd love to know whether Hiro's bow towards Sylar was scripted or another Masi improv. It seems like the kind of detail the guy would suggest. Either way, neat moment.

Sylar catching and icing the sword was extremely cool. Sylar urging Hiro to kill him was also cool, mainly because it makes us wonder whether the villain wouldn't rather be dead than cause the death of his mother and millions of non-super-powered people. The complexity of that perspective was never explored as much as I wish it would have been, but this was a moment which made you wonder.

Ando barrels through the door, he and Hiro teleport back to the Apartment of Clairvoyance, and Hiro's left with a blade cut in half. And here comes another five-episode mini-adventure in which Hiro runs around a parking garage, meets a dancer, snoops around a hotel room and goes on a road trip with a guy from the State Gaming Commission just to get the damn thing fixed.

Hopefully not.

At Company Medical, Mohinder comes across a photo of Mom, Dad and Shanti. He tells Molly that Shanti died before he was born. [Nerd note: Gah! Continuity error! Mohinder found out in "Seven Minutes to Midnight" that he was 2 years old when Shanti died.]

Molly wonders if she's going to die, Mohinder reassures her she won't and winks, and she gives him a drawing of a star. All of which = teh cute, and suggests there's going to be a lot of pseudo-paternal posturing from Mohinder when the SuperTrio show up to "deactivate" the Walker System.

And then the shocker: Mohinder's blood is the super-powered solution to curing Molly's virus.

"Say WHAT?! You cannot be SERIOUS!"

I guess the writing was on the wall. Between the hints that Shanti was a super and the fact that every character on the show is slowly being revealed to have one ability or another, it was only a matter of time before Mohinder turned out to be "special" in some way.

To be fair, it's a cool development for the character, and it's undoubtedly going to give Mohinder a significantly more important role in the plot than he's had so far. If there's a disappointing side to it, it's simply that the show is acting on the impression that non-super-powered characters are dull, or that you can't have a non-super-powered character on the show. The only characters left to become super now are Ando, Bennet, Janice, Sandra and Lyle. And I'm speaking based on hearsay rather than confirmed spoilers, but apparently even Kimiko and Papa Sulu are going to turn out to have abilities. (Don't even get me started on Simone.)

My point is, it'd be great if the show could keep a bunch of its main characters normal; normal people whose extraordinary importance is based on their actions and principles rather than their abilities.

Angela visits Petrelli HQ and tells Nathan to shut up, win the election and get ready to be a strong leader when the bomb goes off.

"She said WHAT?!"

And here it is, the first confirmation in dialogue: not only does Angela know about Linderman's Big Plan, not only is she totally gung-ho about it -- she actually HELPED to put the whole operation together.

I'd just like to take a moment to say:

I KNEEEEEW IT! I KNEW SHE WAS EVIL! I KNEW SHE WAS ONE OF LINDERMAN'S SUPER-POWERED CLAN AND THAT SHE WOULDN'T BAT AN EYELID WHEN NEW YORK EXPLODED!

Also? The sock-stealing thing seems more incongruous than ever, because now Angela's established to be a devious, manipulative, murderous, sock-stealing, scheming, plotting, sock-stealing, colluding, co-conspiring, sock-stealing, cold-as-ice, unconscionable little bi-

[OK, folks, that's all we've got time for this we-

What? You're gonna stop me now? What if it's Candice instead? What if Angela's back at Petrelli Castle sharing oatmeal cookies with Claire and flipping through fashion magazines ahead of their shopping spree? Would that make it any better? (Probably, but it wouldn't be as dramatic.)

Angela draws a parallel between this and Hiroshima. And with the greatest respect to Candice, she's not the type who'd think up stuff like that. She's smart and all, but she's not insane enough to come up with stuff like this, so my guess is it's definitely Angela in this scene.

The reference to Hiroshima is oddly apt, though, given Papa Sulu's appearance next week, and given the Nakamura backstory that was outlined in one of the earliest graphic novels. It's part of the reason why I can't believe Papa Sulu is in on this plan, and why I think he'll be one of the former superheroes to step in and stop Linderman's plan from going ahead.

Angela tells Nathan that his great weakness is his lack of faith in "the idea of destiny." And kudos to Cristine Rose, because the gritted teeth when she said this really hammered home how deluded the character is in her belief that she's fulfilling her destiny. She tells Nathan to "be the one we need," and it's an eerie echo of Future-Hiro's words to Peter in "Collision." The weird part is how the hero's mom turns out to be the one orchestrating the opposite result to Future-Hiro's, and how it's going to end with the incineration (and regeneration) of Mommy Petrelli's "favorite" son.

But here's the real kicker: my notes here read, "Nathan's a dead man." And I don't want to believe it, because Adrian Pasdar's one of the strongest actors on the show, but at this point I'll put money on his departure before the end of the season. If the show felt that Isaac accidentally shooting Simone warranted his own death, you can imagine what they're going to come up with for the guy who just reluctantly agreed to write off .07% of the population.

We draw to a close at Superhero Square. Claire's crying and lamenting how she brought pain to everyone she cared about, and contemplating how Peter made her feel "part of something." And Peter wipes away her tears and tells her he feels the same way.

And I know it's a rather delightful uncle/niece moment, but you know that moment when Hiro stomped up to Hope and told her she was a "BAD PAHSON!"? All I can think of here is the squandered opportunity to do more with the Paire chemistry, and it makes me feel like a BAD PAHSON. But it's still a delightful moment for the characters, and well played by Hayden and Milo.

The SuperTrio show up, and we've got a bizarre Superhero Union at the Superhero Square, and it's extremely cool.

The SuperTrio look on as Peter absorbs RadioTed's ability and begins to glow. And no one thinks to deck Peter because, hey, this is destiny, right?

"The Hard Part" ends with a bunch of storylines left in mid-air, some of them more compelling than others.

Sylar starts the episode as evil incarnate. He briefly gets a guilty conscience, accidentally kills Mama Gray, then paints the explosion in her blood and goes back to being evil incarnate again. The only difference is that now it's without the inferiority complex which stems from a disappointed mother, and the "mwa ha ha" is accompanied by political aspirations.

Hiro needs to take a life to save millions, but he's not sure if he can. But then, he wasn't too sure about it last week, either.

Nathan's ready to let the bomb go off, but he still feels bad about it. Well, he did last week, too.

The SuperTrio are on their way to dismantle the tracking system, but given that the tracking system's a kid, given that there's no way Bennet, Matt or Ted are going to hurt her, and given that Molly's ability is out of operation at the moment anyway, it's difficult to feel any sense of urgency about it.

D.L. and Jessica have found out they're part of a large-scale genetic experiment, though why is yet to be explained, and how it fits with the backstory and other current storylines is yet to be explained.

And Peter? He's apparently determined to go through with events which lead to the destruction of New York. Either because it's destiny, or because it's a contrived device to forward the plot, despite the fact that staying in New York and meeting a radioactive guy makes zero sense.

More than anything, what dragged this episode down was the fact that it felt like a set-up. It probably won't feel that way when it's watched alongside the final two episodes on a DVD; and as the first act of a back-to-back three-episode finale, it will probably work fine.

But as a standalone episode, and as the episode following on from one of the most intensely dramatic, well-crafted and visually stunning episodes of the season, it feels like a let-down.

3.5 out of 5