Review:

Wait, Mohinder kills Noah and doesn't even get a voice-over?

Seriously?

Oh, screw that!

V.O. Mohinder: "And after black tears had been shed and purple flags painted and reptilian limbs severed and blah-de-blah-de-blah ... we asked that the show might once again rock. And lo, the show heard our plea, for it gave us 'Cautionary Tales,' and we saw that it was good, because even though Mohinder shot Noah and it scared the living daylights out of us, the doggie bath was relevant to the plot, and Elle was complex, and West was tolerable, and Noah reclaimed his title as the Undisputed King of All Things Epic."

"They gave my voice-over to Hiro?"

They did. And it was poignant and heartfelt and beautiful, and should be like this every week.

But they also gave the rest of the characters great dialogue and storylines.

And they allowed the cast an opportunity to act the heck out of their scenes.

And they did so with rather delightful panache, and an unpredictable plot, and lots of visually stunning moments that were the height of awesome. And I have the usual complaints and criticisms, but they're few and far between, because this episode, from start to finish, was nothing short of a masterpiece.

We open at Canine Central with unnerving music and dog statues. Noah, Sandra, and Lyle pack boxes. Claire packs her bag for school. You could interpret Claire's defiance as "taking a moral stand against a morally gray father" or "making it clear that the family can't keep running forever," or just "I'm the brat who caused this, but I'm going to play the Blame Bennet game and live in denial because packing boxes would ruin my nails and I don't want to say goodbye to my boyfriend." But it's kind of sad how Sandra and Lyle immediately pack without ever challenging Noah's decision.

It's also kind of sad that it took until now for the mistrust in the family to come to the surface. I mean, Sandra pretty much gives Noah her full support here, even though he nearly caused her brain damage; and Lyle insists to Claire that Noah doesn't abduct people, even though he heard it first-hand from two of Noah's lab rats last season; and it's not like Claire hasn't known about her dad's lies and deception since he wiped her friend's memories. But Punk'd West infuriates Claire every bit as much as a mom with a brain tumor.

Hayden plays Claire's hatred towards Noah convincingly, and of course it's understandable, but you have to wonder why Claire waited so long to express it. I guess the fact that Claire's father bagged and tagged her boyfriend makes Noah's past more immediate and more tangible to her, but I also hope the ramifications of Noah's actions are a little more long-lasting this time than they've been so far, and that we don't get another false reconciliation followed by a fresh start and a breakdown in communication between a family that had already been through a horrific ordeal and apparently never discussed it.

We cut to Tokyo, Japan. Mercifully, it's in the present day.

Saemi Nakamura's cameo was a subtle touch; just the fact that Kimiko was there for her father's funeral, even if she didn't get any dialogue, and even if her appearance wasn't acknowledged by any of the other characters.

Hiro blaming himself for Papa Sulu's death and refusing to accept that his father's gone are well played by Masi Oka. They're also consistent with the character, given the way he blamed himself for his failure to save Charlie. As per that previous tragedy, it's Hiro's first instinct to go back in time to fix it. Part of the lesson Hiro takes from his father's death is that altering the past isn't a solution to every disaster he encounters, but you can already see shades of the obsessive Future-Hiro in the guy who lost his first love and his parents and who's now forced to accept that he can't do anything to change it.

Or he can change it, but he knows he's not supposed to. We'll get to that.

Molly comes home to Chandra's Crib, gets a full night's sleep, and once again becomes a carbon copy of Janice.

Matt: "How'd you sleep?"

Molly [actual dialogue]: "On my pillow."

Molly [translation]: "On a bed of clouds, dumbass -- what do you think?"

Matt refuses to let Molly find the locations of the remaining ElderSupers, which earns Matt a few Favorite Daddy points, even though they're lost later when Matt decides a better approach is to give an old lady a nosebleed and prize the information out of her. But the fact that Matt refuses to endanger Molly -- on principle, even after Maury's been incapacitated -- at least shows Matt learning from his mistakes.

Matt discovers the Parkman whammy, which is basically coercion by planting thoughts into people's heads and compelling them to act on those thoughts.

Forcing a kid to finish her cereal and "be a little girl"? OK, that's inoffensive enough. And to be fair, it's not like Matt forced Molly to strangle a kitten or steal candy from a blind person or graffiti "MOHINDER SUCKS!" all over the apartment. But there's something objectionable about climbing into the head of a kid and forcing her to act on the thoughts he put there; it was objectionable enough when Matt fooled Janice into believing he was an observant, intuitive stud. This goes a step further by skipping the "fooling" stage and going straight to the "believing" stage. It's funny, but it's also kind of disturbing when you recall what Maury went on to do with it, and when you imagine the kind of things that a self-serving, weak-minded idiot like Matt will do with it.

At least he feels guilty about it.

^ ^ Guilty face!

Mohinder, Midas Bob, and Elle meet at San Pedro. Mohinder demonstrates shrewd deductive reasoning by realizing that "take out" is Bob's euphemism for "kill." Hilariously, he fails to realize that he's functioning as someone's tool for about the billionth time on this show. Poor Mohinder.

Mohinder: "I'm not choosing sides -- this is about Claire's blood curing Niki. I'm just trying to do the right thing for everyone."

Blindly naive, hopelessly idealistic, or downright dumb? Your call. I think this was the show's way of establishing that Mohinder's motivation for shooting Noah was nobility rather than revenge or panic or stupidity. You could argue that he's ignoring Noah's experience with The Company and trusting them to keep their word about curing the Shanti Virus, but the fact that it's established as early as this that Mohinder's goal above all else was to save Niki goes a long way to redeeming his actions this week.

Bob confirms what most of us suspected: Elle is his daughter. Biological or adopted? I guess it doesn't matter, although I'd say it's a detail worth throwing in at some point so that we can see how close the parallel to Noah and Claire really runs. Regardless, it highlights how suspicious the guy in charge of The Company would be of everyone around him, and why he'd choose his daughter as the one person he'd trust not to betray him.

Also, this? ...

... is totally hilarious, and totally cool, and totally in character for someone who'll use any excuse to wantonly destroy stuff. I love how there's even a plume of smoke coming off her finger after she Ellectrifies the daiquiri.

Claire writes out "S-O-R-R-Y" in a field using rocks, figuring West will see it when he flies to school. This assumes he's suddenly flying to school, even though we've seen him nearly run Claire over outside school. But who cares, because this scene is the first of several this week that achieves the unthinkable --

IT MAKES WEST LIKABLE!

Believe me, nothing surprised me more about this episode. But not only does Nick D'Agosto grab the one decent script he got on this show and run with it like a pro; he manages to make the character endearing enough that the majority of fans who loathed him with the intensity of a thousand fiery suns suddenly want to see more of him.

It's partly the story that makes this possible; the fact that West gets to do more than stalk the girl he has a crush on and spout one-liners and play pranks on cheerleaders. But I think what makes West's storyline work here is the way the character's pretense disappears. For once, D'Agosto has an opportunity to play the character sans bulls**t, and his whole performance changes because of it.

"I am hurt! I am upset! I have feelings! I am no longer a smug, obnoxious caricature! Yay me!"

The posture changes along with the attitude; he's more insecure and defensive than ever, but he's not even trying to cover it up, and it takes away the phoneyness. There's suddenly something direct and honest and straightforward about the character, and his scenes immediately become more watchable because of it.

Matt goes back to being "an underpaid cop." He helpfully shows us a clear, unobstructed image of the ElderSupers:

Matt: "These guys are involved in some kind of organization, like from back in the seventies."

Fuller: "Like a disco?"

I resent that. It's been made abundantly clear that Angela was a punk-rocker.

The two ladies on the left are already dead? So are the two guys sitting on the right? Shame.

Fuller's like, "Earth to Parkman! Focus!" And Matt's all, "I can solve this puzzle and save lives!" And Fuller's just, "Pshaw! Do some real detective work before I fire you, loser!" And Matt does what he did to save his marriage and get his detective badge: he cheats.

Is working the Parkman whammy on Fuller funny? Sure. And I get that Matt was determined to prove he was right, and that he wanted to exonerate Angela and save the rest of the ElderSupers. But he's applying his ability to get what he wants without worrying about the consequences.

Who else did that? The woman who stole a Ferrari and told a cop to go eat a box of donuts.

One of them was coercing people for fun and one of them is now coercing people to save lives, but the premise behind it -- brainwashing people into cooperation -- is the same. And we laugh it off here, but I'm seriously beginning to wonder if there's some truth to the speculation that Matt's going to turn into one of the show's villains.

At Canine Central, Noah pulls out paperwork on all the supers he bagged and tagged.

He keeps this information in Primatech boxes? Cute detail.

If that elicits an aww, the show has successfully suckered you into being charmed by the happy smile of a kid who went on to become a contemptible jerk. Problem is, it's hard to look at that and NOT say aww.

Sandra wonders whether Noah really did capture and perform tests on a kid. I can buy that Sandra's still in the dark about Company operations, and that she can't believe her husband would be cruel enough to traumatize a boy by abducting him. But the way it comes across here, it seems like Noah hasn't told her a thing about The Company and its methods. And I still can't believe a character as intelligent and perceptive as Sandra wouldn't be demanding answers about Noah's work.

But now, finally, Noah begins to tell Sandra everything. And even though it took unbelievably long for Noah to be honest with his family, it's a delight to see, and it's accompanied by --

-- one of the most stunning shots of the episode. Whoever came up with that is a genius, because it's that kind of visual wizardry that makes this episode so brilliant.

Noah takes Sandra's hand and tells her he really needs her. And we sort of feel sorry for him, even though he lied to everyone and murdered his mentor and kidnapped a little boy and deserves zero sympathy from us. And Sandra's wondering if she should feel any sympathy for him, because even though she's looking at an image of him dead, she's trying to grasp the level of deceit which Noah is capable of, and the pain his involvement in The Company inflicted on his victims and his family. And Ashley Crow absolutely rocks in this scene, because she conveys ALL of that within seconds and with just a couple of expressions.

Noah calls Mohinder, and he's like, "Hey, about me implying you were expendable -- no hard feelings? Good. Now, I need Molly to locate the little punk who's been dating my daughter so that I can manipulate him." And Mohinder's like, "OK." And it's sort of sad that the only time Noah says "Thank you" to Mohinder and actually means it is when he realizes he's about to lose his family and get a bullet in the eye.

Mohinder immediately relays the contents of the call to Bob and suggests luring Noah away from Claire with a false location. I can't figure out how this makes sense: if the plan is to snatch Claire at school and Noah's busy trying to locate West, doesn't that basically put Claire in the open and make her an easy target? I guess Bob wants to know exactly where Noah is so there's no risk of him showing up to pop holes in everyone's heads, but wasn't Noah's preoccupation with West a sign that the guy's pretty distracted at the moment anyway?

On the Rooftop of Pigeonly Delight, Hiro watches Papa Sulu gloating over Angela for the way he "helped" his son fulfill his destiny. Hiro reveals himself to Papa Sulu, and dad's like, "Hey, son, you've been gone for four months and had me worried sick -- thanks for NOT writing and NOT calling and NOT e-mailing!" And Hiro's all, "Yeah, I've been busy changing history and following my hormones -- good times! I hear you died in the meantime, so I'm here to prevent it." And Papa Sulu's just, "Dead, eh? Aw, shucks, that's life, my boy. Deal with it."

"What?! Wait a second, Papa, WHAT?!?"

"This is my fate, son. Our powers make us like gods, but we cannot play God."

"Who's talking about playing God, Papa? I'm talking about teleporting you away from these pigeons so that you won't be here when some hooded guy shows up to push you over the ledge. You're being stubborn."

"Your emotions are clouding your judgment."

"Well, yeah, my dad's about to fall 30 stories to his death. I might be a little emotional. Let me show you HOW emotional ..."

And they teleport away, leaving me wondering what the hell just happened here. I mean, I can appreciate Papa Sulu taking a fatalistic stance on the will of God, and the idea of him believing certain events are set in stone, particularly when they involve the ElderSupers paying for the "pain and suffering" they caused. It's difficult to get behind this when we haven't witnessed said "pain and suffering" and can't judge for ourselves whether it warrants the ElderSupers dying horribly, but Papa Sulu's protest against his son "playing God" works just fine.

Thing is, this isn't like Hiro's puppy love dying no matter what he does. All Hiro needs to do is make sure Papa Sulu gets his flight back to Japan THE WAY HE SAYS HE'S GOING TO so that he's not around when the super who's been locked up by the ElderSupers for 30 years and who's now hellbent on killing them all comes knocking. That's not "playing God" -- that's "being smart and taking preventive measures." It's sort of like not placing your head between the jaws of an antagonized crocodile because you KNOW you're going to lose a head if you do.

"But this is different! Hiro has seen how history unfolds! He needs to accept the course of events!"

Does he? If he does, why undertake a mission to alter the course of events that leads to New York exploding? How is altering the fate of one person different than altering the fate of a city?

"Because this person wants to die."

OK, but that's a different argument to the one the show puts forward at Mama Sulu's funeral, which is, "Everyone dies, and even heroes can't change that, but a parent's legacy lives on in the values they instilled in their children." That's a sound argument and a good point to make. Papa Sulu's argument here is different. He's choosing to accept his death, which hinges on the idea that he "deserves" to die for some crime that hasn't yet been established. And until it is, the way Papa Sulu essentially gives up and hands himself over to destiny lacks a solid rationale. Implying that the circumstances surrounding a murder shouldn't be averted falls flat. Shouldn't the message be that we fight to make a difference for as long as we possibly can?

Anyway. Canine Central. West snatches Noah on the guy's doorstep, takes him a few thousand feet into the sky, and demands to know if Claire ever really cared about him.

*PING!*

West wins a Dumb As Parkman Award for thinking anyone will be truthful in this situation and not, you know, TELL HIM EXACTLY WHAT HE WANTS TO HEAR.

Noah: "She lied to me, so I'm guessing you're pretty important to her."

Alternative response: "Go to hell, you little punk! She never told me about you because she was too embarrassed to admit it to herself! Also? I had a blast experimenting on you!"

West and Noah float back down to the ground, and Noah does what we always hoped he would: he tackles West, and then he...

Wait ... That's it?

Come on, Noah -- you blew your mentor's brains across his apartment. The least you could do here is break West's fingers and flog him with a tree branch or something.

I choose to believe Noah totally would have, except Mohinder calls with a false location on West, and it forces Noah to return to his crafty scheming.

Claire attends cheerleading practice, clinging to some sense of routine and normality in spite of the fact that she's about to be homeless and parentless and in full range of the organization which wants to find out whether it really is true that her body grows back from her head if she's decapitated.

Bob shows up and pretends to be a member of the state board of education concerned about underage drinking. Presumably, the plan was to walk Claire to a secluded part of the school and then chloroform her? It would have worked, and Noah would never have needed to be "taken out." Except Bob uses this moment to be so extraordinarily sloppy that he blurts out Bennet instead of Butler. Which is consistent with the idiot who put two resourceful supers in adjacent jail cells and then decided not to use the surveillance cameras in their cells to make sure they weren't communicating. But it's still so shockingly dumb that I can't bring myself to give Bob a Dumb As Parkman Award. Instead, I'm going to assume this was a deliberate mistake on Bob's part because Bob knew he needed to meet Noah in order to fulfill Isaac's paintings.

Mohinder tries to make chit-chat with Elle by asking her how many people she's killed. Strangely, Elle does not leap at the chance to provide Mohinder with the same mini-bio she gave Peter. We can only speculate why Elle felt she could trust Peter with her life story and not Mohinder. Poor Mohinder. The women he meets either denounce his father as a madman, pretend to love him so that they can steal his research, break his nose, or refuse to talk to him altogether.

So Mohinder runs back to Noah.

Oh, don't, fan-fic writers.

Is this a reversal of the pilot episode? Mohinder and Noah in a car, only now Noah's the one driving the car and Mohinder's the Company Man? It's a neat way of drawing attention to the fact that Mohinder's now the one defending The Company's agenda. He's nowhere near as intimidating as Anonymous Trenchcoat Guy was, but the way the scene is shot, with Noah's eyes reflected in the mirror, and the way the show even plays the same piano motif in the background that we heard back in "Genesis," it's a surreal throwback.

Claire returns to Canine Central and discovers the image (on the laptop which is conveniently switched on and open) of Noah lying dead on the ground while Claire's in the arms of Mystery Guy. The horror of this discovery is compounded with Sandra's homage to every horror B-movie ever made in which an unthreatening character silently approaches the protagonist from behind and decides that a hand on the shoulder will somehow reassure them.

The horror of these two moments is then compounded with Midas Bob showing up with a gun in his hand and Tobolowsky giving that fake smile he's so good at. And that is truly the scariest moment of this scene.

Mohinder brings Noah in for Ellectrification.

Noah: "Elle, huh?"

Mohinder: "You know her?"

Noah [loaded with subtext]: "Oh, yeah."

Elle [flirtatiously]: "Hey, you."

Is it me? Did that not completely give it away?

West flies in and saves Noah by throwing Elle against a [PRODUCT PLACEMENT] Nissan.

West ... saves ... Noah.

?!?!?!?!?

This is the same character who crept around outside Claire's house and humiliated Claire in class, right? It seems like he's a totally different character. This one's kind of pivotal to the plot, and the plot's kind of cool.

Noah starts beating on Mohinder and ends up breaking Mohinder's nose AGAIN. Poor Mohinder.

Coleman scares the heck out of me in this scene. When Noah's pointing the gun at Mohinder, you wonder for a second if he'll shoot him. Unlike the time he pointed a gun at Molly, this carries the very real possibility that Noah will pull the trigger to protect Claire. And, perhaps wrongly, you can't completely begrudge him for it, because he's willing to go to any length he has to for his daughter.

And West -- WEST! -- is the one who dissuades Noah from murder.

Read that last line again. Seriously, the irony here is off the charts.

So instead of shooting Mohinder, Noah kicks him against the car, then (presumably) abandons the guy with a broken nose, one that's obviously never going to get a chance to heal, while Noah and West drive off with Elle in the trunk. Poor Mohinder.

Noah returns to Canine Central. He finds Sandra bound to a chair and tells her about the "collateral." And West walks in with Elle unconscious and slung over his shoulder, and he's like, "Hi, Mrs. Butler! Good to see you again!"

And people said it was D'Agosto's bad acting that ruined the character. I don't know if it's right for the show to be plugging the comic timing of its cast in a scene which involves a family held to gunpoint, a mother bound and gagged in her home, and a psychotic mercenary being kidnapped and used as leverage against her father, but between the actor's delivery of this line and Coleman's delivery of the next, this scene was as hilarious as it was disturbing.

Noah: "Did you pack Mr. Muggles's doggie bath?"

^ ^ Delivered with a straight face!

Heroes? I expect this on every T-shirt at next year's Comic-Con. I also expect a gag reel on the DVD so we can appreciate the sheer strength and determination it must have taken for Coleman to get this line out without bursting into fits of laughter on every take.

Elle wakes up tied to a chair, her feet soaking in water, and ends up Ellectrifying herself.

Noah: "Stings like a bitch, doesn't it?"

He is speaking from experience, right?

Noah switches from the School of Badass Torture to the Cathedral of Shocking Revelations: not only was Midas Bob aware of The Company's efforts to push his daughter's Ellectrification beyond its limits, he was gung-ho and in charge of them, and he had his daughter Haitian-whammied so she wouldn't ever know about it.

Part of it screams, "#%@^ you! I don't give a s**t if you're telling me the truth -- I hate you!"

Part of it's, "Yeah, my father would be involved in something as messed up as that."

Part of it's the realization that she's the cautionary tale -- and that Claire, by comparison, is the one who turned out all right.

I don't know how Kristen did that, but it's a world away from the sex kitten and the sadistic torturer. It actually makes you feel sorry for her. As with West, the snarky, obnoxious facade vanishes, and for a moment, you see the character beneath the pretense.

Tokyo, Japan, in 1990. Hiro teleports Papa Sulu to the day of Mama Sulu's funeral. This is extremely upsetting, but then ...

Aww!

And then ...

Awwwww!

You can tell right away that it's a different actor to the one playing the GameBoy on the Deveaux rooftop. But he's so cute, and it's such a delightful moment, you can't really complain, no more than you can poke holes into the concept by asking why this isn't unraveling the fabric of the space-time continuum.

Present-Hiro makes the unsettling discovery that his mental development over 17 years hasn't progressed very far. This forces him to adopt a "grown-up" stance on Papa Sulu's death and accept that he can't keep his father from dying, but that he can honor his memory by remembering the lessons his father imparted to him.

Well, OK. The idea that an individual's legacy and memory live on after death is nicely conveyed, and the idea that Hiro would realize this by meeting a younger and more naive version of himself is well thought out. And this ...

... is so staggeringly, awe-inspiringly, and beautifully shot, so I'm going to shut up and appreciate what was, ultimately, an elegantly-written discussion on the extent of Hiro's ability to prevent the death of the people he cares about.

But it doesn't change my objection to the way this storyline plays out: when a psycho breaks out of jail and comes after the people who put him there and YOU KNOW IT'S GOING TO HAPPEN, you do what it takes to avert it. Death is inevitable, but the circumstances that lead up to murder? Is Hiro supposed to accept that? Especially after discovering he's responsible -- at least in part -- for creating the killer that Adam Monroe became?

Hiro and Papa Sulu teleport back to the Rooftop of Pigeonly Delight, and Masi and George Takei knock their scene into the middle of next week.

Papa Sulu's so overwhelmed that he's trembling.

Hiro looks like he's about to start bawling.

Oh, crap, now I'm getting all emotional.

HE DIDN'T NEED TO LET THIS HAPPEN, PEOPLE!

Hiro teleports away and leaves his father to be murdered.

Oh, come on. That's essentially what happens. I'm not twisting it at all.

Superhoodie shows up.

Papa Sulu: "Of all of them, I never expected it would be you."

Huh? You locked the guy up for 30 years, and when one of the ElderSupers started offing the rest of you, you didn't think for a second that it might be him? Looking back, that line makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

Superhoodie takes Papa Sulu over the ledge. Hiro freezes time and musters enough morbid courage to walk over to the frozen display of his father locked in mid-air in a struggle with his killer. And even though most of us had figured out by this point that the killer was Kensei and Adam, it's still one of the finest dramatic reveals of the series, largely because of the disbelief Masi brings to Hiro's reaction when he makes the discovery.

Underpaid Cop HQ. I love how this scene takes us back and forth on our feelings about Angela. She starts out mocking Matt for being so incompetent with the mind-whammy that she's even less impressed with him than she was with Maury. And Matt's like, "Don't mess with me, Ice Queen, I can make you finish a bowl of cereal!" And Cristine Rose takes you on an emotional rollercoaster here.

Angela goes from composed-and-self-assured ...

... to scared-out-of-her-mind when Matt starts pushing her about Adam ...

... to mad-as-hell when Matt threatens to Parkman-whammy the name of the ElderSuper that Angela's protecting.

Now that is formidable acting.

You've already taken Papa Sulu, Heroes. If you take away the Ice Queen, there'll be trouble. Don't think I'm joking.

Let me get this straight: Adam lied to the ElderSupers about being immortal? So he pretended all he could do was instaheal, and it took a decade before the ElderSupers finally twigged that the guy wasn't getting any older?

"Continually regenerate" constitutes exactly how many instaheals? He's clearly the same age now that he was when Hiro met him, so if someone with cellular regeneration needs to fulfill some kind of instaheal quota before the immortality kicks in, what kind of rapid injuries must Kensei have been inflicting on himself before he developed this ability?

Angela warns Matt that he's becoming his father by forcing Victoria Pratt's name out of her. And Matt takes the name anyway, securing himself a seat in the Parkman School of Corruption. Well done, Matt! You've gone from Dumb As to Corrupt As!

Meanwhile, at Canine Central, West is fully redeemed of all sins by bonding with Noah and being compared to Noah by Sandra. We now go to a scary visual place in which Noah and West repaint houses together, play golf together, go fishing together, spend Christmases together, enjoy Sunday afternoons by the barbecue together, then slap one another on the back and marvel over how unbelievably amazing Claire is.

Are we sure we didn't like him more when he was an arrogant jerk?

Costa Verde Beachfront. Noah and West bond a little more by talking about cars. Elle gets this priceless expression:

"You cannot be serious, show. You're going to force in a product placement here?"

Bob, Mohinder, and Claire pull up. Mohinder, having pumped himself full of painkillers, has apparently developed sniper-level sharp-shooting.

Whoops, SPOILER!

Noah enunciates West and Claire's escape plan loudly enough for Elle to overhear, earning himself another Dumb As Parkman Award, because it's not impossible to whisper an exit strategy at the same time as holding a hostage at gunpoint.

This scene, top to bottom, start to finish, was the most visually stunning scene of the entire run. Bar none.

West lifts Claire into the air, and Elle Ellectrifies them out of the sky. Beautiful effect, and even if you know Claire's going to cushion West's fall and regenerate, it's so well-paced that you hold your breath and wonder if they aren't about to kill off West the moment they made him likable.

Noah puts a bullet in Elle's arm. Was he aiming for the arm? Was he trying to spare Bob the grief of watching his daughter die? You don't get a chance to think about it while it's playing out, but looking back, you have to wonder.

And then the sun starts to set. And you wouldn't think a sunset would be such a crucial detail to the way the scene plays out, but damn:

That's stunningly beautiful, and all kinds of messed up. I mean, it's two ex-co-conspirators at either end of a father and daughter. And it's a father and daughter who are evil and murderous. And one of the ex-co-conspirators is also evil and murderous, but he's a rather wonderful morally-gray badass who's trying to eliminate a threat to his daughter, so you can't completely hate him for pointing a gun at the dad who's watching his daughter bleed out. And the other ex-co-conspirator's an idiot, but he's trying to honor his dead father's research and protect his foster-daughter and prevent an epidemic from killing off the superhero population and spreading to the general population. So it's not like him pointing a gun at a dad who's pointing a gun at another dad is so objec-

Forget it. That's too screwed up for me to follow.

How the *%@# did they do that? You can actually see the blood coming out with the glass. I don't even want to think about the number of hours that went into creating that effect. That's staggering.

They lined this up so that you'd get a glimpse of the sun setting behind him as the gun fell out of his hand and the blood went everywhere. It's tragic and it's gruesome, but at the same time it's so stunningly well-realized that you don't know how to react.

Except HOLY $%*#. They killed Noah Bennet. They killed HRG. Daddy Bennet. The Company's golden boy.

Seriously. This is like the fourth or fifth time I've watched the scene and I can't even begin to review it objectively. It's so well done. Even when you know they're going to bring him back, the intensity and immediacy are so gripping that they pull you in and don't let go.

So the painting's fulfilled. Noah really did die. Claire wasn't kissing Mystery Guy, she was crying her eyes out and trying to wrestle her way past him.

And even Bob looks kind of sad.

And Mohinder realizes he just lost a few million hysterical fans who were forced to decide whether they could ever love him again after he murdered their other favorite character.

Should the show have left the reveal until the next week, or even the next volume? I think Kring and Ramamurthy would have needed round-the-clock bouncers guarding themselves and their families the entire time, and a lot of fans would probably have been so distraught they'd have stopped watching altogether.

But then, how many times can the show rely on "regenerative blood" as a deux ex machina? After this week, we're always going to think of it the moment someone suffers a fatal injury. There's probably a limit to its capacity; that if the transfusion doesn't take place quickly enough, it's useless; that if the person's heart stops beating and their organs shut down, it's over. Because otherwise, a whole lot of suspenseful moments are going to lose their suspense.

This week pretty much nixed the idea of Hiro going back in time to save loved ones, so it figures there'll also be a dozen strings attached to the "magic blood." You hope that's the case, if only for the sake of preserving the integrity of this scene. If using a sample of Claire's or Adam's blood doesn't become an overused plot device, this scene won't ever lose its power. It'll remain the way it is now: one of the most gutwrenching moments of the series.

So West brings Claire home. Claire's a wreck. Sandra's falling apart. Even Mr. Muggles knows something's up.

They actually got the dog to play grief-stricken?

In Tokyo, Hiro delivers his father's non-eulogy, insisting that as long as Papa Sulu's values and lessons live on in his children, he'll never die. And whether or not you liked the premise leading up to his death, this is the most heartfelt send-off a character ever got on this show.

And it's a meaningful voice-over! In Japanese! With subtitles!

Can Hiro do one of these every week? Not a eulogy, obviously, but something relevant and thought-provoking and profound? Because this was awesome.

This entire episode was awesome. And even after Noah's eye has regenerated, you know the story arc won't be resolved inside of an episode; that it'll have consequences for Noah's family, for Claire's feelings about the father she was so sure she hated, for whoever hooked Noah up to the IV so that he'd regenerate, and for Mohinder, who now needs to come to terms with the fact that he's a Company puppet.

There will be consequences, right? There'd better be. I can't see how there wouldn't be after this episode, because it turned half of the show's story and character arcs upside down. Matt's going dark; Hiro accepts God's will, but you know discovering his father's murderer is going to send him on a vendetta; and Mohinder's stumbling into Noah's role as The Company's right arm.

And Elle becomes more than a sadistic sex kitten.

And West saves the day. Twice.

And somebody, somewhere, realizes that perhaps every episode should be like this ...

Maybe?

Maybe not.

But even if this turns out to be the one lone gem of the volume, it's on a level with "Company Man" and "Five Years Gone." It was fast-paced, it was frenetic, it was unpredictable no matter how spoiled you were, and it was exceptionally well written, well performed, and well directed from beginning to end.

5 out of 5

Joe Pokaski needs an award for this. So does Greg Yaitanes. So does Charlie Lieberman. So do Coleman and Hayden and Masi and Cristine and Ramamurthy and Grunberg and pretty much every actor and crew member involved with this episode. Because, wow.