Review:

It's not like they fixed everything, but this episode was a significant step up from the premiere when it came to consistent character behavior, coherent storylines and development of the volume's predominant theme.

We start out with a great scene but preface it with a device that generally sets alarm bells ringing in viewers' heads: the soft, melancholy piano. This will be Searingly Beautiful Television, it tells us. What raw and cathartic anguish awaits us? What new heights of emotional resonance will it scale?

Sandra sweeps glass from the floor at Canine Central while Claire sits in the shadows and resembles an inanimate object. You wouldn't immediately think of that as a dramatic achievement, but when you realize that most of Hayden's acting on the show involves some kind of movement or animation on her part, acting like a statue becomes a performance in itself.

The other part of the scene that plays so well is Ashley Crow's restraint as the distraught mother: Sandra says how angry she is, but we don't see her shouting or sobbing or looking like she's about to start pounding her fists on the table; which is the perfect way to play it, because bottling up what everyone's feeling somehow conveys the family's sense of violation much more intensely than over-the-top hysteria would.

Leather-clad Future-Claire shooting Future-Peter was good. Two great actresses doing their thing and opening an episode with material as disturbing as this? It's unbelievable. It's not like the show should start with the aftermath of pseudo-rape every week, but a hard-hitting scene like this encapsulates everything that made this episode good: strong acting, well-written and well-delivered dialogue, and the ramifications of what these characters are going through.

In the context of the show's backstory, you also have to wonder whether Sandra even realizes how much she empathizes with Claire and how this conversation would have gone if Sandra hadn't been Haitian-whammied after the last time Sylar came into their home.

Claire cuts herself on a shard of glass and doesn't feel a thing. Again, the brilliance is in the detail: subtle acting from Hayden when she conveys her dismay at not feeling pain, and from Ashley when Sandra winces at the wound; it could be a maternal instinct, it could just be that the sight of the blood makes her want to puke, but either way it's a world apart from Sandra watching Claire plunge her hand into a pot of boiling water and West pinching Claire's ear to see if it hurts. This sets up Claire's sense of isolation from humanity so much more effectively than contemplating whether or not to cut off her toe.

Meanwhile ...

Angela has a prophetic dream. Which is the same one she had in the half of Season Two we never got to see, but it looks so great and it's so deliciously creepy that I'm thrilled the show worked it into the new season.

Hiro gets stabbed with his own sword, Matt gets his throat slit, Noah gets shot, Peter's stomach gets ripped open and Claire gets beheaded. I wonder if Sylar would be so confident about the instaheal ability after seeing that last one.

But he does! Sort of. He shows up in the dream to place his hands on Angela's shoulders, and is anyone else totally flashing back to every time Angela ever did that exact same thing with Peter and Nathan? It's the kind of nuance that gets buried beneath the rest of the awesomeness in this sequence, but looking back, you can see how the show worked in details like this to build up to the Sylar/Angela reveal.

It's already been shot down in interviews, but the resemblance is uncanny. I could easily buy the hint in the graphic novels that these two were related.

You have to wonder how reusing this footage changes the original idea behind it. Chances are this was supposed to be Jessica instead of Tracy. Or maybe the plan was to bring in a new personality all along and Tracy really will turn into a badass during this volume. I hope so because Ali Larter's proven how good she is at playing evil, but the flipside is that you have to feel bad for an actress who's essentially grappling with her fourth character on the show and now possibly having to turn her slightly-sleazy political advisor into an out-and-out villain. Ali Larter must be looking at every actor on the set with irrepressible envy for the way they can build their characters' voices and mannerisms over the seasons.

As with the Adam/Tracy shot, great way to put a new villain side-by-side with an ElderSuper and integrate the new villains with the previous ones. It's intriguing that Knox is the only one of the escaped Level 5 inmates in this dream. It could be that the other convicts will be caught or killed before they become precog-dream-worthy, or that Knox is by far the most vicious of the lot. If you're cynical, the reason that Weevil, Flint and The German aren't here is probably because the show hadn't conceived or cast them when they shot this sequence.

Angela wakes up from her dream and goes straight to the Apartment of Hospice Luxury to blame Future-Peter, who's not bothering with the Present-Peter visage while he's tying strings around the apartment the way Future-Hiro did.

As with their scene in the previous episode, the actors exude the characters' hostility. Angela is courteous enough to knock at the door before she comes in, but the glare she gives Future-Peter as she steps through the door is priceless.

Future-Peter: "There are things I know. Things you can't see, MOTHER. [Perfect condescension.] I've seen what you become. [Raised eyebrows that speak volumes.] I've seen what you do."

What she does? In the future? I have my own theory, but I wonder what he meant by that.

Future-Peter acts like he doesn't care whether three million people die as long as it's no one he knows and cares about. Angela pounces on this and brings up the subject of someone he does know and care about -- "someone like C-..."

C-?

C-C-C-?

^ ^ Currently suffering existential oblivion in a nonexistent alternate future!

You could poke holes into the plot and ask how Angela knew Claire had been scalped when she hadn't yet taken the reins on the Company and didn't apparently have anyone watching the house. I guess she could have dreamed it, but that'd be dreaming that the granddaughter she claimed to care about was getting her head ripped open, and I have a hard time believing even Angela could foresee something like that without trying to intervene.

All of that said, this brings up a nifty twist to Future-Peter telling Claire to stay in Costa Verde instead of coming to Odessa to transfuse Nathan; presumably if she'd packed her bags and left the house sooner she would've been long gone by the time Sylar got there, Sylar wouldn't have gotten her ability, the Company agents would have tasered and captured him without any problems, and history would have unfolded the way it originally did. So Future-Peter screwed up history just by telling Claire to stay at home.

Oh, no. It's that time of the episode, folks. Be brave. Here we go.

Maya visits the Apartment of Clairvoyance. Notice how the camera's focus starts with her chest area. Not a big deal, just saying. There's also some discussion to be had about Maya's expanding wardrobe; is she buying these vibrant orange tops and designer capri pants a couple of days after her brother died, or does Chandra's Crib just happen to have these items stashed in the closet for special occasions? Matthinder shippers and fanfic writers, you know you want to go there.

"Dr. Suresh?" Aw. I choose to believe it's a sign of admiration and respect rather than a hint that Maya enjoys "playing doctor."

You want to be happy for the actor. I can't remember many occasions when Sendhil got to do stunts, or even smile on this show, even if he's only smiling here because he's deranged. There's almost as much to be praised about Sendhil's performance as there is about Milo's: the overt confidence, the arrogant swagger, the nervous excitement. You look back on the way Mohinder's story thread dragged throughout so much of the first season and you want this storyline to make sense. You wish it could have been developed over a few more episodes so that there could be a solid rationale behind the character turning into this.

We learn that Mohinder has increased strength, agility and energy. And that he can work a Spider-Man wall-scaling sequence on a TV budget. And that Sendhil's been working out over the summer until his six-pack's ready to compete with Milo's. It's largely to Dania's credit that Maya gets through almost all of this scene maintaining eye contact with Mohinder.

Mohinder reassures Maya that it's only a matter of time before he figures out how to reverse abilities as well as create them, which is sort of sad because -- coupled with Sylar's promise to help Maya find Chandra -- the implication is that Maya will (per Maya Character Facet #4) fall into the arms of anyone who says he can help her.

Aaaaand here we are! The hands! The hair-stroking! The earlobe-fondling! The tearing off of the vibrant orange top! The rampant making out on a work surface! It's time for "Dr. Suresh" to finally "help" Maya with a thorough "examination"!

We return from the opening sequence to Matt in the desert.

^ ^ Pretty!

Besides that, there really isn't much to comment on in this story thread, so we're going to get it out of the way right now: Matt walks and walks and walks and walks and walks, and it's hot, oh it's hot, it's unbearably hot, and Matt's thirsty, so thirsty, he's so thirsty and hot, he can't go on, and, ooh, vulture! And eventually he collapses. That was riveting. Then Matt wakes up and a turtle tells him to use the root of a plant for water, which is funny, but then we realize it's not the turtle talking but in fact the awesome Ntware Mwine, who's totally wasted in this episode because first he's forced to plug Sprint and then he's forced to ask Matt whether he knows Britney Spears, which either says that a guy's pop culture knowledge in an African desert is 10 years behind, or that Kring's knowledge of pop culture is 10 years behind, which isn't really the point of the scene, but, anyway, the important thing we learn --

-- FINALLY! --

-- Is that Ntware's character Usutu knows Matt's name and has Isaac's ability to paint clairvoyant images. And that Matt isn't supposed to be in the desert. Which, duh.

Meanwhile, near Canine Central, Sylar's merrily strolling through the suburbs with his little red folder, the sun is shining, and a cheerful guitar strums over the soundtrack.

"No, no, no, you idiots! It's all wrong! I want something meaningful! Something with contextual relevance and theatrical impact! I WANT BROADWAY!"

We never get to know the characters on the screen, but it's a subtle nod to the graphic novels that we find out how this encounter with Sylar derails the life that Gael and Bianca would have had if they hadn't been killed here.

It's not like he would have come quietly, but to be fair, he is putting his hands up like they asked him to, he is backing off as they approach, and he doesn't get much of a chance to follow their instructions and get on the ground before they start plowing taser probes into him.

Between the cheerful guitar music and the perspective from the camera in the car, this whole scene was played for laughs. The goal in the previous episode was to make us hate Sylar as much as possible, and it seemed like that was still the goal at the start of this episode. This sketch is funny, but I can't help wondering whether it would have been more effective as a serious scene, one where we knew Sylar was destroying two people's lives and ensuring they'd never get a chance to raise a family and grow old together. There wasn't an obvious way to do that because we weren't introduced to these Company agents on the show and a couple of lines of dialogue weren't going to make us care much about them. But if the show wanted to vilify Sylar, showing how he destroys two people's future together would have been as effective an approach as any.

Welcome back, Midas Bob!

Welcome back, Ellectro-Entity!

Bob blames Elle for letting Sylar escape with the Mohindaire Cocktail and taunts her with recollections of emotional neediness after Mama Bishop died. This screams for explanatory flashbacks, but it also underlines how far the character has come from the Slusho-slurping sex kitten last season, and how psychologically complex the show has managed to make its Company cautionary tale.

Yamagato Empire. Hiro hires "discrete" [sic] private detectives to scour the scene and find Daphne's fingerprints, and we learn that Hiro has trust issues after witnessing Darth Ando work the Force Lightning on Future-Hiro. The "discrete" detectives identify the thief and her address, and Hiro and Ando teleport to Speedy Maison, where ... Oh, God, they actually stuck a CG Eiffel Tower in the background? Oh, show. Why stop there? Why not have some poor extra cycle past the window with a beret on his head and a baguette and a bottle of wine under his arm?

We cut to Boxleitner HQ, where Malden seems to have changed his mind about Nathan being his guy. The about-turn isn't as bad as some of the character's dialogue (among the most painful auditory inflictions, I kid you not: "God and politics -- risky bedfellows!"), but it's the first real glimpse we get of Tracy and the way Ali Larter's playing her. The whining and helplessness are gone, the dangly earrings are gone, and, perhaps sadly, so are the limb-ripping and nightstick-snapping. Instead, there's a no-nonsense briskness to this personality's stride and an impatient forcefulness to her mannerisms. And ...

... She's blatantly manipulating Malden with the batting eyelids and mischievous smile and irresistible charm.

All of which are to Ali's credit. I don't think the twinkle in Tracy's eyes is entirely the character: Ali genuinely seems to be relishing the chance to step into a new role, and a lot of that translates to the subtlety of the performance.

William Katt gets his cameo as the Greatest American Hero to ever end up as a slimy reporter. It's an awfully brief role which I wish could have been longer, but it does afford the show some continuity with the lasvegasniki.com storyline, and it does give Tracy the chance to threaten Katt with, "You run this story and I will hunt your ass down and destroy you." Which makes me go from merely liking the character to adoring her.

Costa Verde Beachfront. Claire restarts the Jackass Mutilation Tape and we witness Attempt #7:

It brings back everything that was great about Claire's character arc in the first season -- her confusion and despair -- but also ignores everything that was bad about her arc -- the selfishness and the bratty rebellious streak.

Beeman wonders on his blog what people thought of the effects sequence. One word: wow. Beautifully shot, to the point where I would never have guessed that the Peter portion was digital; the grainy quality of the camera helps, but the entire sequence as Peter flies in and pulls Claire from the track is so smooth that you can't tell where the stunt ends and the CG begins.

Also, one of the best snippets of dialogue of the night:

"What are you doing?"

"What does it look like? Trying to get hit by a train!"

We have an emotional moment between uncle and niece ...

... Which I don't want to ruin.

Paire shippers, rejoice!

Claire bemoans the way she can't defend herself and the way she's "just a victim." In Claire's defense, she did thwack and knife Sylar until he nearly bled to death.

Then Claire wins a

*PING!*

Dumb As Award for asking Peter to "teach" her to fight Sylar.

"What should I do, Peter?"

"Well, this ... is the TK Maneuver. And this ... is the Ellectrobolt. And this ... is the Supersmash. And this ... is the Levitation Slam. And this ... is the Nuclear Overload."

"Oh. I don't know if I can do any of those things."

Tracy visits Nathan at the hospital and gives millions of adoring fans the chance to see a cheeky Pasdar grin. As with Sendhil, it's such a rarity on the show that you want to smile with it. Then Nathan recalls the "pretty good time" he had with Niki and sees the blank expression from Tracy, and Adrian captures Nathan's disappointment so perfectly: his words sputter to a halt and you can't help laughing because he's so pitiful, but you also laugh because you know this personality won't be able to resist Nathan any more than the other two could.

Then Tracy takes a step forward to introduce herself, and the way this is shot ...

... is just phenomenal. It's beautiful on a surface level, purely because the way the light and the shade play across Ali's face is so photogenic. But when you think of the symbolism behind it, with the whole split-personality backstory and the hero/villain dichotomy between Niki and Jessica, you have to applaud. I don't know if that's Beeman or Goodman or Lieberman's magic, but whoever came up with that deserves a bouquet.

At the Midas Study ... THERE'S A CELLO SIGHTING! And then ... Damn, it's bye-bye to Midas Bob.

I'll let slide that Sylar went from West Coast to East Coast in, like, less than an hour. I'll even let slide that he found the Company facility so easily, because the first explanation that springs to mind is that these idiots were dumb enough to print Noah's Badass Villain profiles on company-headed paper and led Sylar straight to the address.

But Bob? Ned Ryerson? That's almost as unforgivable as killing off Papa Sulu! Midas Bob, who flew around the world to recruit Mohinder and reached out to Niki and loaned Monica an iPod.

Farewell, Bob! Your scenes were a pleasure to review!

Elle looks like she's somewhere between choking and gasping on the sight of her dad in the chair. Kudos to Kristen for the way she played this, because it was the first scene since the one where she gave her mini-bio to Peter to convey how completely the actress has gotten under the character's skin. The way she plays it, it looks like she's not just grieving -- she's grappling with grief itself. I'd love to see a flashback that embellishes that, because we don't know if Elle's ever really cared about anyone besides her parents, so we don't know if she even realizes what she's supposed to feel when she finds her father dead.

Elle goes down to The Basement and immediately releases Noah. Sylar shows up to TK Elle to the ground. It's telling that he lets Noah shoot him repeatedly instead of TK'ing the bullets in mid-air or the gun out of Noah's hands to begin with. It could be that he wanted to test Claire's ability with bullets, but more likely he just wanted to demonstrate Claire's ability to get a reaction out of Noah, which is further evidence that he likes to mess with the Bennets' heads before he tries to trap or kill them.

Was there any chance that Sylar was going to scalp Elle? The tension and suspense are built effectively enough that -- at least for a moment -- you wonder. It's hard to believe the Sylar piano theme would be playing if this wasn't a triumphant moment for the villain, or that the writers would have Peter-in-Weevil going as berserk as he is in his cell -- beating the windows and bellowing at Sylar -- if something seriously bad wasn't about to happen. But then, that's the idea.

Elle goes Uber-Ellectric, Sylar gets KO'd, and the doors in The Basement all open. The out-of-it perspective as Elle regains consciousness was an interesting choice by Beeman; it works because we're left feeling as powerless as she is, and the whole "less-is-more" horror approach plays into these villains seeming scarier. It's a little disappointing that we don't know who breaks out: we get a glimpse of Weevil and Knox and The German, and a blurry image of the one who's going to turn out to be Eric Doyle, but I wish we'd at least gotten a look at the rest of the villains who are going to cause that "unimaginable destruction."

Here's where the tone of the episode backfires. Comic relief is great, and balancing out an episode as intense as this with a few jokes works in theory, but when you go from Elle's short-circuit and the worst of the superpowered population on the loose to this:

... You know something's gone wrong. The transition from a scene as involving as the previous one to a scene as lighthearted as this one falls flat. It's great that Hiro admits why he's so mistrustful towards Ando, but it's impossible to get lost in the narrative because you're so much more invested in the characters from the previous scene. You know you should care what happens in Daphne's apartment because The Formula needs to be retrieved, but you don't, not when it's peppered with Catwoman jokes and humor about gold bars and medallions; all you want is for the scene to be over so that you can find out what happened to Elle and Noah and Sylar and Peter-in-Weevil.

We cut to Nathan at the hospital. Nathan tells Peter that he's been offered a position as a senator. Peter congratulates Nathan with a bordering-on-deadpan "That's incredible." I'd love to know how it all went down in Future-Peter's original timeline: whether Nathan went public about his abilities and still got the job, and whether Peter's totally unenthused because it's the start of Nathan orchestrating the mass superhero culling; or whether it's just that Peter really doesn't give a crap about Nathan's political career because something else is going to happen to make any decision Nathan makes now a moot point. Or maybe Future-Peter just doesn't give a crap about politics.

Like Hiro with Ando, Future-Peter comes clean with Nathan by revealing the scarred Future-visage and admitting he's the one who shot Nathan. Milo and Adrian deliver stellar performances, but what works in this scene is the way the whole timeline-altering end-of-the-world issue is second to the betrayal issue. The focus isn't the damage Future-Peter causes to history or the impact Nathan's speech has on the superpowered population; it's Future-Peter's guilt over lying and trying to kill his brother, and it's Nathan's willingness to forgive that because Peter -- no matter which timeline he's from -- is still his brother. It's the family conflict at the center of the drama that makes the story so compelling.

Nathan calls Tracy to accept her offer, Katt shows up next to Tracy's car with footage of Nathan and Jessica at the Corinthian, and then:

There's a new Ice Queen in town!

Peter swooping in to save Claire from a train? ... was good. Elle going Ellectric in The Basement? ... was great. Tracy going cryokinetic on the Greatest American Hero? Now THAT? ... is awesome.

It feels like less of an homage to Terminator than an appropriation, but it's so cool that it almost makes it OK.

We return to The Basement and learn that they've pretty much got the place back under control. Which is kind of a shame because I would have wanted to see what happened as the inmates left the building and moved onto the streets, at least more than I would have wanted to see Ando picking up gold and Hiro reading the inscription on a medallion.

Angela visits The Basement before Elle has a chance to test the brain matter/wood chipper theory on Sylar. It suddenly occurs to me that Angela might not even know how her son was locked up in this building for months after exploding over New York. Probably another detail from Season Two we're supposed to forget, but I wonder if that would make Angela more or less ticked off with Bob and Elle right about now.

Angela: "With your father's death, the chain of command falls to me."

Bob outranked Angela? I always figured the Petrellis were second only to Linderman and that Angela just didn't care about day-to-day operations within The Company. Apparently Angela was closer to Papa Deveaux and Papa Sulu's level, which still seems to be higher than Maury or Victoria and the rest of the Lesser ElderSupers but nevertheless comes as a surprise. I don't care if they've shelved every other idea from Season Two -- that "1977" episode needs to happen!

Elle: "I ... we ... caught Sylar."

Again, great delivery by Kristen. You wonder why Elle paused to rephrase it, but it's delivered so naturally that you buy Elle's insecurity.

Angela: "Good for you!"

Hilarious at the same time as infuriating. You hate Angela for being so insensitive, but even more so for treating Elle like a child.

Was Elle doing such a shoddy job as a Company agent? She struck me as a little reckless when it came to Ellectrocuting an Irish pub owner, and she failed to zap the guy who's about to be revealed as Angela's son, but to only have stayed because Midas Bob was sticking his neck out for her? That's harsh. She doesn't seem any more incompetent than the other agents we've seen -- on the show and in the graphic novels -- so I'm going to go with the theory that Angela had a prophetic dream on her way to The Basement and realized she needs to release Elle in order to fix what's happened. It's also the only way I can reconcile Angela releasing an unstable Company agent into the world when she's likely to blab the truth to the first person who listens and Ellectrocute the first person who looks at her the wrong way. I would have expected The Company to have a firm procedure in place for agents who want to return to a normal life. It probably involves killing them.

With the central drama resolved, we return to Speedy Maison. Daphne shows up and looks mightily p**sed about Hiro holding her medallion. Hiro teleports around the room, Daphne reveals that The Formula's behind the Mona Lisa, thereby awarding Ando a

*PING!*

Dumb As Award for not looking around the apartment thoroughly enough. The outcome is that Daphne runs off with The Formula.

So, at the end of this episode, how has the Hiro story moved beyond where it began? Hiro started out looking for Daphne because she had The Formula, and he's still looking. He found her because the detectives got him an address, and now he can find her because he's attached a tracking device to the medallion. Which is nice and all, but does anyone get the sense that this story thread is lacking momentum? Daphne's an entertaining character, but she needs more to do than chasing Hiro around an apartment for a medallion.

Mohinder wakes up in the Apartment of Clairvoyance and discovers that -- dun-dub-DUN! -- he's becoming ...

... part of an appropriation of The Fly! Now all we need is for Maya to blow his brains out. Don't do it, Heroes!

Noah returns to Canine Central. I can't figure out if we miss the tearful reunion because Noah's so busy gathering his files, or because everyone's so freaked out from that last time Noah came home that he's not even going to ask if anyone's happy to see him.

Claire randomly comes down the stairs and there's an Aww! moment. Noah cryptically tells Claire that "something" has happened, which immediately sets alarm bells ringing after a season of Bennet Secrets & Lies. To everyone's amazement, Noah follows suit with Hiro and Future-Peter and reveals everything about the Basement Cons and their abilities. We learn that Knox has the ability to absorb fear and convert it to strength, that Flint is a blue-flame firestarter, that The German is Magneto, and that Weevil ... is really named Jesse, but that he's also apparently so bad that Noah doesn't want to tell us about him. His profile says "Sound Manipulation," which may or may not be Echo's ability from the webisodes. Again, the show seems to be very cagey about revealing these characters; I hope we find out at least a little about them before the volume's over.

Claire begs Noah to let her be proactive and courageous and idealistic and help bring the Basement Cons in. Which brings her a step closer to becoming Elle, but also leads to a shock when it turns out that Noah and Sandra are happy to leave Claire under the protection of ...

... Mommy Firestarter?! Which, yay, but also huh?, because this skipped over a whole bunch of questions that really need to be answered. As far as we know Noah didn't even know Meredith was alive, so how he found her or contacted her is anyone's guess. It seems like next week's episode goes into a lot more detail about the vibe between Meredith and Sandra, which is a relief because you wonder how Sandra could be OK with Claire's biological mom dropping in and undermining her. You also have to wonder how Noah settled on Meredith as the model protector for Claire instead of the Haitian. Not a plot hole by any means, but definitely a development in the story that brings up a lot of questions.

Future-Peter shows up at The Basement, presumably with the intent to remerge Present-Peter's consciousness with Present-Peter's body and be all, "Hey, Past Self, it's me! Well, shucks, I screwed up history by making Sylar invincible, but hey, no one found out! And I saved Claire from getting hit by a train! And I decorated your apartment with string! It wasn't a total waste of a trip! Laters!"

I couldn't help wondering how much Future-Peter knows about the bond between Angela and Sylar. When he says "Sylar" here, it's not clear whether it's an exclamation along the lines of "My mortal enemy!" or whether it's more "My brother!"

Angela doesn't care one way or another, she's just appalled that Future-Peter chose Weevil as a vessel for Present-Peter's consciousness. Which I'm not sure I agree with, because Francis Capra's an ideal choice to portray Peter as bewildered and anguished and desperate to warn his family about the impostor posing as him. Only problem is he doesn't get much of an opportunity to do that. The moments at the gas station with Weevil's reflection show that the actor's obviously capable of playing Peter, but for whatever reason all we see of the person inhabited by Peter's consciousness is Peter. It's not necessarily a bad move to show us Peter when everyone else sees Weevil, but it would be nice if Francis Capra got a chance to play more than a reflection.

Peter finds himself not quite himself, then gets mixed up with a group of morally questionable associates involved in morally questionable activities. Recycled plot device? Pretty much, although this one does come across as a lot more compelling than the last one.

Flint torches some random woman at the gas station and The German beats the living daylights out of some random car driver. And Peter ... just watches this happen? I guess he could be so confused about the bodyswap that he's too disoriented to intervene, but he was coherent enough to phone Nathan so it's not like he's completely zoned out. Maybe he figured it was too late to save the burned-to-a-crisp lady or that he wasn't strong enough to take on three superpowered cons at the same time. Or Peter's just an idiot who couldn't make up his mind what to do. You decide. Whichever explanation is correct, I thought it was puzzling.

And so we come to The Big Reveal. Angela steps into Sylar's cell, accompanied with solemn choral music that tells us something gothically chilling and momentous is about to take place. Angela loosens Sylar's restraints and assures Sylar she can give him "what all boys crave from their mothers." Which isn't really an admission, but Angela's eyes here?

There's a concern and sincerity in that expression that goes beyond metaphorical maternity. There's warmth in that look, which is so unusual from a character like Angela that if there's a caveat to undo what Angela says, it's going to feel less like the show played us and more like it misled us.

"My name is Sylar, and you are not my mother."

"Oh, but I am, dear. I am."

^ ^ On-screen reaction imitating our reaction?

You can hear the collective THUD! of jaws hitting the floor across the nation. It's not the story that shocks us, it's the fact that the show was willing to stoop low enough to go there at all. I predicted that Peter and Sylar were brothers back in "Parasite," but the catch is I WAS BEING SARCASTIC. I didn't think they'd actually resort to soap-opera tactics in order to keep the principal villain relevant.

Is there a catch? I hope so. I hope it turns out there's a DNA-splicing test-tube twist that culminates in a mass Parkman-and-Haitian-Whammy-induced conspiracy in which no one ever had a clue that Sylar was related to Peter and Nathan. Because that would suck, but it would be less desperate a maneuver than making Sylar a Petrelli and a brother to Peter and Nathan.

I'm not counting this against the episode. It's lifted right out of daytime soaps, but I'm putting faith in the show that when they say "Nothing's what it seems" they really mean it.

Besides the slow pace of the Hiro and Matt threads, this episode had almost nothing working against it and almost everything working for it. My complaints are mostly about what we didn't see, and in most cases the weaker parts we did see are only weak because they're starting out slowly. This episode continued the thematic work that the premiere began, it showcased some terrific performances from Milo, Kristen and Cristine, and it recaptured the emotional resonance that made the first season so compelling. It made us care about the characters and their predicaments, and it made us want to see where the story goes next.

4 out of 5