Previously, the show got hooked up on telling a whole back story to Sylar that just didn’t contribute much to the relevant events, and true to form, in this story they jump through the same pointless hoops once more. But there is a benefit to this pedantic pacing; there is no time to have Hiro and Ando being terminally stupid, or for Sylar and Microwave-boy to rehash any more Magneto and Pyro scenes from X-Men 2. A bad sign for me is when things start to become unintentionally funny. It’s getting to the point where, when they mention Costa Verde, it comes out like Macho Grande in Airplane!, as in “Over Costa Verde? No, I’ll never get over Costa Verde!” Eventually, the first disclosure comes while Peter has flown to Noah’s secret lock-up to get his guns and money, when Parkman realises that Mohinder hasn’t told him about meeting Noah prior to the abductions, and being aware they would happen. Parkman and super-strength Mohinder have an entirely one sided-fight while Noah escapes only to be caught by a returning Peter. The SWAT teams are on their way as they saw Peter in the lock-up; they must leave now! And, almost everything else we get given here is entirely predictable. Noah and Denko don’t get on, Noah has his own agenda, Angela is manipulating people from afar, Nathan is dumber than a bag of spanners. Sheesh – we know all this! The SWAT guys arrive and catch Mohinder when he uses his Mak’tar Stealth Haze, by running in front of them to be shot full of tranquilisers. Parkman also gets caught because presumably he can’t be bothered to make them shoot each other, but Peter turns up and zooms away with him. They go to Isaac Mendez’s old studio, so that Parkman can paint pictures of city-wide destruction; it’s identical to the good ol’ days of season one. How do you stop an exploding man? At this point I started to chuckle the nervous laugh of a man who has the winning lottery numbers, but didn’t get time to buy a ticket. Please, no more. I accept season one was entertaining, but trying to rework the same plot already doesn’t suggest that the writers think the attention span of the viewers is miniscule. It also encourages me to think that Tim Kring is sat in corner looking at a blank wall hoping his eyes will go white and he’ll come around and find a brilliant script in his lap. If, indeed, that does transpire, possibly because Bryan Fuller writes it and puts it there, I fear that the guillotine will have already come down on the Heroes once and for all.
