By Faith McQuinn

For all you non-believers out there who thought HEROES had fallen into a sophomore slump, I hope you caught this week’s episode. It just might be the best of the season thus far.

Sylar (Zachary Quinto) and Maya (Dania Ramirez) are getting a bit friendly, but he only likes her for her deadly power. Alejandro (Shalim Ortiz) doesn’t like it and the boys tussle. The usual words are exchanged: “I’ll let you die if my sister’s eyes bleed again” and “I plan to kill you and your sister if I ever get my powers back.” You know, normal stuff.

Hiro (Masi Oka) finally reveals his love to Yaeko (Eriko Tamura) with pretty bad results. It turns out nothing’s worse than a samurai scorned because Kensei (David Anders) turns Hiro, Yaeko, and her father over to White Beard.

Peter (Milo Ventimiglia) is finally heading out of Ireland with Caitlin (Katie Carr) in tow. She’s distraught about her brother’s death and declares that she must travel with Peter “to kill that bitch.” Hell yeah, more power to the Irish lasses! They are heading to the building Peter painted in his Isaac Mendes haze. But, just as the show goes, I’ll save the rest of that story for the end.


While Caitlin and Peter hop a plane to Canada, Claire (Hayden Penettiere) is not making the cheer squad. In an effort to cheer her up, West (Nicholas D’Agosto) suggests that he and Claire give head cheerleader Debbie (Dianna Agron) a taste of her own medicine.  In a truly ingenious stunt, Claire gets Debbie alone. A masked West swoops down, picks up Claire, and drops her on the stairs leaving Debbie thinking Claire is dead and a freaky flying man is out to get her. Needless to say, the cops show up, don’t believe her crazy story, and Debbie is kicked off the team for drinking on school property. Must be nice to have super powers.

I wonder if Monica (Dana Davis) saw West fly or Claire regenerate, that she could do it too. All I know is that I better start seeing cooler things from this girl. Last week, it was double dutch; this week, it’s gymnastics. Mohinder (Sendhill Ramamurthy) is testing Monica’s abilities, and I feel like he’d really want to see her do more than just do flips on a balance beam. Bob (Stephen Tobolowsky) obviously doesn’t want her to do even that. To his horror, Mohinder finds out that Monica is to be the first test subject of the altered virus. He can’t bring himself to risk her powers and subsequently destroys the entire supply.

I’m waiting for the big Company shakedown, but instead Bob calmly says that he was out of line. And in an attempt to keep him in line in the future, he’s assigning Mohinder a partner—Niki (Ali Larter). Or is it Jessica? I’m pretty sure it’s Jessica, but it’s so hard to tell with her “power.” I think Mohinder is in for an ass kicking pretty soon.

On the other side of the world in the Ukraine, Noah (Jack Coleman) and the Haitian (Jimmy Jean-Louis) question a Company man about the whereabouts of the other seven Mendez paintings. It seems the Haitian has fine-tuned his powers. Last season, he could only erase memories back to a certain time period; now he has the ability to delete specific memories. Has Noah been training him? Where did he learn this new trick? Does it really matter? It’s cool (and a bit creepy) no matter how it happened. After causing some mental and physical damage, they discover the paintings’ location.

This, ladies and gentleman, was the best part of the episode. After rewinding and pausing a few times, I picked up a few things. One of the paintings is of Claire lying broken and bloody on some stairs…much as she looked after West dropped her earlier in the episode. Another is a close up of a hand holding a vile. Could this be Bob holding the altered virus? Another is of Kensei and Hiro fighting. One more shows Mohinder, with a broken nose, holding a just-fired gun, and then of course, there’s the painting of dead Noah Bennett. I didn’t get a good look at all of them, but I’ve got to know more about these paintings.


Maybe more will be revealed next week since this episode ended with Peter and Caitlin traveling a year into the future to find New York City evacuated. After finding the building in his painting, Peter finds a note from a man named Adam. (Interesting, Mohinder eyed a file for one Adam Monroe.) Desperate to figure out what it all means, Peter unknowingly jumps forward in time. Yes, I realize that finding out what caused the evacuation of the Big Apple is cool and all, but I’m still reeling over those paintings!