Heroes 1:9 review

Oops. We're really late with this one. Tony checks out the ninth episode of Heroes - from the first season, the BBC2 one, for anyone who's confused...

Since Hiro and Ando seem to be the eternal highlight of this series, we’ll start off with them. Following Hiro’s decision last week to travel through time in order to save a girl he’s just met, Ando is left in the diner on his own. We’ve already seen the photo of Hiro and Charlie on the board, but it’s not until this episode that Ando notices. It turns out the photo was taken six months ago. Sadly, we don’t actually see Hiro until the very end of the episode, which shows him six months in the past, telling Charlie he’s going to save her life. Considering she’s only been in Heroes for about one and a half episodes, she’s almost managed to ruin it by taking away the best character.  

Fortunately, in his absence the rest of the cast just about manage to keep things interesting. DL and his wife/wives Niki/Jessica are still having marital problems, and the poor little can’t-act son is caught in the middle of it all. With the two men of the family on the run from the two women, the Jessica part of the group is busy buying herself a sniper rifle, with the intention of shooting DL’s poor baldy little head off his shoulders. Harsh, but quicker than a divorce.  

Mohinder is in India still doing the whole self-doubt thing, and meets the boy he saw in his dream. Apparently, he doesn’t come to people in their dreams; they come to him. Like it makes a difference. Anyway, through one of these dreams, Mohinder learns that he had a sister, who – surprise, surprise – was special. Sadly, her condition caused her to snuff it, just months before her father found a cure.  

Elsewhere, Flying Man Nathan Petrelli sees the missing painting, which depicts his brother lying dead in a pool of blood outside Claire’s school, and decides the best way to deal with it is to cover the painting with black paint. Unfortunately for him, Simone has a photo of the painting (ingenious!) which she shows to Peter later in the episode.  

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Being a bit on the slow side, rather than cowering in a corner, sucking his thumb and vowing never to go near that school, he opts to face almost certain death instead. So off to the school he goes, where he meets Claire; only he doesn’t know it’s Claire because some daft tart (Jackie) is pretending to be the cheerleader that saved the people in the burning train.  

Pretty soon, Sylar turns up and cuts the top of Jackie’s head off, thinking she’s the special cheerleader. This is all due to Jackie’s lies, so there’s probably a moral here, but I can’t for the life of me work out what it is. Regardless, we finally get to see Mr Sylar in action, as he uses some kind of psychic power to cut through Jackie’s skull. After smacking Claire across the room and seeing her heal, he realises his mistake and goes after her.

Fortunately, she’s got a floppy-haired friend to come rescue her; Peter and Sylar have a bit of a grapple on the roof, and they both fall off together. Peter smashes his head and dies. A happy ending all round.  

No, sadly not. Claire finds him on the ground bleeding and he takes her power and heals himself. Oh well. Anyway, Sylar is nowhere to be seen, having run off into the woods, where’s he’s confronted by Eden and the Haitian. Here, Eden reveals her ability (apart from having huge bug eyes) – she can make people do things just by telling them to. She tells him to go to sleep, and they’re able to catch him. However, rather than just kill him and solve everyone’s problems, they take him away peacefully.

In other news, Isaac managed to kick the drugs. Yay! Then following Mr Bennet’s orders, Eden made him start doing them again. Boo!