WRITER: Tim Kring DIRECTOR: Paul Shapiro
CAST: Ali Larter (Niki Sanders), Milo Ventimiglia (Peter Petrelli), Tawny Cypress (Simone Deveaux), Sendhil Ramamurthy (Mohinder Suresh), Santiago Cabrera (Isaac Mendez), Noah Gray-Cabey (Micah Sanders), Masi Oka (Hiro Nakamura), Leonard Roberts (D.L Hawkins), Jack Coleman (Mr Bennet), Hayden Panettiere (Claire Bennet), Greg Grunberg (Matt Parkman), Adrian Pasdar (Nathan Petrelli), D. Elliot Woods (SWAT Officer Simmons), Christopher Eccleston (Claude), Jimmy Jean-Louis (The Haitian), James Kyson Lee (Ando Masahashi) & Link Baker (Broken Nose)
Two weeks later: Peter is in hospital after his nightmarish vision, Niki has been jailed, Claire is suffering from amnesia, Greg's investigation into Sylar hits a dead-end and Hiro decides to claim his sword...Just a few episodes after we jumped back in time six months, the chronology of Heroes takes another leap, this time forward by two weeks. Following Peter's terrifying vision of himself blowing up and destroying New York, the young nurse has been hospitalized and is being watched over by his brother Nathan.
The multiple storylines by creator-writer Tim Kring hark back to the dense earlier episodes of the season. All of the characters are revisited, making for a packed episode full of incident and interesting new turns. Hiro's decision to steal the sword he saw psychic artist Isaac draw, in the hope its ownership will restabilize his time-bending powers, is the most entertaining. Masi Oka has proven himself to be the most iconic and enjoyable character on the show, so even when his plots are quite simplistic they're always good fun to watch.
Niki (Ali Larter) was a character who began the season with the most intriguing power (a sort of split-personality disorder), but she ended the first half stuck in a narrative that had broken away from the central plot of the show. Niki, husband D.L, and son Micah were never embroiled in the "save the cheerleader" mission or even aware of the nuke about to wipeout New York, so their storyline became a little distracting to watch.
In Godsend, Niki remains superfluous to the bigger picture behind Heroes, but her incarceration at a max-security prison, threatened with the death penalty after admitting multiple murder, certainly lends more weight and interest to her storyline. She's certainly experiencing the downside of being a superhero compared to the rest of the cast.
Hayden Panettiere continues to surprise me week after week. You'd be forgiven for expecting her to be talentless, thrown into the mix to appeal to teenaged boys with her curvy good looks. But she constantly manages to amaze me as Claire, giving her character real believability and a touching sense of vulnerbaility. Far from being just the resident hottie, she actually provides the show with its most humanity.
Following Fallout, Claire's character has taken the biggest leap in development. She is now aware of her father's real involvement in her life, having teamed up with the mysterious Haitian (Jimmy Jean-Louis, finally doing more than just look enigmatic). It will be very interesting to see where this partnership leads in future weeks.
Jack Coleman remains nicely unpredictable as Claire's father Mr Bennet, here scuppering mind-reader Matt's investigation into his paper firm. Mr Bennet also makes a typically ominous visit to Mohinder, hoping to join forces...
The big news for fans is the arrival of a new hero in this episode, namely Claude, a British pickpocketer played by Christopher Ecclestone (Doctor Who). Ecclestone's appearance is little more than a cameo here, but it's a brilliant piece of casting nontheless. I'm hopeful Ecclestone can inject some of his playful-yet-serious sensibility into the show as the Invisible Man.
Overall, Tim Kring's kickstart to the second half of season one is an exciting and enlightening mix. The characters are always great fun to watch and the premise remains enticing, even now it's been refocused. Paul Shapiro's directing is excellent, with some fantastic set design for Peter's visions and Niki's grim prison.
There's lots for fans to savour here and my interest in how the rest of the season unfolds has been piqued.
