Since finishing last night’s installment of HEROES, I’ve been sitting at my desk trying to figure out exactly what kind of superpower the executives at NBC have. Is it the power of persuasion, or simply the ability to control my mind?
Once again, the NBC marketing department fooled me into getting far too excited about the addition of two new characters into the HEROES family. Hiro’s father, George Takei (STAR TREK — in case you’ve lived in a cave for forty years), and Claire’s Bio-mom, played by Jessalyn Gilsig (NIP/TUCK).
Yet as I expected, their appearance wasn’t until the final few minutes of the episode, where we learn that Hiro and Ando were indeed ‘kidnapped’ by Hiro’s father (no surprised there) and that Claire’s biological mother is indeed alive — again, not shocked, but her power to control fire, okay that was cool. Bonus points for Hiro though, the fact that he stuck by Ando’s side shows that you don’t actually need superpowers to be a hero! (yes, that read as cheesy as it sounds).
So what were we left with? Sitting through an hour that revolved around two of HEROES most annoying characters — Matt (Greg Grunberg) and Niki (Ali Larter). How sweet, Matt and his wife are having a baby. It doesn’t take super-powers to predict that the baby’s most likely not his. And Niki, poor multi-personality Niki. Who’d have thought that an actress as stunning as Ali Larter would be saddled with the series most tedious story-line. Can bad-ass Jessica please ‘kill’ annoying Niki so Ali Larter and more importantly the audience, can start having some fun.
Of course with Sylar’s final line “How’s Claire” and yet another phenomenal promo for next week (NBC marketing deserves an Emmy for their promos alone), there’s no doubt I’ll be back here next week to find out who Claire’s real dad is (Nathan? Mr. Linderman?) and why exactly George Takei is so disappointed with his son. 
