My holiday from Heroes

Hey gang, I'm back from my hiatus, and ready for...ahh crap, Heroes.

Yes, Heroes was the first show back from the winter festivities, and it was a double-barreled blast of boring. As is easiest, I'll be breaking it down by characters:

First off, Hiro. The Jamaitian did some white guy voodoo on him, and he teleported out of the circus. He shows up in Japan, spouting random pop culture jargon, and stops the world's slowest purse snatching in front of the largest crowd of disinterested people ever. The cops deliver him to Ando, and several segments of tired "Oh hey, I think he's making comic book nerd references" later, they figure out he's supposed to go to Florida. That's it. That's two episodes of storyline for Hiro; he was in one place, and now he's going to another.

Claire: She's doing happy go lucky grunt work at the Sullivan Brother Carnival, then Lydia pulls into second place in the "Smartest Character on Heroes" contest by tricking Claire into walking into Dirt McGirt's trailer and seeing a Primatech box, instantly turning from "Idiot who walked eyes-wide-open into a cult" to "Idiot who is going to attempt some espionage, even though she's an idiot". Multiple Man won't leave her alone though, until she tricks him into an ambush at the *sigh* House of Mirrors. Then she leaves to go to Nathan's fancy military funeral and has a heart-to-heart chat with Peter.

Ahh Peter...now that Nathan is officially dead, he's decided for the 9th time to be more of a hero. His first heroic act, getting shot by a disgruntled office worker after his cunning plan to bore him to sleep with a long monologue doesn't work. Unfortunately, Claire eventually shares her power with him, so he's able to heal up and try to save the world some more, one long stare at a time.

In the only remotely cool thing that happened in this doubleheader of suck, Bennett gets the drop on Speedy McGonzales and Abu Ghirab's him in the freezer of a chinese restaurant. After beating the crap out of him (offscreen, of course) for information, he's just about to start carving him up when the ex-partner/future lover/current nap inducer changes his mind, and instead they play all nicey-nice to get the layout of the carnival. Unfortunately, Bannett says the word "normal" about 70 times in a 4 minute conversation, which spooks Speedy and he bails.

Samuel takes on the monumental task of attempting to make anyone give a rat's ass about Dr. Deafenstein (or if you prefer, Deaf-N-Furter), revealing that he sent her the cello (and showing the giant ass compass painted on the back, conveniently not shown to the audience before now...probably because the writers didn't think about it until just now), and then having her use it to play Pied Piper to a homeless hero with the power to encourage plant growth. Samuel and Gardener Guy go back to the carnival where they use their powers to create a suburban lawn. Fascinating stuff, for reals. For really reals.

Anyway, Sylar (Smartest person on Heroes, for the record...third place is a tie between Bennett and Sylar's baseball cap) finds out that he can't kill anymore. Instead, he uses whatever forgotten empathy crap to swipe Lydia's power, then he gets a sweet magic tattoo which turns out to be a picture of Claire. We end with Sylar outside of Claire's window, and the return of Chuck. It's a show I watched, fell out of love with, but everybody says it's gotten better. I'll believe it if I see it.

Anyway, new Heroes tonight, 100th episode of How I Met Your Mother, and some 20 years of Simpsons thoughts. Smell ya later.