Heroes 1.15 - "Run!"
Airdate: February 12th, 2007

I've written elsewhere about my distaste for Heroes' relentlessly annoying promos, and I must give props to Entertainment Weekly's awesome Gillian Flynn for putting it so perfectly in her recent review: "Finally, a request to NBC to stop those bombastic promos, which promise that every next episode will be so shocking we may die." Sing it, girl! This show has plenty of delicious thrills packed into every millisecond. No need to gild the lily, you know?

That said, the latest pretension-oozing catchphrase ("Someone flies, someone dies!") has me all kinds of worried. I'm terrified that the "someone dies" just might be Ando, who I have grown to love and who provides a very necessary counterpoint to enthusiastic Hiro.

This eppy finds the duo going undercover as bellhops in order to retrieve a shady lady's hideously ugly bag. If they succeed, she'll introduce them to Linderman. Ando is smitten with this duplicitous lass and so are we, because she's played by the glorious Missi Pyle. If you guys can, I don't know, give her some powers or think of another convoluted way to keep her around, I'd be much obliged. Anyway, she's up to no good and imprisons Hiro in a closet and drags Ando off into the sunset. Please be careful, Ando!

Meanwhile, Mohinder sets off to meet a new Hero named Zane, but Sylar gets their first. Mo's storylines occasionally put me to sleep, due to their gently lulling nature and his beautifully sculpted face and the fact that they are kind of boring. But teaming him up with Sylar, who is now impersonating Zane? Good call! Zane's kind of dull power, by the way, is melting stuff, but from Mohinder's reaction, you'd think it was curing cancer or something.

The whole Claire's Totally Screwed Up Family story also gains traction this week and I am even more invested than I was before. After Mom blackmails Dad with the news of their daughter, Claire's bioparents finally meet face to face and Claire sneakily listens in on the whole conversation.

Unfortunately, Nathan doesn't seem that into meeting her, but I bet he's just hiding his true feelings, which he always does, which is why all the fangirls love him so much. There's nothing that makes us swoon more than an emotionally unavailable character played by a ridiculously charismatic actor, right? I can't quite figure out biomommy's deal - is she devious or just lost? I kind of feel like blackmail wasn't her initial intention, but I could be wrong. I do love that Jessalyn Gilsig, so I hope the character's in it for the long haul.

Oh, and when Claire gets home, her other mommy has now completely lost her memory and doesn't remember anything, not even the yappy dog or Claire. Heartbreaking!

Finally, Matt still has the crappiest luck in the history of the world. He's now working as a bodyguard for Linderman's creepy lawyer, and he runs into a whole mess of trouble when Jessica gets assigned to kill said lawyer. Assigned by Linderman, no less. I know!

Anyway, Mirror Niki tries to reason with Jessica, and that works out about as well as you would expect it to. Jessica kind of awesomely kills the lawyer and tosses Matt out of a window, but he's OK and actually ends up making off with a bunch of diamonds. Maybe his luck isn't so bad! Except you know this isn't going to end well. It's not like," he makes off with a bunch of diamonds and takes a nice, relaxing vacation with his wife and they live happily ever after and Clea DuVall becomes his best friend." This is Matt we're talking about.

Overall, this is sort of a good, middle-of-the-road episode in which a few plotlines are moved along nicely, but nothing terribly earth-shattering takes place. But the nice thing about Heroes is that, even with this kind of episode, there are still at least a few places to go "Ooooh!" and "Aaah!" and all that.

By the way, Jessica's next target is Nathan. Watch out for the fangirls, Jessica: their combined rage is way more scary than Sylar could ever dream of being.

iTunes Links:

Heroes - Series
Heroes - Season 1
This episode - "Run!"