Heroes: Patience Wears Thin

Dammit, Heroes, you are starting to get on my last nerve.  I work so hard to put my faith in you and keep believing in your potential to thrill and entertain me, but like a junkie cousin who cleans up just long enough to borrow money, you just disappoint me and break my heart.  I know you’re brimming with potential, but your stories just keep circling the drain.  How the flying hell can a solar eclipse take away a genetic mutation?  Who’s writing the inane 9^th Wonders comics that keep showing up long after Isaac’s death?  Just how many freaking times can Sylar waffle between good and evil in the course of an hour?  And most importantly, why do I still care?!?  Since I’ve got much more important things to do like getting ready for family gatherings with mass consumption of mashed potatoes and dark meat, I’ll boil things down to a brief heads up on each over-scattered cluster of characters:

Arthur & Mohinder: Artie acts all high and mighty, makes a bunch of precog drawings, orders Sylar around, and turns the screws on Mohinder to figure out the ecliptical power drain.  Mo cowers, complains, freaks out about needing a cure for his mutations, and then makes himself a cocoon from which he emerges non-mutated, since apparently the eclipse destroys even half-assed defective synthetic powers.  Whatever.

Matt & Daphne: A pre-eclipse Hiro takes himself, Matt, & Ando to Daphne’s Kansas homestead.  Daphne’s freaked out and wants nothing to do with Matt, especially with her powers gone.  Cue an emotional reveal that without her powers, Daph is crippled and didn’t want Matt to see her like that.  Whip out the hankies, ladies, ‘cause Mr. Sensitivity loves her anyways.

Hiro & Ando: Hiro’s still 10, and decides that the only way to save the day is by reading ahead in the next issue of 9^th Wonders and letting predestination do all his work for him.  Seth Green & Breckin Meyer cameo as comic book shop owners who may have all the answers, but they’re shorted on screen time this week.

Peter & Nathan: Angela sends the brothers down to the tropics to add The Haitian to their ranks.  He was instrumental in stopping Arthur once, maybe he can do it again.  Pete & Nate do a little bickering about their assorted parental issues, but nothing of great importance comes to light.

Tracy: She’s pretending to be on Angela’s side, but Arthur tasks her with rounding up Marine recruits for a villainous army.  Yikes.

Noah & Claire: The father/daughter duo bond over blunt object combat training, but are rudely interrupted by Sylar & Elle.  Claire heroically takes a bullet in the shoulder for her dad, but for once she’s actually hurt.

Sylar & Elle: Sylar’s good.  Elle provokes him, Sylar’s bad.  Eclipse happens, no more power hunger, Sylar’s good again.  Makes out with Elle, but Noah, who is clearly as sick of Sylar’s constant  back n’ forth as I am, lies in wait with a sniper rifle pointed at his flip floppy brain.

TO BE CONTINUED!

Last word: There’s a rumor on the street that with the utterly depressing death of Pushing Daisies, former Heroes writer/producer Bryan Fuller might resume his old post at Heroes HQ and bring some semblance of intelligence and creativity back with him.  But believe me when I say that I would gladly let Heroes vanish from the face of the earth if it meant even just one more episode of my Daisies.

Season 3, Episode 10: The Eclipse Part 1 (originally aired November 24, 2008)

For another take on this episode, check out Outlook Not So Good by Inisia Lewis.

For more on Heroes, click here.

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Photographs courtesy of NBC and IMDbPro