TV with MeeVee: Totally Frakked: Heroes -- Expect the Unexpected

Heroes
Title: “Unexpected”
First Aired: 2/19/07
For the first time since...well, for the first time ever, an episode of Heroes plods along at a predictable, boring pace. Sylar sucks the brains out of a torch-wielding metal shop mama and suffers crippling earaches; Hiro and the attack of the 50-foot woman Hope goes nowhere; Matt and Janice fight over the bag of diamonds. Blah, blah, blah. If not for the final moments of the closing act living up to the episode’s title, viewers might have wondered whether there was any truth in Chapter 16’s advertising.

Sylar and Mo-Handsome are doing the Butch and Sundance routine, only instead of robbing banks, it’s a meet-and-greet with fellow evolutionaries. First on their list is Dale Smither, an auto welder from Montana who's blessed/cursed with the power of super-hearing. Jaime Sommers she’s not, but sadly for Dale, you can see a mile away that she’s next on Sylar’s dinner menu.

Early on in the episode, we’re reintroduced to Ted Sprague, the Atomic Man, then to leggy Hana Gitelman, who can send and receive electronic transmissions with her mind. The Human Wireless connects with Atomic Ted on a very intimate level -- the crosshatch scars they both bear, which were administered by Daddy B. when he experimented upon them. The duo contacts Matt, who is presently being chewed a new one by a shrewish Janice after she discovers the diamonds Matt pocketed at the Malsky murder scene. Matt sees this as the perfect opportunity to escape Janice’s talons, and the duo becomes a trio. The threesome heads for the Bennet house and a showdown with their shadowy nemesis.

While Momma B. is rushed to the hospital following one too many mind-wipes by the Haitian, Daddy B. and the Mindwiper are back in New York and up to no good. Daddy B. convinces Isaac to betray Peter and presents him with a state-of-the-art sidearm, the perfect means to eliminate their mutual problem. Then, Daddy B. and the Haitian stake out the roof of the Deveau Building, hoping to bag and tag old friend Claude the Invisible Man, who once escaped their clutches. Claude and Peter are up on the roof completing Peter’s Jedi training when Daddy B. zaps Claude with a paralyzing jolt of voltage. A quick-thinking Peter grabs Claude’s twitching body, tosses it over his shoulders, and jumps off the building, sailing away from danger. Claude wakes up livid and storms off to places unknown because, thanks to Peter, the Invisible Man isn’t so invisible anymore. But before he leaves, Claude delivers an ominous warning about Isaac.

The promising Ando/Hiro subplot about gargantuan Vegas showgirl Hope dead-ends when Ando spills the contents of the pink bag. It’s full of poker chips -- and expensive ones, judging by their look. Hiro and Bill Fagerbakke catch up with Ando/Hope, there’s a shootout, and Ando is wounded. As the police lug the two gargantuas to the pokey, Hiro decides it is time to send Ando home. So as new dynamic duos are forming, Hiro and Ando’s comes to its end.

The last five minutes redeem the forty-odd that came before them, and finally the unexpected comes into play as “Unexpected” runs its course. The Bennets return to their Odessa, Texas McMansion to find yet more armed home invaders waiting for them (hotty-cop Matt, Atomic Ted, and the Human Wireless). Hiro boards a bus, and the conductor is none other than the hero with the greatest superpowers of all time, the one and only Stan Lee! Peter confronts Isaac in his studio, and a gunfight breaks out. Isaac accidentally shoots Simone, and she dies in Peter’s arms. Wowzah!

In next week’s “Company Man,” Matt and company take the Bennet family hostage, and Daddy B.’s backstory is, at long last, revealed.

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