For my money, the biggest spark of the hour was between Nathan Petrelli and Bob. The sweet static electricity of information. That little scene, in which Bob revealed a bit about Adam Monroe's backstory as the man who drew the first-gen heroes together, was a perfectly honed little info-dump. And judging by the hurricane-into-snow trick, Adam has developed a host of new powers since last we saw him. (C'mon, you weren't really surprised that Adam Monroe and Takezo Kensei are one and the same, were you? You didn't see that coming? For shame.)

The weakest part of the episode for me was the hunt for Maury. (Doomdays with Maury!) The idea of a master of nightmares loose in a building, toying with his quarry and getting them to off one another, is a good one. Worthy of a full episode of another show, one that didn't have so much superfluous baggage to clean up. Instead, in the 15 minutes that the Maury plot thread was given, all we got was Niki seeing dead people and going all Hulk Smash on things. (And she didn't even kill Suresh! What good is a rampaging former Internet stripper if she can't off one lousy geneticist?) Watching Parkman step up and own his past was nice, though; it almost made up for Greg Grunberg's having to deliver the teary ''deathbed'' confessional/plea. It's almost impossible to play without it delving into melodramatic cheese. Which it did.

And, finally, Hiro. The story line that went nowhere fast has, at long last, run its course. And you know what? It ended pretty well. Not so well that I'm going to forget six weeks of wankery, but we got a fight between Kensei and Hiro, the evolution of a villain, and the solidification of a legend. (In other words, we got Star Wars, complete with a sword fight between former student and master.) And, almost despite myself, I kinda dug the last exchange between the lovelorn time traveler and his princess, who vowed to spread the word far and wide, so that ''the boy Hiro Nakamura will have tales to help him sleep.''

All in all, a promising turn of events, with next week's chapter set to fill in some of the many storytelling blanks. Not a perfect hour of Heroes, but an encouraging course correction.

What do you think? Why did the Company send Peter to Ireland? Was it to ''recruit'' Caitlin? Did Suresh really not know that Bennett is a tough customer, after watching him shoot Eric Roberts in the dome last season? Is that really why the good doctor switched sides? Is Niki Patient Zero? And with both parents gone, will Micah go bad, or will Uhura finally have something to do?

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