'Heroes': Powerless

So, besides the eclipse, what happened this week? (And we won't mention that eclipses rarely last longer than seven minutes, never longer than 10, and mega-never as long as 45 minutes. Or that the half-light that everything was shot in just made this episode tough to see.)

Parkman and Daphne had a fight and she ran home to daddy. Parkman followed — I'm not going to say how, because I've made it my Thanksgiving resolution to not say his name until he's not 10 years old anymore — and declared his love. Then, he learned that before Daphne got her powers, her legs were all but useless.

Tracy was funneling information on Nathan to Arthur, in exchange for guaranteeing her place in Nathan's eventual presidential administration. And Tracy's betrayal led to Nathan's kidnapping in Haiti. (By who? The Haitian's brother, Baron Samedi — taking a week off from being a voodoo god and a Bond villain?)

Elle continued to twist Gabriel in the wind. After last week, when I thought the producers made a breakthrough with her and gave Elle both some substance and purpose, she's now acting like a cat who's bored with her toy. Let's look at her history with Gabriel. First, she saved him from suicide. Then, she fell for him before pushing him over the edge into Big Badness. Last week, she tried to kill him before Gabriel forgave her and they got all touchy-feely. Now, they're on the road together, ordered by Arthur to retrieve Claire — I guess the whole ''one of us, one of them'' thing was a Company line, not a Petrelli directive — and she told a rent-a-car clerk that he's a serial killer? Whu-huh? First, why were they renting a car and, more importantly, why would she force him into a scenario in which he's got to decide to be the bad guy? Such inconsistency is troubling, especially when there's been such progress.

Together, Elle and Gabriel crashed Noah and Claire's little martial arts retreat and, without her powers, Claire got shot in the crossfire...just like Arthur foretold.

Ultimately, how was ''The Eclipse, Part I''? Hell, I don't know anymore. Each hour is a different shade of the same; some bits are cool, others are painful. Every episode gives the impression that so much is going on, but it rarely amounts to much. And even less happened here than normal, since it's just a part one. Heroes is what it is. If you love it, then you love it. If you hate it, then you've either stopped watching, or you get a certain sadistic pleasure out of watching how bad it can get. Or, if you're like me, you can't stop watching out of a blind hope that the next episode will be the one that gets the train back on the rails — and you don't want to have missed it.

What did you think? Will Noah take the kill shot and rid the world of Sylar and Elle? Will He Who's Acting Too Stupid to Be Named find salvation in a comic-book store? When will someone, finally, kill Mohinder?