'Heroes': Mommy Dearest

Gabriel, after giving Elle something of a half-assed Viking funeral on the beach, decided that he needed to know the truth about his alleged Petrelli lineage. So he flipped open his phone, scrolled through his address book of folks with powers, and payed a visit to Sue Landers, a hot young paralegal who was also a natural lie detector. Naturally, now that Gabriel has regressed back into his Sylar persona, Sue Landers is attacked by those Crazy Eyebrows of Doom. And you know what? I'm now officially bored with Sylar. Because he's no longer scary. He's no longer Heroes ' Big Bad. And he stopped being the villain we all loved when he uttered one, simple word. ''Cake.'' Sylar is now a punchline. Still, he nabbed the truth-telling mojo and paid a visit to Pinehearst.

Now, Peter and Nathan were dealing with their megalomaniacal father in two very different ways. Nathan waltzed into Pinehearst and announced that he was taking over. (Remember, he had his eyes opened in Haiti, and wants to unleash powers on the world to hammer said world into shape.) Peter, on the other hand (and at his mother's behest), decided that a hostile takeover was the way to go. While Nathan was in the basement with the first of his test subjects (Chad Faust, from The 4400 ), Peter and the Haitian faced off with Arthur. And Peter would've shot him, too, if it weren't for Sylar, who learned from Arthur that he isn't one of the pesky Petrelli kids. Still, Arthur got a hot bullet injection.

You'll note that I'm not talking about Parkman, Daphne, and Ando's Adventures in Bike Messenging. I'm going to skip it for three reasons: (1) It didn't follow the parental interaction model, (2) it wasn't as cool as the Kevin Bacon-Jami Gertz flick, Quicksilver , and (3) it had the lamest chase scene ever, with Daphne running down the fleeing schmuck who didn't want to share Isaac Mendez's secret pages. (Which just showed us what we already saw. Brilliant! Though reading the unreleased 9th Wonders — and seeing Hiro trapped in the past by Arthur, who stole his powers — prompted Ando to decide that he wants some time-traveling juice, too.)

All in all, it was an average episode that was elevated by one, intensely satisfying subplot. I'd be a happy Heroes watcher if every episode had a strand that reminded me why I responded so strongly to these characters in the first place.

So, what did you think? Can you explain how Arthur knew exactly how/when to find Hiro and Claire? I thought the whole vision quest, painting-the-future thing only worked with, you know, the future. Why didn't the Haitian also dampen Sylar's powers? I was always under the impression that all he had to do was be in the room to render someone impotent. Oh, and as much as I dug Hiro this episode, hasn't he now proven that he's never to be trusted with anything of value? First the formula, now the catalyst. Don't let him near your kids.