Heroes: 7 minutes to midnight review

As compared to last week, I think tonight's Heroes episode, "Seven Minutes to Midnight" set up well next week's culmination episode. The description on the tv.com site is a little misleading, so I'll give my summary.

Professor Suresh (formerly "Professor X") goes to India to intern his father's ashes. While there, he discovers that he had a younger sister who died when he was very young and that he also seems to have a hidden power, some sort of lucid dreaming ability. This discovery will undoubtedly restore his faith in his father's genetic research and bring him back to New York. It also means that the list of heroes has increased a little bit more.

Isaac and the Suresh's "NYC Neighbor" (who also appears to now have some sort of undetermined mutant ability, perhaps akin to an attraction to Indian men) are seen in the Agent's care. To a certain degree, it appears the writers are attempting to have us believe the Agent's efforts in this genetic research project are for the greater good and that he is really just a good guy deep down. Perhaps this is and will turn out to be the case, but for now, I will stick with my misdirection theory. Somehow he has determined that in an alternate timeline, the cheerleader dies "tomorrow night" at her homecoming dance and he is perilous to stop it as the evil mutant Silar is bent on destroying all other mutants, including his daughter. I question how he is unable to prevent this from happening, and can only hypothesize that he must be playing both sides and has much more to his character than the show has developed. In the tv world, this sort of misdirection means that he will probably die and warn Peter et al. that Silar is the real enemy.

The only other storyline that gets developed in this episode is that of Hiro, his sidekick, and a new mutant (who was also among Isaac's paintings). As means of introduction, this new mutant (nickname TBD) is a waitress (also in Texas) whose memory has become greater than George Costanza's in The Abstinence. While Hiro and the waitress are trading Japanese lessons for toast, a "dark" character, possibly Silar, displays (for the audience) the ability to move a cup toward him without any strings (a trick John Travolta's character did with a pencil in Phenomenon).

As Hiro goes to the bathroom, the waitress pauses her flirting to open a can of peas, and is subsequently killed by (presumably) the "dark" character because he ordered carrots. Crushed, Hiro decides to go back in time and stop it. At this point it was 9:54, so I knew he wasn't coming back this episode, but a quick shot to a picture on the wall (changed from an earlier pan of the same picture) shows that he at least went back in time to some point and interacted with her. The preview for next week has Hiro in it again, so he makes his triumphant return then (I'm hoping it's going to be like Dennis Hopper's return in the end of My Science Project, but that may be asking for too much).

There was also some continuation of the storyline with the cop who can hear thoughts and his troubles at home as well as the plot about the Radioactive Man who premiered last week in Nothing To Hide (see last week's review). Unsurprisingly, the radioactive man escaped from FBI custody and blew up a car in the process. For punching his boss (last week), the cop gets a month suspension without pay.

I thought this episode was much better than the last couple weeks and I think it's because it kept the various storylines under ten (three and half actually), which left adequate time to develop them a little better than in some of the previous episodes. I question the need to introduce yet another mutant, but if they are going to continue with making Hiro (as compared to Peter) the main character, I guess they have to give him a girlfriend as well.

Next week's episode promises to be the episode I've been waiting for where it all comes together. The previews have been promising as much for the past couple weeks so I'm not holding my breath. On a more optimistic note, however, I don't know how next week can't be the culmination of this first half/third of this season, and on this casuistic logic, I'm positive it will resolve some of the unification issues that have been slowly developing, as well as advance the overall storyline.

Tags: heroes, 7 minutes to midnight, seven minutes to midnight, nbc