Heroes: Somehow Heists Are Less Fun With Superpowers

Linderman, Linderman, Linderman. Everything comes back to Linderman. D.L. owes him a favor, he's got Hiro's Katana of Destiny – we'd really better meet him at some point, and it had better be soon, or else he'll end up the Maris of this show. (Hey, maybe Borgnine could play him!)

So what have the heroes been up to since they've been gone? Um, not much, actually. Most of the characters have storylines that can be summed up in one sentence. Nikica gets moved into a psych ward. Matt leads an unfruitful raid on the paper factory. Claire reveals her secret to Zach again. Bennet chats with Mohinder about The List. Not that it wasn't nice to see Claire and Zach interacting again, even if he wasn't at his normal cuteness level, and not that it's not great to see Bennet get his menace on after the long break. But it was a bit of a slow episode. The biggest advancements come in two storylines.

Hiro: Hiro tracks the katana from the painting to a museum in New York, where Ando figures out that the S-symbol on the handle is a combination of two characters, meaning "great talent" and "godsend" – a reference to the heroes' powers. The sword is under glass, which means a heist is in order. I confess, at this point I had visions of Hiro being lowered into the room at night, using aerosol to illuminate the lasers, but no such luck. He just slows time down and nabs the katana. So disappointing. Happily, after Hiro discovers the sword's a fake and Linderman has the real one, he meets up with Nathan, and their interaction is, as usual, priceless. Hiro seems to have a special affection for Nathan, maybe because he was the first other hero he ever met, and for all that Nathan tries to remain impassive, he clearly likes the little guy too. I'm starting to think that Nathan doesn't end up a supervillain after all. How can someone who likes Hiro be evil?

Peter: Because Peter spends most of the episode in a coma, there's less of his whining than usual. In fact, I don't think he whines at all. A first, perhaps? Anyway, in Peter's coma dream/vision thing about him exploding, there's a guy standing off to the side laughing at him. I would have liked this guy just for that, even if he weren't played by Christopher Eccleston, who you may know as one of the many, many Doctor Whos (he also played a delightfully dastardly Iago in a British TV production of Othello). Once Peter's awake and roaming around Manhattan, he sees Christopher – even though he shouldn't. Because Christopher's invisible. The previews suggest that Peter adopts Christopher as his sensei, which I wholeheartedly support, as long as Christopher is a graduate of the Dr. Cox School of Mentoring. I'm looking forward to seeing how this plays out. I know, I can't believe I said that about a storyline of Peter's, either.