So the promos did not lie: The eclipse that promised to strip our beloved superpowered folks of their abilities does come, and does strip them of their abilities. This leads to several amusing moments where our heroes go through the usual mannerisms to induce their powers, but to no avail. Sylar flips his hand. Hiro squints real hard. Nathan tries to fly and just falls in the river.
And the heroes almost all become more interesting. (Not Mohinder. He will always be deathly dull.) Sylar becomes more impulsive, macking on Elle, unaware that Noah is aiming a rifle at his head. (If Sylar isn’t shot, this pairing has potential.) The Petrelli brothers sweep away the haze of banality and have a sibling tiff. Claire is able to be shot and bleed, which makes her happy, and us too. (Maybe she will finally die.) Unfortunately, Hiro still thinks he’s 10 years old, which would be a ridiculous plot development if he were in fact acting any differently.
We assume the powers are gone only temporarily, lest the show turn into Gary Unmarried. (This episode is actually the first of two parts; the previews imply the next one will exclusively feature Claire in the ER. Which is fine.) In the meantime, there’s only one thing to be done: Bring in Seth Green! Yep, Green, along with the less interesting Breckin Meyer, pops up as a co-owner of a comic-book store in Lawrence, Kansas. (Wackiness will surely ensue.) Is it a bad sign that Seth Green and Breckin Meyer are thought to breathe new life into the show? We’d have to go with yes.
