Heroes Retrospective: Seven Minutes To Midnight

1. This is where Mohinder's storyline started dragging its feet. He stares. At a key. For hours. Before unlocking. The drawer. Ugh. This is a rare example of a Heroes subplot being mangled: Mohinder spends the next two episodes in a holding pattern, going around and around until he ends up right back where he started in the pilot. It's... well, it's awkward. And a rather transparent holding technique.

2. Charlie is, in a way, the perfect victim in storytelling: you see just enough of her to recognize a sweet, sympathetic person (without feeling like you're forced to like her for the sake of cheap drama). Then she gets a swift, brutal death, and you're left feeling a little sad for it.

3. The Matt/Ted/Audrey scene just doesn't work for me. Again, it's Matt being a mouthpiece, and since he can't actually pierce the surface of a person's mind, it's not clear why Ted thinks his responses rather than just, you know, saying them out loud.

4. Yeesh, Isaac looks terrible without stubble.

5. This is also where Eden started losing her villainous aura: her concern for Isaac seems genuine, and the sinister overtones of her interactions with Mohinder are gone now. Either Zehetner learned to tone down her telegraphing of the character's intentions, or she was rewritten as a foil to Mr. Bennet's ruthlessness. Either way, it's a change for the better.

6. Er... so if Chandra Suresh thought his daughter was "special", and he knew about Sanjog Iyer (the dreamwalker) before leaving India, why is Sylar "Patient Zero"?

7. We get to see Sylar's murder of Chandra Suresh here (albeit in a wonky dream/flashback), and it's actually more significant than you'd think because it contradicts the graphic novel supplements that NBC has been putting out since the show started (specifically, the first issue, which showed Chandra Suresh's taxi cab crushed and torn apart). I'll have more to say about the comics when we get to Hana Gitelman, but for now I think it's important to note that as far as consistency is concerned, the "bonus material" attached to "Heroes" is no more accurate than any other media tie-in.