ad4m22407 – Once Upon a Time in Texas
You know an episode is going to peak in quality when it features any of the following characters: Hiro, Sylar or Samuel. This episode features all three.
Hiro, having arrived three years in the past outside the Burnt Toast Diner, reminisces on his failure to save Charlie’s life from the clutches of Sylar. Apparently he’s forgotten that she had a clot and was going to die no matter what. But then he meets Sylar three years in the past before he murders Charlie and Heroes is off and rocking again.
It seems that Kring and his writing team are doing what they always do when they get desperate – they go back to season one and tie the current plot around one of the beautifully crafted tendrils of the origin story.
Meanwhile, Samuel, with actor Robert Knepper now a main cast member (and about bloody time, too) needs Hiro desperately to fix a problem in the past which his own rapidly dying time traveller is no longer capable of fixing. Unfortunately, Hiro’s too wrapped up in the problem of how to save Charlie without destroying the time-space continuum, a problem that requires the attention of Sylar himself.
Meanwhile Bennett is back in town to watch over Claire before the Homecoming game and torn between fidelity or having an affair with colleague Lauren (guest star Elisabeth Rohm.)
The genius of the episode is that it’s all built on the wonderful Hiro/Charlie romance that was so delightful to watch in the first place. With Sylar shown here in his murdering heyday and Hiro on top comic form, the stage is set for what is easily the best episode of the season. Superpowers are used, battles are fought, jokes are made, decisions are pondered and best of all, it’s got a genuine punch-in-the-face cliffhanger that’ll see you begging for the next episode. It’s so exciting, so thrilling that all the notes made during the episode are in capital letters and full of expletives.
This is it. This is the Heroes magic. Whatever you did to make this happen, Kring, keep doing it. Spellbinding stuff.
Five stars.
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