Heroes - "Angels and Monsters"

My disappointment with Heroes continues to grow, unfortunately.  So much so that I really just didn't feel like writing anything up last night after watching it.  Instead, I checked out Christian Slater's new show, My Own Worst Enemy, which actually held my attention better, at least in its first episode. Let's get right to it and get the spoilers over with. The writers are doing the worst possible job of writing Hiro.  Here is a guy who has saved the world twice.  He's trained under a master swordsman, and spent time as a samurai in medieval Japan.  How is it that he is still a clueless, naïve idiot?  That was part of what endeared him to us in the beginning, of course, that his desire to be a hero and save the world initially vastly exceeded his experience or ability.  But by now, he should be a master of space and time, confident and in control of his abilities, and simply shouldn't fall for tricks like how Adam got away from him last night at the bar.  That whole scene was right out of an early first-season episode, and Hiro should have evolved well beyond that. Granted, things didn't end any better for Adam himself, who got jumped and captured by the mysterious Pinehearst Company working at cross-purposes to the Company.  As it turns out, Pinehearst is in the process of recruiting several of the evolved humans to its own unknown purpose.  From what we've seen, especially when Angela was sent a vision of her so-far late husband which paralyzed her, their purposes are antithetical to the Company's.  Further, we know they're the group Future Claire and her future friends are working for; Future Claire wears a Pinehearst pin, and they are seen in Pinehearst's buildings. The only surprise that came out of that while scene in the bar was when Hiro stabbed Ando to prove he was ready to join Daphne's new group.  This smacked, to me anyway, of reaching a little too far to provide the viewers with a serious cliffhanger.  It's not much of one when I'm convinced Ando's in no real danger.  Hiro rigged something to make it look like he stabbed his best and oldest friend without actually killing him.  It is simply not in Hiro's nature to actually actively betray anyone like that.  If the writers really believe he would do it, they've missed out on all of what makes Hiro who he is, and I despair for the rest of the series. They did give us the answer to one small mystery, though not one I'd been greatly concerned with.  I had assumed that Linderman was a hallucination on Nathan's part, either brain damage from his death and rebirth, some kind of underlying mental illness, or possibly (though this was a remote possibility) a side effect of his power.  I had kind of hoped for the latter, since they've shown us the very high price Sylar is paying for his ability.  I wanted to see some of the others develop unpleasant side-effects as well. When Daphne started talking to Linderman outside the Pinehearst building, I knew it was going to be more than a mere hallucination.  I'd wondered at whether they were showing us scenes that had happened a while in the past without labelling them as such at first.  I'd have liked the idea that Linderman, while running the Company, had also gone ahead and set up its rival and had been actively recruiting people on both sides.  As it turned out, it was all Maury Parkman's doing with his ability to control minds.  What was interesting, though, was that he was doing it at the behest of Arthur Petrelli, Nathan and Peter's supposedly-dead father.  I'd very much like to know what he's up to.  My guess is he set up Pinehearst in opposition to the Company a long time before, and represents an opposing factor to whatever the Company is up to.  Surely this opposition is what got injured to the point of needing a ventilator and presumed dead.  It remains to be seen if Pinehurst really represents the good guys or the bad guys.  Ideally, there would be no good or bad guys, just shades of grey. Now that the writers have shown us their love of The Fly, they've decided to have Mohinder steal from Aliens instead.  The injection and mutation has changed his personality so fundamentally as to make him another Sylar, prowling the city and preying on whoever he feels he needs.  He's got them all cocooned to the walls of his lab for some unknown purpose, at least one of them still alive.  And that's where Maya wanders in and discovers them, and subsequently becomes one of them herself.  I fully expect within a couple episodes for them all to have baby Mohinderflys burst out of their sternums.  If they (and we) are lucky, someone will return to the Sulaco and nuke the site from orbit. At least (hopefully) we won't be seeing much of Maya any more.