In the immortal words of Bender - "Oh. Your. God."

This whole episode - yikes! I would say one of the best yet. Genuinely tense and emotionally impactful, too. When Matt shot Claire to save her adopted mother - when Hiro's father revealed that "the company" was going to take Claire if she started to manifest - when radioactive guy - (he's a menace to himself and others? I don't know - he is definitely NOT a good guy, and I'm not feeling so friendly towards Wireless, who put him up to the hostage thing, either) went nuclear after being shot- the scene of HRG hugging his doomed family under the eyes of his creepy boss - Claire's expression when the Haitian shoots her adopted father...
Overall, this episode both builds and destroys empathy for "The Company Man." I mean, he betrayed and shot his own partner for doing the same thing he would later do with Claire - shielding her from the eyes of his bosses. You also have to wonder - why was it so important to save the cheerleader? What heroic acts has she got in front of her? Easily the most heroic of all the characters except Hiro, Claire has acted bravely in the face of danger, risking - if not exactly her life - a lot of pain for others. And kudos to the young actress (who also played a wily babysitter on Malcolm in the Middle) who makes us feel so invested in the character. She would have made a great Buffy.
Questions from the promos - looks like Simone may not be dead after all? Or is she one of Isaac's tormented visions? Or she's a zombie? Oh, why can't we have new Heroes episodes every night?

Heroes Death - Unexpected? and Japanese pop art

Okay, before we go into the Heroes death, I wanted to talk about some way cool pop art from two women artists about my own age - check out:
http://www.galerieperrotin.com/artiste_.php?id_=17&nom_=Chiho%20Aoshima&dossier=Chiho_Aoshima#
By Chiho Aoshima
and http://english.kaikaikiki.co.jp/artworks/list/C5/
for work by Aya Takano
Super cool anime aesthetic, but demented and good. I wish I could do this kind of thing!

So, I bet, if you read any spoilers at all, anywhere, you probably knew Simone was going to die. Not a huge surprise. And we know there's another death coming on March 5th. I'm betting (and this is not a spoiler, just my conjecture) that Isaac's going to die in the next two episodes as well. The surprising thing about this episode was how it was kind of slow, slow, then unexpectedly full of action - and how unremittingly dark it was. I mean, it's nice to see cheerleader finally unleash on HRG, and Peter use his powers to actually kick some ass (even if its poor Isaac's) and go all Matrix - but I miss the moments of humor, which even Hiro and Stan Lee couldn't supply this episode. Mohinder...he's probably high on my list of goners, as well. Who's next on your list?

Run!

So, this episode was okay, it advanced the plot, but Mohinder shouldn't have been so easy to fool - but I thought it was great when Claire threw a rock at her bio-hero-father's car, and then when she told HRG, "You're NOT my real father." Of course, she doesn't know he's grounding her to keep her safe from Sylar, who is still on the loose and more powerful every minute - hey, now he can melt stuff! And how sad was it when Claire's adopted mom could no longer recognize her own previous Mr. Muggles?
PS When is Hiro going to get his powers back already? And I heard the terrible news that Hiro won't be part of season 2! Oh, okay, how about getting rid of the only character anybody cares about!
I was also happy Lost was back to characters I actually cared about - I mean, Desmond is at least sort of interesting, compared to the blandly weird Others.

Distractions Etc

So, last night's Heroes episode, Distractions, seemed to up the pace a bit, a bit more action and answers. Having watched X-Men 2 the night before, I almost felt like the cheerleader's mom was going to say "You know those mutants you've heard of? I'm the worst one..." when she showed her daughter her "Pyro" abilities. The actress playing Claire's mother looks so much like her. Other goodness: Hiro and Ando's interactions with Hiro's sister and father. And the license plate number on Hiro's Dad's car - was the same as Star Trek's Enterprise.
I'm just not crazy about the actor playing Sylar's acting skills. Did anyone else feel that not only did the actress playing Claire' adopted mother outacted Sylar, but that the DOG was outacting Sylar? (After all, it is a blood-eating dog. Weird!)
The invisible man pushing Peter off the building, then punching him in the face - hilarious.

News from the Whedonverse

So, Joss Whedon is off the Wonder Woman project. Disappointing, I think it would have been interesting to see what Joss could do with that character. Interestingly, there's talk that the studio's picked up a script with a 1940's-Era Wonder Woman, which would be great - that was really the best era of the Wonder Woman Comic book. Here's the story - posted by Joss - on Whedonesque.
In other Joss news, here's a story on the "8th season of Buffy" comic book on MTV.com. I'm excited to see what they do with it, though disappointed Spike and Angel won't be used much, I think because of cross-market liscensing problems. Yes, another comic book to keep track of!
Someone dropped me a note about Witchblade's Japanese Manga - if anyone has any new info on this, let me know!