I don’t have a problem with character-centric storylines, per se. It’s when these storylines are the entirety of an episode without any forward movement of the actual plot that I speak up. Take the Helo and Sharon storyline from season one for example. The two of them are slowly, madly falling in love with one another despite the inherent differences of ideology and physiology, to only name two. It was done over several episodes and mixed with ass kicking amounts of shooting, running, screaming and without sole attention being paid to it. The writers just let it happen and didn’t sit and devote an entire episode to it chock full of flashbacks and dramatic pauses. Instead we got to sit around and watch the Galactica getting beat the fuck up, Starbuck struggle with her inner demons and Baltar slowly go insane. And we watched Helo and Sharon fall in love and get all preggers.

I have a sinking feeling that this season would treat that storyline differently. The feel of the show has changed and not for the better. Instead of weaving storylines together into an enticing mesh the writers are separating the plot into ala carte entrees with other storylines serving as appetizers, perhaps to be made into entrees of their own but not at this meal. Good television just doesn’t work this way. I’m not intrigued when they haven’t dealt with Colonel Tigh in almost a month. His ab sense has been noticeable and isn’t causing me to craft alibis for him in my mind, wondering what wacky hijinks he’s been up to. Instead I picture him sitting in his quarters, drinking and wondering when he’ll be called to appear on camera next and why he killed his wife on New Caprica when all it would get him was co-billing in what was essentially an Adama-centric episode near the start of the season. The same can be said for Starbuck being Starbuck. We’ve seen Starbuck-Anders all over the place but what about the brash, rebellious pilot of last season? Did faux motherhood take the edge off? I’d be interested to know, the writers are going to address that next week it appears but why has it taken this long and what did we gain from leaving her character development on hold?

And let’s address Baltar, he’s been an afterthought since the end of last season. He serves to pull plot out of others, he’s a crutch and nothing more. Maybe in the coming weeks as the season grinds to a close we’ll get somewhere with him but in the meanwhile I’ve almost forgotten this is the same Baltar that forged Sharon’s Cylon test results and smuggled a nuclear warhead onto Cloud Nine. Or even the Baltar and fiddled while New Caprica burned. He’s just been Baltar that Walks With Cylons or Baltar, Threesome Toy with optional talking head. He could have stayed with the Cylons and at least had more robot nookie but the show deemed that to be Not Boring Enough so we get Baltar, Inmate and pseudo political entity (with optional talking head).

Caprica Six? Almost did something with her last week, huh. Oh well, could’ve followed up on that but we’ll just not bother. Hey! More Tyrol time for everyone! He’s so blue collar, so hard working. Gosh it was awesome to see him organize a strike for the mining workers only to cave like Mammoth when Admiral Adama threatens to put Cally against a bulkhead and shoot her for treason. A real activist would’ve dared him to do it and then ripped out his own eyes, tossed ‘em at Adama and set himself on fire. But Tyrol just makes some silly faces and calls the strike off. Way to go, Chief. Show ‘em what you’re made of – gelatin.

So we’re down to the last few episodes. I’ll go ahead and spoil things for you because this season has treated us fans with disdain and annoyance, more of a bother than anything. Starbuck supposedly dies but really makes a break for Earth after realizing she’s known the location all along (see the whole Eye of Jupiter painted on her wall back on Caprica for evidence). Dee turns out to be a Cylon, big surprise there. Not sure of what else but I’m sure it will lead to some sort of climactic cliffhanger of a season finale with webisodes to tide us over until the inevitably disappointing season four begins. Battlestar Galactica? More like Boringstar Galactica.

What about the statue? The other hatches? The smoke monster? Locke? Hurley? Claire? Rousseau? That black lady with teh cancer? The numbers? The aftereffects of the hatch imploding? THE OTHER HATCHES? Sun and Jin? Charlie and his recovery over Eko’s death? Does he finish building the church? The church? THE OTHER HATCHES? The list goes on and on but instead we’re treading water, waiting for the shark we just jumped to come back and finish us off. But NBC in its infinite hype decides to inform us that this week we’re going to discover all sorts of things and have all sorts of questions answered. See every episode of Heroes I’ve reviewed for my opinion on such promises.

That said, this episode was a little better having only spent about half our time with a storyline concerning Jack and his adventures in Thailand with a girl named Achara. The other half actually took place in modern day and revolved around the usual trinity of Jack, Kate and Sawyer. I remember there being other characters on this show and they used to be more than accessories to those three but that was so long ago I’ve truly forgotten what it was like.

So Jack gets moved out an outdoor holding pen while Juliet is cuffed and imprisoned for killing Danny and letting the prisoners escape. More likely is that she’s being punished for trying to move this plot along. We go around in circles in the flashback game as Jack tries to figure out what Achara does for a living. All we know is she gets paid in envelopes, sneaks off and has “a gift.” Contrary to popular belief she’s a tattoo artist and not a lobbiest for big tobacco. Well more to the point she “marks” people because she can “see who they really are” which begs the question from Jack, “well who am I really?”

Captain Obvious would like to answer that, if Achara would be so kind as to go be crazy in the corner for a minute.

Jack is the rich, privileged son of a rich, privileged man. He has this faux crisis in his life, gets dumped over and over and eventually ends up on a retarded island where he bumbles around pretending to be a leader, eventually culminating in him being kidnapped by the Others to perform spinal surgery on their leader. Somehow all that translates in some Chinese characters and bad tattoo art chisled onto his shoulder. The judge over Juliet’s case Isabel can apparently ready the letters and they play a little game with the audience called, “Who Can Be The Smarmier Fuck Over Something The Audience Doesn’t Know?” Basically she knows what it means and finds it ironic. Jack knows what it means and is indignant. The audience has no fucking clue what it means and gets to sit there, the proverbial monkey in the middle of this ridiculous game.

Otherwise in Kate and Sawyer-land, we discover from Karl that the Others actually live in houses “with backyards” and not in abject poverty like previously thought. Oh, and the next night there would be no moon and they’d get to see the “Teddybear Constellation.” Well gee, all my questions have been answered so far. Thanks Lost.

This week’s contestant is Dimitra Apostalobulas (from the Greek word Apostalo meaning ‘Show Me The Filo‘) of Chicago. Dimitra is 32 years, a first generation American and like a lot of her fellow native Americans she has recently been fired, losing her copier sales job because she sucked at it. So with her lucky Greek Kobinskini beads she picks case 22 as her lucky case and we begin.

She quickly starts off doing well, revealing $500, $5, $100, $200,000, $200 and $750 in her first cyclone of picks. The banker, instructing her to “Call him Zeus” offers her $33,000 but she NoDeals that with the quickness and we move on.

Her second round reveals heartbreak as $500,000 and $1,000,000 are consecutive picks. But following that are $25, $75,000 and $1,000 so all is not lost. The banker offers $27,000 and we get to meet her family. Her younger brother George is a portly, swarthy oaf of a man. Then we have the mom who calls herself The Mom, so there you go and finally Angela, her older sister. We’re then introduced to the fine tradition of breaking plates to celebrate. Opa! they cry. Opa, for those that don’t know, is the Greek equivalent of Yee-Haw. Dimitra NoDeals faster than Hermes and we’re on our way.

The disturb-o-fest continues as Dim reveals $50,000, $25,000 and $50 (which incited her brother to break some plates). Finally she picks $10,000 and the banker calls down to offer her $54,000. Before she gets a chance to decide, her mother now unveils another Greek tradition for wishing luck on one another – spitting in someone’s face. She demonstrates on Dimitra to the combined groans of Howie, the audience and the entire fucking civilized world. Dimitra decries that “the Greek gods were defeated!” and NoDeals. I’ll pretend to understand what she means like everyone else and move on.

We get more gross-out moments when after $10, $100,000 and $1 are revealed the banker brings a girl down with a vial of his own spit. Like WTF? Who’s writing this shit? Anyway, the offer is $77,000 and Dimitra NoDeals.

She shoots herself in the foot a bit as she reveals $400 and $750,000 getting an offer of only $44,000 from a self-admitted happy banker. But mommy tells her to NoDeal so she does. Then she reveals a paltry $300 inciting a group hug and more plate breaking as well as as $91,000 offer. But with $200,000 and $400,000 still available, she NoDeals again telling Howie that she “came to play.”

The girl holding the next case she picks asks to borrow her Komboskini good luck bracelet. This review is starting to look like an Ikea catalogue. Something in that voodoo bracelet works, however, as the penny is revealed and sparks plate breaking and the first sighting of the Bartokomous Dance of Joy in over 20 years. The banker offers her $109,000 but she NoDeals.

Three cases left Dimitra reveals $300,00 cutting her safety net in half. Just $75, $5,000 and $400,000 remain. The banker tries to pressure her out telling her “Goodbye” and offers her $95,000. Her family tells her to deal. Will she buckle? Like a fucking belt, boy howdy. We find out her next pick would’ve been only $75 and would’ve netted her a $210,000 offer. Her case ended up containing $400,000 so she done fucked up pretty bad. You could see in her eyes that all her hopes of locking her mom up in a convalescence home and running off with her roller derby superstar girlfriend were quickly fading as her family closed in around her both figuratively and literally.

When you fuck with Zeus you either get the beard or the lightning. Sorry Dimitra Apostalobulas, this time you got the bolt. Opa!

Last week on Battlestar Galactica we wasted a shitload of time with Helo and his craptacular quest to save the retarded Sagimatronianers. Well fuck them, no one cares about that anymore. We’ve got other fish to fry. This week we concentrate on Adama being a pussy and Tyrol with wife Cally in tow getting their asses stuck in a command pod that’s slowly venting atmosphere out into space. Intermittently we also discover that they’re still planning Baltar’s trial, there hasn’t been a Cylon sighting in 49 days and this show is really starting to test my last fucking nerve.

It’s Battlestar Galactica, right? I’m not hallucinating, am I? This is the show on SciFi that is about the humans running from the evil Cylons and trying to find their new home, Earth. I’m fairly certain up until they discovered the planet known as New Caprica that they were trying damn hard to accomplish exactly that. But since? Inane fucking bullshit. Love stories, food stories, human interest nonsense and character back stories that could be explained in one or two sweeping expositions instead of entire episodes.

Now we know that Adama and his wife didn’t get along so hot. Well whooptie-fucking-licious that sure means a whole lot to me seeing as his ex-wife was vaporized back when this show still tried. Ooh and it caused friction between Lee and his father? Well gee, that couldn’t have been explained in a few lines of dialogue, nah. Seeing as the colonists are short on medical supplies, food and other necessities I support pointless flashbacks are all they have left to spare. It’s imagining the audience actually tunes into this garbage and finds it captivating that scares the ever-loving shit out of me. I know for a fact there are fanboys and fangirls Tivoing this crap and eating it with a fraking spoon, begging for seconds. But not the Captain. I’m just watching in the vague hope something interesting happens.

So what else happened this week? Well Tyrol and Cally get saved by getting jettisoned out into space to a waiting Raptor piloted by Athena. Tyrol is alright by the end, Cally is still fucked up. Adama’s anniversary comes and goes with everyone walking on eggshells around him. He himself walks on eggshells around Roslin concerning the telegraphed old-person-sex that we all know is coming. In other words – nothing. Where are the Cylons? Fuck if we know. Where’s Earth? Not in fucking sight. How about Hera? I’m sure she’s around, who gives a shit?

I miss fat Lee. I miss Xena killing herself over and over again. I miss Quantum Leap Al being all creepy having sex with Tigh’s wife. I wish the fucking smoke monster from Lost would come and kill everyone and let this show die before they even get a chance to continue this gigantic shark jump they call season three. I’m starting to hope I’m one of the last Cylon models just so I stand a chance at resurrecting once this show inevitably kills me with bullshit.

Britney reportedly checked into rehab only a couple days ago. Then she checked out and fled to Florida, like the hurricane she’s become. Some drinking and partying is usually the cure for those post-Kevin blues but this time it wasn’t enough. Tearful and determined she called ahead to a closed tattoo parlor and got it opened again. She stood up to the mirror and did it herself, balls to the wall.

So congratz, Brit. You’ve made another mess than your publicists will nodoubtedly have to clean up. At least you didn’t end up married or pregnant thing time, maybe you’re getting more mature or perhaps you’re just saving that for another day. Either way, good job on furthering the notion that you’ve gone completely batshit insane. We’re behind you all the way. You’re our jiveTurkey Of The Week and we couldn’t think of a more deserving twit.

Remember, for more scathing critique of all things Pop visit our sister site jiveTurkey.com!

This week we get to concentrate solely on Desmond and his trials and tribulations. While in the middle of a meeting between Locke, Sayed, Charlie and Hugo about Eko’s death Desmond freaks out like Charo and goes diving into the ocean to save Claire who was, until then, thought to be taking a walk. He later claims he just “heard her” but Charlie and Hurley know better, they know he can see the future. Words get thrown around drunkenly, Charlie calls Desmond a coward and gets tackled for his trouble. Then we get to find out what happened when Desmond turned the override key at the end of last season. Between the turn and waking up naked in the jungle it turns out he is returned several years to when he was still in London, dating Penny and sucking up to her father. Generally speaking it seems normal to him as if he didn’t remember what the future held but little things here and there give him insight like Penny telling him it isn’t the end of the world followed by the microwave beeping. Just little things.

Numbers get bandied about as he arrives for his interview with Penny’s father. Trying to appeal to the patriarch he tells him that he and Penny want to move in together. This turns ugly fast as her dad rejects and utterly humiliates Desmond and tells him he isn’t worthy of his daughter. This ends, predictably, poorly and he leaves the building and walks out to find Charlie, also in London and playing his guitar on the sidewalk. This leads to a spark of recognition from Desmond who suddenly remembers everything about the future including the sudden downpour that he predicts a moment before it happens.

Desmond confides in this best friend about his new discovery. His friend who happens to also be a physicist is skeptical. Just like in any he calls the final score for a sporting event on TV followed by the appearance of an acquaintance of theirs smacking the bartender with a cricket bat. But neither of these things happen, instead he just looks like an ass and heads home to a sympathetic Penny. They get all tender with each other and the next day he finds himself buying an engagement ring for her. All seems to be going in a good direction until the clerk plays the spoiler and transcends the show, telling him he can’t buy the ring because then he won’t break Penny’s heart, enter the sailing competition, end up on the island and live for three years pushing the button and saving the world. I believe I saw her nametag and it read “PLOT.”

So PLOT and Desmond wander around town a bit while Desmond tries to figure out if he’s dreaming, crazy or just the central character on a recently disappointing but overall worthy television show’s latest episode. Using the death of a red shoe-clad man our white-haired expositionary woman turn Oracle tells Desmond that everyone has their path and that there’s no deviating from it, as life will always put you back on it no matter what. Apparently unwilling to pay attention or respect, Desmond takes off with the ring anyway to give to Penny. But after they get their picture taken, the very same picture Desmond carried with him all those years on the island, he realizes there’s no escaping fate and breaks up with Penny.

He escapes to the bar where he realizes he had made the prior day’s predictions prematurely and that the football game would end as he said he had sudden hope that he could change the future. So up he goes only to see that acquaintance stroll in with the cricket bat and, in a moment of retarded heroism, saves the bartender from it and takes it to his own head as a result. That shakes him back to the future where once again he’s naked in the jungle. Then we replay the first few minutes of the episode with the drinking and the tackling and all that followed by Charlie helping a bumbling Desmond back to his tent where Charlie’s told in the single actual useful moment of the episode that Desmond has seen his future and that Charlie is going to die. Jumping into the ocean was trying to prevent Charlie from drowning. Setting up the lightning rod last week was because he saw Charlie hit by a bolt. But he knows that there’s no preventing the inevitable and that Charlie is going to die.

Or maybe the show will forget about this like so many other storylines.

On The Love Boat Colonial One we get reaquiainted with Tom Zarek, formally of Battlestar Galactica (a show on SciFi that didn’t suck eggs). Apparently he’s there as an advovate for Baltar in his trial. He says that a trial will tear the fleet apart and is interested into in the safety of everyone and that perhaps martial law should be imposed. Meanwhile sickness is ravaging the newly arrived Sagittarons who blame Doctor Robert for killing their people. This sets Helo off on another one of his annoying Helopian quests to solve the mystery and save the day.

If there’s one thing that’s killed this show for me it’s been that love quadrangle between Starbuck, Lee, Dee and Anders. If there’s something else that does it for me it’s people growing moralistic backbones for no discernable reason or in direct contridiction with their prior actions. Helo is one of those. He’s gone from love-lorn soldier to posessed pussy-whipee. He has sympathy for everything and anything, seemingly without discern. It’s almost as if the writers don’t know what to do with him, so he just does a little bit of this and a little bit of that. In this episode he plays some square-jawed Inspector Clouseau, sneaking around trying to discover what really won’t amount to anything in an episode or two. Just more stalling while the show refuses to address anything the previous two seasons were building toward. Earth? Eh. Cylon war? Oh well. Hell, even the five unseen Cylon models? Well now that Xena is on ice it seems that’s also on hold. We’re just floating through space, wasting time.

So instead of wasting more time, I’ll sum up the episode. Athena meets with Caprica Six and tells her to cooperate to gain favor with the humans. Six then hallucinates her own Baltar and kisses him. He exposes her for her true reason for being on the Galactica and that’s because she secretly wants to be human. This is overseen by Roslin who wonders who the hell Six was talking to and who the hell is still watching this dreck. Helo snoops around and discovers Dr. Robert has a history of killing Sagittarons and it’s still the same here but nothing comes of it. Robert gets arrested, Adama thanks Helo and we’re one more wasted episode toward an inevitable third season letdown of a finale.

GOSH!

That’s how I can sum up tonight’s episode of Heroes! We’re getting to the last episodes of this first season and NBC is finally delivering on promises it made. Like the cheerleader, Claire! We understand now why Hiro warned Peter to “save the cheerleader” to “save the world.” All the clues were there, we just had to connect the dots! Obviously Claire’s dad being none other than Nathan Petrelli is closely connected to that plot line and probably also to the other tag line from this season, “are you on the list?” This week Claire finds out from her biological mother that her dad has money and later finds out by eavesdropping on a conversation that he wants nothing to do with her. Maybe a week ago I’d say Claire’s storyline, as trite and pointless as it were, was something -I- wanted nothing to do with but not anymore! This is gripping stuff, people!

Next we have Matt Parkman, the psychic cop. Who? Oh that’s right, we sorta forgot about him for a while huh. Well he’s back, bub, and he’s working private security because the show had no work for him the past couple weeks. He’s assigned to some fat white guy on their way to making a deal downtown. They arrive and lo and behold standing outside the jewelry store they’re heading is our favorite schizocarp Niki looking dashing and debonair in sunglasses and false character appeal. I mean strong character appeal. Matt and his client head inside and reveal the transaction is purchasing a bunch of diamonds from the jeweler for a pile of cash. All is going well until Matt’s Spideysense™ goes off and he hears the jeweler’s thoughts about Linderman’s agent coming to kill both Matt and his client. Turns out in return for springing her from the police, Linderman is requiring Niki to do his dirty work. So Matt freaks the fuck out and tells the client they need to flee like whoa and off we go on a cataclysmic date with this week’s promise: two Heroes will face off.

As is my usual caveat, no one reading this cares about spoilers so I’ll go ahead and say that this “face-off” consists of Matt handcuffing Niki to a handrail and then running, only to have her escape and come after him, throwing him out a window and killing his client. Yay NBC! That’s what I’m talking about! Hype hype hype like Bobby Brown and letting us down like Whitney. In the end Matt pockets the diamonds and sneaks off while Niki escapes and gets her next assignment: Nathan Petrelli.

Now someone at NBC must be reading this because there’s no other reason for Hiro and his hetero life partner Ando to be stuck in a revolving door of nothingness for two weeks straight. This time around they’re in Vegas and get duped into helping a con woman out in stealing a purse from the casino’s head of security. It took the entire episode to reveal that but the Captain’s in no mood for dramatics tonight. Peter and his invisible friend Groundskeeper Willy have, ironically, disappeared. No mention of them this week nor of the Haitian.

The only other storyline of note is Sylar and Apu Mohinder Suresh finally meeting face to face, even if Suresh doesn’t know it’s Sylar he’s meeting. The good doctor got a call from a potential named Zane Taylor who gets a visit from Sylar soon thereafter. Suresh arrives and Sylar, posing as Zane displays the power he recently, erm, acquired. The ability to melt solid objects. So it’s comforting to know that if the whole nemesis thing doesn’t pan out, Sylar has a solid future in liposuction alternatives. And speaking of cutting the fat, it’s time for the Captain to run. See? No negative comments about the writers being a bunch of sub-human idiots doing the work a thousand retarded monkeys could do faster and better. Nothing at all.

Just remember. Next week - someone flies, someone dies. Biggie fries.

lost |lôst; läst| (adj): (1) unable to find one’s way; not knowing one’s whereabouts.

This is where I believe the writers currently are. Lost returned to us last night after the winter hiatus and Captain Obvious was pretty psyched having waited through the break tiding himself over with Gilligan Island episodes. Oh that crafty Professor, I bet you he would’ve figured out that smoke monster by now. So heading into the new episode there were questions a’ plenty regarding our castaways, the others and all the other random island happenings. Surely they’d at least focus this episode on them, right? Hee hee, right.

The past two three several episodes have been mainly focusing on Jack, Kate and Sawyer, living as <s>prisoners</s> guests of the Others on a small island about two miles off the coast of the main island. I guess you consider it their ‘summer island’ for when life gets boring on the mainland. Before christmas vacation we watched Kate and Sawyer get their dirty bits all tangled up, Jack and Juliette kinda hover around an interesting storyline and Ben wandering around, creeping out the bugs. Then what ho, Jack discovers Ben’s spinal tumor and under much duress (and prodding by Juliette as a potential way of killing Ben without anyone knowing he meant to kill Ben) agrees to operate on him. So Jack intentionally tears Ben’s kidney sac (how porn does that sound?) and tells the Others he’ll let Ben die if Sawyer and Kate don’t go free. Yadda yadda, Kate and Sawyer escape and this week’s episode begins.

We learn about Juliette’s background back home. I hate the way Lost lives in flashbacks so I’m not going to reveal it all slow and methodical-like but instead just tell you what the fuck is up with her. She’s a doctor, pretty good one too researching fertility problems using experimental medications. She worked under her ex-husband, career wise and not in that other dirty way, and was pretty happy remaining anonymous and obscure in her research but then interviews with a company that’s ‘not based in Portland‘ who offers her the chance to study some really screwed up cases involving really screwed up reproductive system behavior. She tells them no, that her ex wouldn’t even let her if she wanted to and that the only way she could ever escape all that would be her ex-husband getting hit by a bus. Then she wigs out and takes off, retuning to her office. Outside her building, however, she runs into her ex-husband who, predictably, gets hit by a bus. The company she interviewed with approaches her again a few days later and bada-bing she’s now on the island.

Meanwhile Jack paces around only to discover Ben has regained consciousness mid-surgery. He requests to speak to Juliette who later confides in Jack that Ben offered to let her finally return home if Jack would just finish the surgery and save Ben’s life. In return for this Juliette would help Sawyer and Kate escape and eventually does.

Kate and Sawyer in the meantime wander around the jungle a bit until they run into Alex (Rouseaux’ and Ben’s daughter) who offers to lend the two her boat if they help rescue her boyfriend from what turns out to be some sort of Others reeducation center. They break into the place and find him in a room strapped to a chair in front of a large screen flashing images and messages at him. I’m sure all the hardcore Lostreopithicans out there will be slow-mo’ing their way through that footage. Probably hints about why the second season existed if all they did was introduce and then slowly kill off all the tail section members. So they break ol’ boy out and make their way to the beach where Nina finds her boat and all is about to be hokee-dokee when Danny emerges from the jungle and holds them at gunpoint. Sawyer starts to move toward him but Juliette is faster, emerging from the jungle and shooting Danny, letting all of them go with the exception of Alex who can’t be allowed to leave on account of her dad’s wrath. Kate and Sawyer (with Alex’s boyfriend in tow) have absolutely nothing to say about this and happily take off and… LOST.

So what did we learn this week? Well. Nothing. Really, entirely and absolutely nothing. They took what most shows would treat as ten minutes or even a commercial break and stretched it into an hour, and what for? I’m all for back story but there are better ways of doing it than creeping along. This episode reminded me of every term paper I wrote in elementary school where I would start them off, “I thought long and hard about what to write about with regards to ‘SUBJECT’ and in doing so discovered that I found ‘SUBJECT’ to be very, very interesting in a lot of unexpected ways. I say unexpected because I didn’t think I would feel this way about ‘SUBJECT’ but in doing my research I kept finding myself more and more and more and more interested in ‘SUBJECT’ and that came as a big, big surprise to me.” That would continue for about twelve pages and in the end I always got a D, and rightfully so. I learned my lesson back then, don’t fluff up what doesn’t need to be fluffed. Concise is appreciated, brevity rewarded and mentally jerking off onto paper is never warranted. I feel that’s what Lost failed to realize last night. They mentally jerked off all over the audience and didn’t even bother giving us a towel.

Insults to the Captain’s intelligence aside we’ve also been monitoring the evil power stealing baddy Sylar’s imprisonment by Claire’s adoptive father. But what ho, it appears he’s outwitted him and we now get to watch him on the prowl again! Maybe he’ll hunt down the producers and get ‘em. Oh wait, that would require the producers obtaining any sort of talents or abilities first. I digress.

On this week’s episode we finally meet Claire’s mom in person. She has absolutely nothing of worth to add to the storyline except to reveal Claire’s biological father in the last moments. If you’re reading this you couldn’t possibly care about spoilers so it turns out to be Nathan Petrelli, Peter’s brother and the dude who can fly. Claire leaves her real mom to head back home but not before her birth mom gives her a necklace and some kind words, telegraphing to the audience that she’ll be dead within an episode or two. Little does Claire know that back at the homestead Sylar, having freshly escaped and nicking her dad’s wallet for an address as already been there and roughed her adoptive mom up a bit. He would’ve killed her but her adoptive dad and his hetero Haitian life partner showed up, shot Sylar a little and then zapped her mom’s memory so that she could never tell another soul about how retardedly unlikely it is that Sylar didn’t just kill her. Fucking writers.

We catch up with SpongeGoth Squareass Peter as he learns the ways of being invisible from his newfound Scottish buddy. The Scotsman, long since jaded and having lost all faith in humanity after reading a few scripts ahead tries to convince Peter to drop all his connections to his friends as they’re just deadweight holding him down. Peter is resistant of course, like any good protagonist should be. It’s not until Groundskeeper Willy tosses him off the roof of a building that we discover Peter has retained the abilities he copied from others. Apparently it wasn’t temporary only. Then he wigs out and thinks he’s going nuclear only to be dropped like a girl scout by Willy with a well placed right hook. Damn son, you been knocked the fuck out!

Elsewhere in the world of Heroes it seems Nikki is resigned to a life behind bars but then she’s mysteriously released by some fat white guy we’ve never met. Marlon Brando was unavailable for comment. We think for a moment that her alter-ego might be contained but hah, of course it isn’t. Instead it’s imprisoned her and has taken over again. So in other words this at-one-time interesting storyline continues to falter and bore going making donuts in this proverbial parking lot of a show.

So where do we stand? Isaac, the prophetic painter is slowly hooking up with Peter’s girlfriend. Peter is being a whiny, sniveling bitch and Claire is setting herself up for a showdown with Sylar, as he undoubtedly will kill her birth mom within a few weeks. Nikki’s spinning her wheels and Hiro really hasn’t made any progress this week. Oh, but remember the list? That very, very important list. Are you on the list?, the show asked. Well, seeing as they didn’t really broach that subject this week I guess we’ll have to wait and see. As usual. Unless it’s a list of people who aren’t buying into the pretentious mockery of interesting television, which if it is then Captain Obvious is number one with a bullet.