Spoilers for “The Kindness of Strangers” below.

Things that happened

Well, this will be a short one. I’m not one to say ‘nothing happened’ generally, as I understand that shows can’t be all bang-bang-bang all the time. They need to have character development and emotional resonance and climbing action and all those things. And that’s fine. Great, even, in a lot of cases. But not when it comes to Heroes. Because Heroes sucks at it.

In important news: We catch up with Angela ‘Mom’ Petrelli, who is in a hospital bed after her invisible man attack two episodes ago. She’s now confessed to murdering Hiro’s dad and blames her injuries at the police station on a suicide attempt, despite the fact that “pretending like you’re getting mauled by an invisible man” is kind of a shaky way to off yourself. Matt doesn’t believe her — mostly because he can read her mind — and enlists a similarly doubtful Nathan to help him find the real boogey man attacker. Nathan points him in the direction of an old photograph of his mom and eleven other people, including Shaft, Sulu, “Needlenose” Ned Ryerson and — in a dun-dun-dun moment — Matt Parkman’s dad. Who may also be a famous character actor, but who I have yet to identify.

In any case, Molly confirms that Matt’s dad is, in fact, the boogeyman of her nightmares. Matt wants her to use her powers to locate his father, but her other dad Mohinder is totally against it. In the end, she agrees to try anyway, and in doing so leads them to an apartment building in Philadelphia but then she, somehow, gets caught by the boogeyman, trapped in her nightmare, screaming in vain mentally for Matt to help her.

In less relevant news: Nathan shaves his crazy mountain man beard and then, later, sees himself all disfigured again in the mirror. Sylar shows up in Mexico (somehow?) and meets up with Maya and her brother and, also, Derek, who doesn’t last long before Sylar clocks him in the head with a brick. Because Sylar is evil and wants to help the crazy teardrop kids get to Suresh so that he can regain his powers somehow or something.

Claire and West are insufferable and terrible and, seriously, awful. This is the worst thing on television this season and maybe ever. She sneaks out and they fly up to the top of the Hollywood sign. She makes gooey eyes at him. He tells her that he’ll never be able to trust her until she throws herself off the hollywood sign and breaks herself into pieces and then regenerates while he watches. She concurs. He catches her as she falls and they kiss and kiss and kiss into the night. He’s like a good eight feet taller than her and when they make out later at street level the neck strain is palpable.

Meanwhile, her dad lurks in the shadows, suspecting she has a boyfriend. He’s relieved when she lies and tells him it’s just cheerleading.

Also, Claire Bennet pronounces the word ‘library’ like ‘li-bary’, but I am not sure that’s a character trait they built into the script.

Lastly, Micah is trapped in a bizarre world that is a literal construction of what an out-of-touch hack TV writer imagines post-Katrina New Orleans to be like. It is awful and all the characters he meets there are bad. The worst of them is one Monica Dawson. She’s a hero too, with the power to instantly learn abilities she sees on TV or in person or whatever. It’s kind of a cool power, but she is a walking vacant lot of a character with no real potential. Why the hell is Micah even here again? Who are these people?

Things that were good

• No Ali Larter AND no Hiro-in-Japan subplot? That’s like a double special bonus!
• Matt Parkman’s dad being the boogeyman (or at least a red herring for the real boogeyman) was a nice surprise twist. There’s still some potential with this plot line.
• They’re telegraphing it a little too much, but the idea that someone soon will kill Maya’s brother (probably Sylar) and she’ll be on her own as a superpowered death factory is also very cool. It’s very easy to see the strong tentpoles holding up this season — it’s just that the tent itself is still so very leaky.
• Next week: Veronica Mars will save us!

Things that were bad

• Four episodes in and we already get stuck with a filler episode? That’s totally not cool.
• It’s become incredibly clear that Tim Kring is an exceptionally bad writer with literally no grasp on the way actually human beings behave and act. There’s just so much about his characters that can only be considered insulting to any viewer of any intelligence. Would it be fair to say that Kring is just a hack who sort of backed his way into success with this series?

Worth Watching If…

There’s really no justifying this one. Aside from a few flashes of importance during the Mohinder and Parkman scenes, nothing in this episode could be called essential viewing. If you missed it, don’t worry about it — “Matt Parkman’s dad might be the boogeyman” is really all you need to know.

In Five Words

Parkman’s Dad Might Be Boogeyman

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