Ahhh finally, after a dearth of TV reviews, you're back!!!
Looking forward to your weekly wraps Pete. Any plans on regular reviews of other shows?

Personally I thought the episode was a little mixed. It felt a bit too methodical in laying out the seasons plot points to the point where it gave away too much information. Case in point Hiro and the kensei arc. Although he’s oblivious too it, you know that he’ll end up becoming Kensei and marry the swordsman’s daughter yada yada yada. Now that I know this I kind of want him to just hurry up and do it so he can get back to NY and join up with the rest of the crew. Also this opens up a whole can of time travellin worms since if Hiro always was kensei then how can he be modern day hiro too? It’s early and I can’t explain myself properly.

I also thought they took too long in re-establishing the characters and just getting in to the swing of thing. But hey, it’s only the first ep and a solid one at that, I just hope it ramps up big time from here.

What are your thoughts on peter and how he ended up chained in the container? Why was he wearing the symbol necklace?

P.S George Takei – weakest.death.ever
P.P.S Wasn't there supposed to be a heroes origins show during the hiatus? I had a weird feeling that I had missed out on a whole bunch of shit during the first 15mins the episode.

Thanks for the comment, Tron!

At the end of the week, I'm going to try to put together a "what's new" article with mini-reviews of all the new shows (still have to watch some of them). Thankfully, we have a bumper crop of sci-fi/geek TV shows this year, so we'll see which ones I pick up full-time.



About the Kensei/Hiro arc: True, most of us are pretty sure that Hiro ends up becoming Kensei. After seeing the Takezo Kensei documentary over at yamagatofellowship.org, the pieces all seem to be there. Then again, we all knew that Peter was going to be "the bomb". Sometimes it's not about the end result, but the story of "how" he got there.



I'm interested to see how the whole thing plays out. Hiro could become Kensei, but it seems more likely that Hiro will be too afraid to change history even further and will secretly help Takezo become the Kensei. 'Porting him around, helping him dodge arrows, finishing his trials, etc. Maybe it will be a combination of both and we'll get to see how what they do in the upcoming episodes gets misinterpreted and becomes legend.



As for Peter, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that after the explosion, Peter may have crash landed somewhere and the Company had a hand in finding him, shaving off that ridiculous hair (Milo Ventimiglia finally gets his wish!) sedating him and putting him in that container. I think that the Company was secretly shipping him to another location, but that the Lucky Charm Leprechauns found him on accident first.



George Takei - 100% agree on the "weakest death ever", taking the spot of Peter's "mirror shard in his head" from last season.



And as for Heroes:Origins, yes. It was supposed to be inbetween seasons 1 and 2, but production took too long to ramp up and casting took forever, so instead they are supposed to be introducing it between seasons 2 and 3, but this time they've attached some big names to it. Kevin Smith is rumored to be directing an episode, and other directors like Brian Singer and Eli Roth have all been courted by NBC. Tarantino was approached, but apparently turned it down because he had no idea what "Heroes" was. I guess the guy doesn't get to watch too much TV.



Plus, I think a lot of us felt like we were missing something because the writers made subtle comments to events we haven't seen, which will probably be fully explained in flashback episodes later in the season.



One thing I want to find out about is whether Nathans scarred and burnt face was real and he's somehow hiding it (plastic surgery, superpower) or whether Nathan is just crazier than a coconut.

1) Excellent review. It's nice to have your captions back especially.

2) 2-8 in 3v3. Not too bad for a first week.

I swear that voice Parkman hears in Molly's head is just the audio lifted from Fellowship of the Ring.

They completely brushed over Nikki, Dl and the little boy (forget his name at the moment). Maybe there are too many characters now to fit into one show. Dug your review by the way.

Thanks,
Paul

Thanks for the comments Manzy704 and Louischez!

Manzy704: Hey, welcome back! I thought the exact same thing. I half expected to see a huge fiery eyeball staring down at them. Maybe that's what Parkman and Mohinder have going: a totally hetero partnership like Frodo and Samwise did... wait a minnit.

Paul: Welcome to the site! I'm not too bummed that they left Nikki and Micah out of the premiere (it's not my favorite storyline) but they will be appearing in the upcoming season. From what I've heard, DL is not around (either dead, missing, in jail, etc) and Nikki leaves Micah in the hands of a new character while she leaves to pursue her own problems. And if you think there are already too many characters, wait until they finish introducing all of the new batch. We still haven't seen Kristen Bell (from Veronica Mars) and from what I've been reading online, we'll meet quite a few more of the previous generation of Heroes as they get picked off one by one by the hooded assassin.

Also, did anyone notice that Ando absentmindedly bumped into Nathan Petrelli right before they found the photo of Kaito in the newspaper? Nathan also entered the apartment minutes before his mother left and found the photo of her right outside the door. Add that to the fact that the assassin went over the side of the building with Kaito and then vanished, it looks like they're trying really hard to pin the murder on Nathan. It's not going to end up being him, of course (possibly Sylar with Candace's powers) but he's a suspect.