Broken Frontier

Once in a while—and sometimes more often than we’d like—the creative forces behind Heroes churn out an episode that inches the plot forward only slightly so they can focus instead on character development. Last week, with “Ink,” allowing the show to catch its breath by focusing on just a few of the series’ many key players was a welcome change of pace. However, with “Acceptance,” there arises one major problem: Some of these characters just aren’t that interesting anymore.

Take Hiro, for example. In this episode, he tirelessly  attempts to prevent a man from committing suicide by traveling back in time. Again and again (47 times), Hiro fails to prevent his coworker from jumping off the roof of their office building. He eventually succeeds in talking him down, but the apparent inevitability of this occurrence convinces him to accept his terminal illness and finally tell his sister that he is dying. It’s poignant stuff, sure, but these sequences are frustrating in ways that they shouldn’t be. Couldn’t Hiro come to the same conclusion in a more engaging way? Also, the guy that Hiro is trying to save is some jerk who lost his job after getting ripped and photocopying his butt at an office party. Since Hiro is brought closer to death each time he uses his time-travel ability, does that mean that he effectively shortens his life by trying to save this guy dozens of times? That’s depressing for all the wrong reasons.

Another character that eats up a lot of time in “Acceptance” is Tracy, arguably one of the most worthless characters on the show at this point. In this episode, she’s trying to go back to her normal life, or as close to normal as someone who can transform into water can get. She returns to work under New York Governor Robert Malden (Bruce Boxleitner), but she soon realizes that something is missing when her boss sees her only as a sex symbol. So why should we care?  There was very little reason to latch onto Tracy as a character last season and that hasn’t changed. She seems to be losing control of her abilities, which is somewhat interesting. But, perhaps appropriately enough, the show treads water whenever she is the focal point.

While Tracy and Hiro seem to be stagnating as this season progresses, Nathan’s story is really picking up. As avid viewers already know, “Nathan” isn’t really Nathan at all. After Sylar killed Nathan last season, Matt used his mental powers to brainwash Sylar into thinking he’s the dead senator. After becoming Nathan mentally, Sylar’s shape-shifting ability makes the transformation complete.  But Nathan’s not feeling like himself, and has begun discovering strange new powers which he, Sylar, still possesses. That can’t be good.

Knowing that one of Sylar’s powers iss to pick up on objects’ histories by touching them, Angela brings her son some items from his childhood to jog his memory and prevent the super-powered serial killer from reemerging. Unfortunately, this unlocks a vision of Nathan’s ex-girlfriend Kelly dead in a pool. Is Nathan a murderer?

He visits her mother, Millie (Swoosie Kurtz), who says Kelly disappeared years ago, presumably running away from home. When investigating the pool area, Sylar’s old ability kicks in and Nathan learns that Kelly slipped off the diving board, hit her head and died right in front of him. Nathan confronts Angela, learning that she covered up the incident and had the Haitian wipe his mind so he would never remember it. With the truth uncovered after all these years, Nathan tells Millie what really happened, but she still doesn’t believe him.  Or so it seems.

Knowing what really happened to her daughter, Millie has Nathan killed and buried. Fortunately, Nathan survives the attack thanks to Sylar’s healing ability. But, when he emerges from the ground, the body formerly known as Sylar has resumed its true form. Is Nathan no more? This total shocker makes the more tedious sections of this episode worthwhile.

The ending of “Acceptance” opens up a host of new story possibilities, but it’s a shame that, despite Nathan’s portion, the episode is fairly uneventful as a whole. Tracy and Hiro got some unnecessarily drawn out character building, and a few brief dialogue scenes between Claire and her adoptive father Noah are barely worth mentioning (Claire helps him get his life back on track). That said, next week should be exciting.