Broken Frontier

When in doubt, remind viewers what got them hooked on a show in the first place. This seems to be the primary strategy Heroes writers employed for this week’s episode, titled “Once Upon a Time in Texas.” In it, Hiro Nakamura transports himself to 2006—during the show’s fan-favorite first season —in the hope of saving waitress Charlie Andrews (Glee’s Jayma Mays) from certain death at the hands of Sylar. Does this trek down memory lane pay off? Well, it’s a fascinating idea. Unfortunately, the end product is a bit of a mess.

As fans remember, Hiro met Charlie during his “save the cheerleader, save the world” quest in the episode “Seven Minutes to Midnight.” Hiro learned that she also had a special gift—a superhuman memory—but she was soon killed by Sylar, who targeted her for her ability. After Charlie’s death, a distraught Hiro traveled back in time six months to save her. The two fell in love, but before Hiro could fulfill her dream of traveling around the world, she revealed that she had a blood clot in her brain that would kill her eventually. Despite Hiro’s efforts, he could not save her.

But with Hiro now facing a potential death sentence of his own—a brain tumor—he’s decided to save Charlie for good this time after accidentally traveling back to the Burnt Toast Diner in Odessa, Texas on the day Sylar will kill her.  Unfortunately, with the help of a time-traveler at his carnival, Samuel Sullivan trails Hiro, warning him that his intervention could alter the timeline. But Hiro shrugs off Samuel’s warning, freezing time just moments before Sylar would have sliced open Charlie’s head.

At this point in the series, Sylar wasn’t invulnerable, meaning that Hiro could easily bump off the defenseless super-powered criminal right then and there. But, instead, he merely wheels Sylar’s frozen body out of the diner and stashes him in the luggage compartment of a Greyhound bus. With Charlie safe, Hiro confronts his younger self, telling him that Charlie is dead and that he must travel back in time to save her, thus preserving the timeline. But while Charlie is safe from Sylar, her aneurysm has ruptured. Suddenly, Hiro needs Sylar’s help.

Unfrozen, Sylar realizes that Hiro’s time-traveling abilities make him impossible to kill, and agrees to use his power to remove Charlie’s aneurysm in exchange for information about his future. What does Sylar learn? That despite acquiring several new abilities, he will die alone (isn’t he glad he asked?). Hiro then freezes time and moves Sylar elsewhere to continue down the same path, ensuring that history will play out as intended.

If all this time travel is giving you a headache, you’re certainly not alone. While this episode brings back familiar characters, locales and scenarios from the series’ halcyon early days, this show no longer has that level of narrative focus or underlying intensity. “Once Upon a Time in Texas” just feels like a chore until its eventful final scenes. When Hiro and Charlie are ready to share their happy ending together, Samuel pops up and has her transported somewhere else in time. With his own time traveler now dead, Samuel is using Charlie as a bargaining chip. If Hiro helps Samuel right some wrongs in his own life, he’ll get Charlie back. Hiro reluctantly agrees, and travels with Samuel eight weeks into the past. There, they find Mohinder Suresh (remember him?) lying dead. That should be a shocker, but since it’s doubtful Heroes viewers really missed Mohinder or his droning opening monologues all that much, the character’s appearance likely elicited more groans than gasps.

Okay, since Hiro apparently has far more control over his powers than he did earlier this season, why can’t Hiro just travel back in time to the moments before Samuel abducted Charlie and prevent it? Also, wasn’t Hiro losing control of his abilities earlier this season? He doesn’t seem to have any problems with them these days, save for the occasional headache. His powers only seem to work incorrectly when it’s convenient to the plot, which is becoming distracting.

This episode also features a pretty superfluous storyline involving Noah Bennet and an almost-affair with his Company partner Lauren (Law & Order’s Elisabeth Röhm). We learn that Noah once had the opportunity to cheat on his wife but didn’t, and that he would much rather be a high school English teacher than a Company agent (err, I mean a “paper salesman”). But it all feels like padding, and it doesn’t really move the overall story or his character forward. And at this point, Heroes can’t afford to meander like it does this week.

But all this jumping back and forth in the timeline brings up some interesting question. Theoretically, if Hiro ever did drastically alter the course of events and shift the timeline, couldn’t this series essentially reboot itself permanently? Each season, Heroes’ writers make a concerted effort to get back to basics, but a timeline shift would afford them the opportunity to revisit character relationships and abandon tired storylines and freshen the overall premise with a minimum of expository housekeeping. This season is by no means terrible—it’s been quite good overall—but an actual new beginning for this series could bring jaded former viewers back to the fold.