Maybe considering Heroes as NBC’s Lost was giving it too many props too soon. Tonight’s superpower du jour was predictability, but a kickass cliffhanger was its weakness. Until the end came, the show was a bit too predictable and there were no surprises or intelligent twisting of the plot.

I knew from the get-go that Eden was a plant. She just pops out of nowhere with her shy wallflower innocence. The lizard’s name is Mohinder, oh how sweet! Plus, how could Mohinder trust her so quickly? Further proof that men are too stupid, trusting the words of a woman just because she’s so pretty. Dude, it’s New York! Wake up. But she made Daddy meals; that’s good enough for him.

You are a scientist sitting on what could possibly be the next world-changing break in evolution and you tell everything to the little pixie down the hall? If they found your father’s home in India a day after he died, isn’t possible they found the apartment in NY, after they found you in a cab in NY? Out of 18 million people, they found YOU. Not so smart after all, are we, Mister Smarty PhD? But then as he leaves she plants one on him, how could he not want to stay? Is she a mutant for hire working for Mr. Bennet?

Our funny-man, Hiro Nakamura, and his reluctant sidekick Ando Masahashi call Isaac Mendez’ studio. Isaac tells Peter Petrelli not to answer, that it was some Japanese guy leaving him messages. Peter picks up and tells Hiro what future Samurai Hiro told him in the train frozen in time in last week’s episode, they must save the cheerleader. Peter and Isaac struggle to put the paintings together that tell the story, but one piece is missing, one of the pieces Simone, took away to sell. But with this love triangle going on, just how complicated will it be to get it back?

Save the Cheerleader, save the world. But things never are so simple. Hiro and Ando are prevented from leaving by last episodes cheated poker player who wants his winnings back by having our Japanese duo play in a private poker game. When Ando notices one of the players is armed, he panics and takes Hiro into a storage area. Meanwhile we hear a ruckus in the game room.

The players are being massacred but you quickly realize it’s not someone human doing the work, as the door is nearly smashed in by a body with such violence, the blood leaks in through the cracks. Hiro begins to doubt himself because of his inability to do anything about it. He feels he has failed at being a hero. He has his first hero crisis all heroes from ancient mythology to today’s new mythologies, like The Matrix, must go through. If the hero doesn’t suffer in these stories, it weakens the story. To be a hero is to rise above your being.

Meet the Bio-parents. Papa Bennet pulls one out of his... hat, by finding Claire’s birth parents pretty damn quickly, which she later refers to as bio-parents. Please tell me no one fell for that one. I’ll give Claire the Cheerleader a break, for being young and stupid - and way too pretty. See what I mean? But it’s not like she has an inkling of what her Father Mr. Bennet, aka Horned Rim Glasses Man, does for a living. No one does. He’s so boring and suburban; you’d never think he was black ops secret agent man. Which has yet to be determined, but he’s obviously on to the mutants and has at least one working for him.

It seems, we find out during a discussion between Claire and her adoptive mother, that she may have a weakness. As a young child she had "a cough" severe enough that it needed a genetic background investigation. So perhaps, like David Dunn (that’s Bruce Willis in Unbreakable), she can choke on something. But a light bulb definitely went off in her head when she learned this little factoid and that Daddy dearest has been deceiving her in some way. Or maybe the illness was simply the trigger for her abilities.

It also seems as though Miss “Schizoid Embolism”, Niki Sanders was triggered when her husband “left” for the Pen. In this episode, she tells him, “When you left, I became a different person" and he finds out just what she means by that. I must admit not guessing D.L. Hawkins superpower and was wondering how he got into the house. Niki lets D.L. stay the night, a restless night for Niki who sneaks out in the middle of the night and comes back and of course doesn’t remember anything. What did she do? Well when D.L. and Niki go visit some of D.L.’s colleagues we see dark-side-Niki’s handy work with bodies torn in half. It seems to be her signature move - no guts, no glory I guess. She later confesses to doing it but not remembering.

Finally, it happened - I was waiting for it to happen. It was time that Niki and Evil-Niki had a little chat. Seriously, they were sitting next to each other. Evil-Niki tells Niki, she’s the one that gets the job done, that does what has to be done to survive. And that she has D.L.’s money from the robbery that sent him up to jail. That she slaughtered D.L.’s crew. And that she has to take the money and run or else D.L. would take Micah, their son, away from her. And lo and behold, Evil-Niki was right when she’s caught taking the money out.

We also find out he’s got a temper when he tried to impale Niki after finding her with her hand in the cookie jar. But then again, betrayal is a hard pill to swallow. Our first taste of a mutanto e mutanto fight was interesting, though tame. But the dude can move through walls, solid objects, and people. This explains how he just walked out of prison. It left us with a great cliffhanger, too. Is Niki dead? With certain producer/directors like Whedon not afraid to kill off major characters in his series, I wouldn’t be surprised if Heroes went in the same vein. But I doubt it. Niki and Doppelganger Niki are far more interesting personas than most characters on the show - so far, I have to add. And just what kind of super-powers must Micah have with full mutant parentage?

To be continued, indeed. I just hope all this predictability was only an appetizer for a bigger arc. Please be great, please be great, and please be great.

Tonight’s episode gets a downgrade from the usual five stars, to 4 outta 5. Maybe that was predictable also.