“Heroes” kicked off Season 2 tonight with the first installment in the second volume of the series. This new volume, “Generations”, luckily has nothing to do with the horrible “Star Trek” movie of the same name, although the fact that I saw that particular movie in a theatre gives me enough geek cred to provide insight and analysis into this season’s action.

This first episode led us into the action in media res, with the audience playing catch up as the cast has settled into life four months after the actions of the Season 1 finale. There’s a company to infiltrate, there’s a killer targeting the elder generation of heroes, and there’s a very scary man haunting a young girl’s dreams. Oh, and there’s the feudal Japan version of Jack Sparrow. Can’t forget that.

Let’s delve in, shall we?
Season 2 started with another of Mohinder’s groan and/or yawn-inducing monologues, during which he asks bland questions best kept to an eHarmony personality profile. Only this time, the show featured not only past footage of the show, but FUTURE footage of the show as well. This served to intrigue yours truly, as it allowed me to wonder what the hell I was seeing and not, “Did Mohinder just ask me if the searchable life is worth searching?” I’ll leave it to others to post screencaps of every bit of future footage we saw, but by the time we arrived in the show’s present day, I was ready to get my “Heroes” on.

Mohinder’s monologue, we learn, is part of a concerted effort on his part to gather research for a virus which started to kill all supers in the time since the explosion. A creepy guy from Linderman’s company has been following Mohinder from lecture to lecture…well, if you consider Ned Ryerson from “Groundhog Day” creepy. Turns out he wants to bring Mohinder back into the company fold, using his literal Midas touch as a way to fund Mohinder’s research. Sadly, he didn’t keep saying “Bing!” after each Mohinder refusal, which would have made my day.

The virus plot made me go “ugh”, much in the way that various things once described by C+C Music Factory made people go “hmmm”. But lo, we find out by episode’s end that the virus is itself a ruse concocted by everyone’s favorite paper salesman, Noah Bennett! He’s moved his family to California, changed their name to Butler, and works, ironically, at Copy Kingdom. He’s still in paper, he’s still middle management, he’s still answering to his inferiors. Only I’m pretty sure he never pinky swore the living hell out of Eric Roberts, making him beg for mercy. So that’s a little different.

Bennett’s enforced a strict “no special” policy on the Bennett household, which leant a very “Incredibles” feel to their dinner scene, with both Dad and Claire struggling with their banal lives. Both feel uncomfortable living such restrained lives after, you know, having helped saved the freakin’ world. I know the feeling all too well. A few weeks ago, I almost spilled some coffee on the train. And the person next to me looked kinda shady, and maybe they had, I dunno, a bazooka on them, and they would shot the bazooka by accident, sending said bazooka hurtling down the Green line tunnels, causing a chain reaction of destruction all along Boston’s Back Bay. I mean, I saved the world and everything, and I still work in a cubicle 9-5 daily. So I can empathize with Noah and Claire, is all I’m saying.

Claire meets Emo Superboy on her first day of school, and forgive me if I just yawn and call him the less sexually confused version of Zach and move on. Dude was obsessed with robots and aliens, but in the cool way I am. So clearly, he’s not meant for Claire. Which means we’ve got six more weeks of “Stop being a robot!” dialogue, and yes, this is going to be pretty painful. And we don’t have the healing ability of Claire , so just buckle up, people.

Speaking of painful, Molly Walker’s been having some pretty painful dreams herself. Then again, if you lived with Matt Parkman and Mohinder, you might have some pretty bizarre dreams too. (Can’t wait for the movie tie-in: “I Now Pronounce You Matt and Mohinder”.) Through legal means I won’t even TRY to explain, Molly is now living with these two men, even though my admittedly cursory knowledge of the adoption process tells me that there’s no way two non-related dudes can just scoop up a little girl that quickly, but whatever, we’re hear to talk about Molly’s drawings.

Unlike Isaac, Molly cannot paint the future; she only draws the devilish eyes she sees in her dreams, along with the helix formation that permeates the show. These eyes belong to the man she referred to at the end of Season 1, and promises to be one of, if not THE, Big Bad of “Generations”. The sense of foreboding around this character equals the foreboding surrounding Sylar, although I must admit I giggled a little when Parkman overhead Evil Eyes in Molly’s dreams saying, “I can see you you.” Because, you know, at that point I said aloud, “Holy Crap, the Big Bad this season is Sauron????”

I am hesistant to label notSauron the sole Big Bad, because it’s unclear if notSauron is one of the remaining Nine of the Original Dirty Dozen. After all, Sauron commanded nine Nazgul after all, and OK, I’m done with the “Lord of the Rings” now, I swear. That being said, I am not sure if notSauron killed Kaito Nakamura or not. It’s more than likely that they are one and the same, but I’m waiting on final judgment. In any case, we learned tonight via Kaito and Angela Petrelli that the work their group did caused amazing amounts of physical and psychological harm, and it looks like one of the remaining eight (post-Kaito) is looking for revenge on the lot of them.

Angela, for her part, looked insanely sallow throughout the episode. Her interactions with a very much alive Nathan (replete with Grizzly Adams beard) showed a depth of pain and hurt that four months simply hasn’t healed on either part. Her life’s work lost, along with her son, Angela’s left with barely any skin on her body, left only to blame Nathan for Peter’s death. Tonight featured her strongest performance yet, in my humble opinion: last season she veered from “loopy old lady looking for attention” to “I’ve planned this all along, now watch me do my best impersonation of Angela Lansbury in ‘Manchurian Candidate’.” Tonight she was neither naïve nor blandly evil: she was a mother, first and foremost, and that made her character more interesting.

Nathan’s turned into a drunk, and like Parkman, drove away his wife in the wake of the explosion. We learn that Claire knows he’s still alive, although the “how and why” will probably left to an episode entitled “Big Bomb Go Boom” later on in this volume. We can see Nathan’s angst, not only by his shagginess, but by what he sees in the mirror: a horribly disfigured, burnt version of Peter. Extra Crispy Peter is enough to drive anyone to down Wild Turkey.

And yes, Peter: the locks are gone, people, along with his memory. My guess is that Bennett, Peter, and the Haitian concocted a plot to wipe Peter’s memory so he couldn’t access Ted’s powers and hurt more people in the future. This theory explains the memory loss and the helix necklace around Peter’s neck (much like the one the Haitian wore). None of this explains Peter’s $12 haircut, but I’ll leave that to the fanfic people.

While all our heroes of yore dealt with life in the present, Hiro came face to face with his own hero in the past: Takezo Kensei. Turns out, though, that the man at the end of Season 1 wasn’t actually Kensei, but a decoy sent in by the real Kensei in order to pick off his opponents from a concealed position. Oh, and Kensie’s totally a white dude.

Yup, turns out this hero of Hiro is an ex-pat from England, using the name “Kensei” as a ruse in order to instill fear in his opponents. At this point, what seemed like a kick-ass ancient Oriental storyline turned into a combination of “Pirates of the Caribbean” and “Back to the Future”, with Hiro as Marty McFly and Kensei as a combination of Jack Sparrow and George McFly. This might eventually prove to be a good way to go, but it’s just not what I was expecting. I shouldn’t fault the show for not zagging where I was expect them to zig, but like the Spice Girls might opine, wanna, I wanna, I wanna, I wanna, I wanna really really really wanna zigazig ha.

Plus, man, it’s Sark from “Alias”! I can’t hate on this storyline too much. I suppose we’ll see Hiro help Kensei achieve his hero-dom, or that Hiro will in fact take over the Kenzei name, in essence turning Kensei into the Dread Pirate Roberts of feudal Japan, and that will all be fine and good, but I’ll not be holding my breath waiting for the story’s logical conclusion.

Amidst all these familiar faces, two new ones were introduced: Maya and Alejandro, twins from Honduras. Yes, twins. On a show about superheroes. You know what I’m going to say. C’mon, say it with me!

Wonder Twin Powers, Activate! Form of…Two Pretty People, The Female of Which Kills People and Makes Them Bleed From The Eyes if He’s Not Beside Her!

OK, maybe that’s not what you were thinking. Whatevs.

These two took the advice of Mohinder’s father, and perhaps the advice of Neil Diamond, and they’re coming to America. They hope to find a “cure” for Maya’s inability to make people act like they’ve just seen Phyllis Diller naked. So they’re off to NYC to find a now-dead Papa Suresh, and given Mohinder’s inability to act as a super-suave undercover guy, the Company might have already killed him by the time this dynamic duo ends up in the Big Apple.

***

Thus wraps up Episode 1, a solid 7/10. It wasn’t “Company Man” or “Five Years Later”, but a solid intro that answered a few lingering questions while asking a host of interesting new ones.

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