Review: Heroes - Building 26

This volume so far has gone to great lengths to really define the heroes and villains of the Heroes universe. With Nathan's plan pretty much in full swing its not safe to be someone with powers unless your name is Claire, in which case you could pretty much get away with murder and still live in Costa Verde. But what about the rest of the characters? Intuitive aptitude: an awesome description of Sylar. While Sylar may be the best character on the show right now, I have to admit that his roadtrip with Luke is getting a little stale. I mean, its great that we're learning more about his backstory, but Luke is really annoying. It was really funny when Sylar essentually admitted to being a serial killer. The two of them are eventually tracked via a traffic camera that identified Sylar's face, prompting a team to be dispatched to the diner where Luke is enjoying the road trip. Sylar escapes by leaving Luke behind, only to return and rescue him in addition to get some equipment from the team. The two of them rode off with Psyhco Killer playing on the radio. How much longer will Sylar put up with Luke before he eventually kills him? Ando and Hiro are somehow in India. How did they get to India? I guess that's a little sense of story that we'll have to overlook. The two of them are following the plot device...I mean, drawing that depicts them stopping a wedding. Hiro stops the wedding to match the picture and learns that he can still be a hero, despite having no powers. Hiro is going to get boring if this give and take with Ando continues. Why does Hiro continually undervalue Ando? Ando clearly has powers and Hiro doesn't. Ando has grown more likeable than Hiro at this point. Their next destination? LA to save Matt Parkman. Claire is becoming more and more like her dad everyday, mainly in her actually getting clever. The person texting her warns her that there is another one near her that is in trouble, someone named Alex at the comic book store near the Bennet household. After convincing Alex that he should run, he ends up in her closet at the house to hide. But this is after Claire telling her mom that Noah is up to no good again. Noah is forced to move out for a while and ends up in a local hotel. He has a few drinks, and begins to feel funny. That's because Parkman, Peter and Mohinder have drugged him! One can only assume this is to interrogate him for more information on the events. There was some minor stuff with Nathan and his operation. Namely, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) being given jurisdiction to run the program. So that means Nathan needs evidence of the necessity of the operation, which means a staged escape for Traci. Who then proceeds to freeze an innocent analyst and impresses upon the DHS liason the need for the operation to continue. This episode was really just to get the people where they need to be for the next episode. Noah is being portrayed as being forced to make a choice. I'm worried that we're going to the same result that we end up with every time Noah is faced with this decision: he's doing it to protect his family. This volume is still going relatively strong up through chapter three, but I worry the story is starting to get stalled again. Don't get me wrong...these first three episodes have been intense and have set up a potentially nice season. But we're slowly getting into having the same character conflicts being recycled for the sake of creating convenient heroes and villains. Overall score: 85 out of 100