This Heroes recap was going to let you go, but instead will now knife you in the stomach

If we didn’t know that Heroes was ending for the season next episode, this would have been a relatively satisfying episode. We got to find out a bit more about the Company and Adam Monroe, there was a modest amount of gunplay, and one of the Wondertwins got butchered. That ticks off a lot of check boxes. But knowing that we’ve only got 42 minutes of Heroes left this season, it’s hard not to feel like things are getting a bit rushed. The plague that threatens the world just doesn’t feel terribly menacing yet, there’s still a billion unanswered questions about Adam Monroe and the Company, and Sylar has been sidelined for most of the season. In the (potential) final episode next week, these topics are either going to be handled quickly, or not at all. That feels like kind of a rip. At first glance, the only ones we have to blame for this are the striking writers, and by extension, Communism. However, here at Cracked, our editors encourage us to take the long view, so I’m also going to blame George W. Bush, Rich Hollywood Jews, and my parents. Things we now know: How did Adam know exactly where Victoria Pratt was? Everything we knew about her suggested that she had gone deep into hiding, and very few people knew where she was. I’ll guess that the Nightmare man read Angela Petrelli’s mind and told Adam about it, even though we haven’t seen any direct evidence that the two are co-operating. Still, it beats my other theory, which centered around an edited scene of Adam and Peter Googling her. We still don’t know whether it was Bob or Mohinder that decided to save Bennet’s life, although both are aware he pulled a Lazarus. The big question here of course is what form the inevitable father daughter reunion will take when Claire and Noah cross paths again. I’m personally hoping that it’s some kind of Three’s Company-esque situation, where having both had their memories erased by the Haitian, the two meet on a blind date. They immediately hit it off, and are only moments away from a passionate kiss, when they're interrupted by Matt Parkman, who’s now their landlord. Micah and his cousins are back, and take part in one of the most inane stories I’ve ever seen on television – the Great Backpack Caper. I understand that there have to be some lighthearted moments in a show that features such grave threats to the world, but this is taking things a bit far. Last year Hiro and Ando’s hijinx managed to lighten the mood of the show without coming off as contrived or trivial. Micah’s cousin (I’ve completely forgotten her name) has gotten a pretty raw deal. To be the worst new cast character in a field that also includes West and the Wondertwins is both astounding and shameful. Speaking of everyone’s favorite Hondurans, a couple weeks ago I said I’d tolerate their return to the show once they finally did something. Technically they didn’t actually do anything this episode, though fortunately for us, someone did do something to them, in the form of a knife to the abdomen. Alejandro’s ambush of Sylar while armed with nothing more than a wispy mustache was woefully ill-advised. Incidently, watching Sylar smooth-talk Typhoid Maya is really unpleasant to watch. It feels a little bit like watching old people flirt. I’m a little fuzzy on how Peter intends to save Caitlin. How exactly does he think that changing the future will save the girl that he left there? For a plot device as overused as time travel, you’d think someone would have figured out by now how to use it properly. I’d suggest writers should steer well clear from using time travel in their stories. Aside from some very specific exceptions - e.g: stories where characters from Star Trek : The Next Generation travel back in time to take twentieth century fan fiction writers back to the future with them - I never use time travel in my own work any more.