Heroes - "The Second Coming" and "The Butterfly Effect"

So Heroes is back and still boring. The brilliance of the show from its first season was that it had all of the characters in different places but working towards the same goal. In tonight's two episodes, the characters were all over the place and each dealing with their own issues. This would probably be fine if the show didn't bounce us around all over the place, making it hard to care about one issue for longer than that scene. Since this is the premiere, I think I need to address each plot thread and figure out what's going:

1. Peter/Future Peter: Obviously in the future, things all went wrong and the only way for Peter to stop it is to go back to the past and become a bad guy. This is kind of confusing. Is he good in the future or just as good as one could be? He was far too moody in the present tense, so that's going to have to change for me to care. Additionally, whatever happened to his Irish girlfriend? She got left behind in the future last season and was forgotten about. Not even a mention of her tonight.

2. Nathan/Linderman: When it seemed like Nathan found God, I was prepared to turn off the TV and never watch Heroes again. Luckily they seemed to have saved us from that by turning Nathan into Hurley. Why Linderman is there I'm not so sure, but it appears the writers had wanted to do something with Nathan as a Congressman and so they've gone back and found a way for him to do it again. What also needs to be addressed is why he survived. I'm sure that this will play out over the course of the season, but a simple explanation here would have helped me understand this thread a little bit better.

3. Mohinder/Maya: This was a weirdly set up and hardly used thread. Maya again was just sort of useless and didn't really contribute anything more than a sudden epiphany in Mohinder that happened so quickly that it's almost a shock he didn't think of it two seasons ago. Mohinder did the stupid thing and got some weird combination of super strength and agility, but when he did, be became a total sleezeball. His weird peeling at the end should give me a little something to care about next week, but we'll see.

4. Claire: Her taped almost train jumping was one of the lamest things this show has ever done. It looked like it was going to go on her MySpace. Her encounter with Sylar was very creepy, but started and stopped so suddenly that it fit awkwardly into the episode. I understand her "not being human" thing, but really her plot sort of stalled out. It looks like she's on the brink of bad, but the writers need something compelling to keep their most compelling character interesting.

5. Hiro/Ando: The best part of the entire evening was watching Kaito tell Hiro he shouldn't have opened the safe. His new nemesis will be fun because she seems like the perfect foil for the usually whimsical Hiro. His new found power made him a little less full of bubbly optimism and his discovery that future Ando kills him sort of made Hiro a bit of a disappointment tonight. The best part about the character is that he's always been the fun one. Tonight he was just a bit too serious.

6. Sylar/Mamma Patrelli/Bennett/The Company: So Bob is dead, Elle is out, and Mamma Patrelli is in control all of the sudden. These poorly set up new bad guys have escaped with good Peter in the body of Weevil and Bennett is going to hunt them down. Seems like these are all really just facts, not really anything to ponder. On the other hand, we now know Sylar doesn't eat brains, but just sort of fiddles around with them. He was super creepy in his scene with Claire, and now he seems unstoppable. I'm actually excited to see what they do with him now, especially with the implication that he's a third Patrelli boy, so that is going to be what I'll focus on the most next week.

7. Nikki/Not Nikki/Parkman: Parkman was completely irrelevant in this episode except for that we've met some guy in the African desert who likes Brittany Spears and Sprint. The mysterious new Not Nikki character however was just a step above that. Sure she offered Nathan a job, but really all we found out is that maybe there's another personality a la Jessica running around that can freeze people to death. I'm interested in that too.

8. Loose Ends: Where were Micah and Monica? What happened to the real Nikki Sanders? Why was Bob so unceremoniously killed off? Why is Claire jaded in the future? Where did Future Peter get the power to put people in other people's bodies? What is Claire's mom's involvement in The Company? That group of bad guys in Mamma Patrelli's dream looked intense, when do see them in action? Will this show get really good again?

The Second Coming: C
The Butterfly Effect: C+