Another Week, More Awesome Heroes

Chapter 6, ''Better Halves,'' was one of the show's most self-contained episodes yet, giving us brief glimpses of Mohinder, Peter, and Isaac (no Matt to be seen, which is fine, because I couldn't take any more of his freaky mind-reading from last week and I find him boring) and focusing on Hiro, Claire, and Niki, who continues to flex her Incredible Hulk-like powers in increasingly scary ways. I never even imagined that she did the bad things that put her husband, D.L., in jail. If that's her ''better half,'' then I don't blame D.L. for putting his fist through his wife's stomach.

Speaking of D.L., he can apparently ''phase,'' or pass through solid objects, much like Kitty Pryde in the X-Men movies and comics. With parents like this, Micah is bound to have some incredible powers. Also, despite some general resemblance, D.L. is not the guy who hangs around with Claire's dad and erases people's memories. That other guy is a completely different character whom the show's writers refer to as the Haitian. It also seems he is not Sylar as I once believed.

Claire's dad, who still doesn't have a name other than Horn-Rimmed Glasses, gets more complex with every episode. He cruelly orchestrated a meeting between his adopted daughter and a pair of evidently fake biological parents, yet he seemed to show fatherly concern when he learned from Eden, who's been his mole with Mohinder all along, that Peter has to ''save the cheerleader.'' It was the natural assumption in the first few episodes that he killed Papa Suresh and is trying to do something similarly harmful to our heroes, but maybe not. Could anyone who answers the statement ''Also, there may have been an encounter with someone who can stop time'' with ''Really? That's cool!'' be that bad? Maybe he's just a superhero geek too.

Still, the Claire and Hiro plotlines felt a little like they were marking time, even though Hiro offered one of the episode's funniest moments with a look of utter ''hell, yeah'' on his face when Ando told him that he'll have a sword at some point in the future. Though I hope these two don't turn into some ridiculous, simplistic, and stereotypical Asian comic-relief duo, I also hope that Hiro won't be completely bummed out by his inability to stop Bizarro Niki from ripping those three guys in half. For as Ando said, ''Every hero is on a journey to find his place in the world. But it's a journey. You don't start at the end. Otherwise they can't make a movie about it later.''

Is anyone else annoyed and unconvinced by Mohinder's sudden and complete turnaround? (I'm sure flights to and from India are not cheap.) What's the deal with the half-DNA-helix symbol that keeps popping up? As usual, I can't wait until next week.