This week's episode of Heroes was written by two of the writers from the first season, Chuck Kim and Christopher Zatta, and thank the television Gods for them. It felt like the previous two seasons. It moved better. It made sense. It was genuinely funny and suspenseful. It was intriguing and it had the most "did not see THAT coming" opening of the season.

Although the very first part of the opening started on shaky ground with the Hiro/Ando bit, what with the fake Samurai sword and stage blood routine. Hiro froze time, went to a prop store, stole some supplies, popped back to the bar a few minutes earlier, told Ando to fake his death and popped back to the correct moment in order to carry out the fake assassination. Knox leaves to take Adam to see "the Boss." Daphne gives Hiro an assignment, to capture a precog from Africa and bring him back alive. She warns Hiro to be careful. Hiro asks why. She says, "Because they see the future." Which was funny in a sweet way. It felt good to be in on the joke again, to see things coming and still enjoy them.

Claire leaves to save Meredith, her bio-Mom. Sandra, Claire's adopted Mom, tags along saying, "One of us, one of them. I'm the one of us." Eric Doyle of the Doyle Marionette Theater (of course) is holding Meredith Gordon captive. He can control people's physical movement. He decided to make Meredith love him again. Apparently they were an item at some point in the past. Yes, because all women use some shlubby sad sack after breaking up with a gorgeous guy who can fly. Let's be fair, maybe she dated Eric before Nathan back when Eric was young and hot. Doubtful.

And in this season's best opening bit yet Adam Monroe is taken to Pinehearst where Arthur Petrelli lays in a sick bed hooked up to a respirator. Knox holds Adam next to the bed and places Arthur's hand on his. Adam starts to scream as his face ages and dehydrates a la "Last Crusade" until he turns into a pile of ash and falls to the ground.

Then Arthur pulls the breathing tube out of his trachea, which heals instantaneously, and says, "Feels good to breath again."

Wow! What an opening! This show hasn't been this good since last year. Now that everything is making sense and we have our bearings again we can enjoy the show again. We can sit back, relax and get into the sub-text, like the Pinehearst logo being the tattoo all the "villains" had in the first season. We now understand that these "villains" were made in the Pinehearst labs and branded as a way of keeping track of them and perhaps as a sign of solidarity. In knowing where the episode is taking us we feel like a part of the ride instead of a victim in a drive-by airing of a chaotic storyline and machine-gun style editing.

Daphne meets Parkman at the airport in a clandestine way so Parkman thanks the turtle, his power animal, he brought back with him from Africa. Saying, "Okay turtle you got me home so now we just need to find Daphne, save her life and get her to fall in love with me. If you could just give me a sign. I can't believe I'm talking to a turtle." Then he sees Daphne at the bottom of the escalator and says, "High five turtle." Technically it's a tortoise, a turtle would never survive in the dessert, and how did Parkman get an animal into America without a quarantine wait period? He must have bought him a ticket to fly sitting next to him. Parkman gets the "moving too fast" award for telling Daphne he had a dream and they fall in love, get married, have a baby and name her Daniella after Daphne's Grandmother. Not the typical first date but who's being picky? Daphne has to run (pun intended) so she asks Parkman to wait for her. He agrees. Nathan and Tracy go to see Suresh. They ask him to help them to get rid of their powers. Suresh seems very interested in Tracy. He gets a little creepy and kind of hits on Tracy. He says, "I believe we can be of great assistance to each other," in a way that makes a person feel yucky inside. The snake sound effect under his close-up doesn't help either. Suresh drugs Tracy and Nathan, straps them to some lab tables and waits to run experiments on them. Daphne speeds in to recruit Suresh, discovers his dirty little secrets, says he's just like all the rest of the villains she works for and speeds out again before Suresh can stop her. Looks like someone's world might be coming apart very soon.

Daphne pops in on Sylar. She tries to recruit him because he's a killer and the man who wants him likes him just the way he is. Sylar doesn't want to go with her. So Daphne leaves with the fire-thrower "bad" guy and leaves Sylar behind. Sylar wakes Peter from his medically induced coma and tells him they have to help their Mother. Peter doesn't like the sound of that and gets mad at Sylar. Peter wants to know how Sylar learned to control his powers in the future. Sylar says he doesn't know but that just knowing he does in the future gives him hope.

Hiro and Ando try to sneak up on the African precog. Hiro gets hit on the head with a shovel twice before realizing that they need to sneak up on him the old fashioned way, by waiting until he shows up.

Eric, the puppeteer, catches Claire and Sandra and forces them into a game of Russian roulette. An emotional and teary first round in which Claire is forced to choose who to point that gun at, her bio-Mom or her adopted Mom, reveals that she looks up to Meredith and might be disconnecting from Sandra. Then Eric makes a key error, he underestimates them. Sandra's turn to spin the gun lands on Claire. He allows Claire to say what he thinks will he her last words. She tells her Mom, "Mom, it's okay. It's me. You can't fight it. Do what you have to do. Pull the trigger." So Sandra pulls it three times until she gets a live round and blows Claire out of her chair. Eric turns his back on Claire, thinking she's dead, and gets hit on the back of his head by Claire with the butt of the gun Sandra threw on the ground after firing. Awesome. True it was a little predictable but in a very enjoyable way. HRG arrives and sedates Eric to take him into custody. He compliments his daughter for her good work. Claire walks away from her Father in angry, cold silence. Meredith talks to Noah about Claire saying she doesn't need them right now and then HRG tries to recruit Meredith to work for the "good" guys.

Sylar takes Peter to see their Mother. She's in a trance like coma. Peter tries to read her mind but all he can see is the Pinehearst symbol. Peter decides to go after the people who hurt his Mother. Sylar tries to stop him. They get into a super-hero, comic book style fight in which Peter lets loose on Sylar, beating him severely and leaving him in the same medical coma Sylar woke Peter from.

Tracy gets smart, suckers Suresh into feeling like she understands him and gets him to hold her hand. Then she freezes him, freezes her bonds so she can break them, frees herself and then frees Nathan. Just as they turn to leave Suresh appears and says, "We're not done here." Then they cut to commercial. Very menacing. We have to wait until next week to see how they get out of this sticky wicket.

After a long, hard day of recruiting "bad" guys Daphne pops back into the airport just as Parkman was about to leave. She tells Parkman he's not Pinehearst material, that he's a nice guy. He tells her she needs to stay away from them too because they cause her death. He tries to convince her that he can protect her. He asks her to tell him what her heart is saying. She says it's telling her what it always does, "keep moving too fast to get caught." He demands to know what they have on her. She doesn't tell him; instead she speeds out of his life.

Hiro and Ando prove themselves worthy of the precog's time by using their brains instead of their powers to sneak up on him. He shows them a painting of the "villains" they seek. He gives them a choice: either take him to them or they can follow their own path. They realize the symbol in the painting is the same as the logo on the Pinehearst card given to Hiro by Daphne when she recruited him. Hiro asks, "But what does it mean?" Just as the camera pans over and zooms in on a painting of what looks like Peter hugging a man in a suit we can only assume is his Father, Arthur Petrelli.

Peter zaps himself over to Pinehearst and walks into confront the evil responsible for his Mother's coma. He interrupts a meeting of the "villains" and discovers his Father is alive. His Father tells him to give him a hug. He whispers in his son's ear as they hug, "I'm sorry it had to come to this." Then he takes Peter's powers. Again, not a shocking twist but a very satisfying and uncomfortable inevitability, the only person strong enough to stop the power drunk Peter was his Father.

This episode got a rocky season back on track. Hopefully the dynamic writing duo of Kim and Zatta will keep things going along these same entertaining and engrossing plot lines.

Story by Erin MacMillan-Ramirez

Starpulse contributing writer