Written by: Joy Blake, Melissa Blake
Directed by: Lesli Linka Glatter
Rating:
The One Where: Matt and Nathan confront Nightmare Man, alias Maury Parkman, while Peter opens the box and discovers his true identity. Mohinder takes on an assignment for the Company while Monica becomes a Buffalo Girl, round the outside.
Verdict: What a mundane episode. There’s some nice character stuff with Matt confronting a family demon – and Alan Blumenfeld is brilliant as the scuzzily sinister Maury – but elsewhere it feels as if the show is treading water. All that business with Hiro in Feudal Japan is dragging: he clearly works better as a comic foil for the contemporary heroes, not marooned in pseudo-Water Margin capers.
Highlight: The superbly edited sequence where Matt and Nathan scrap with two different opponents before realising that they’re really fighting each other.
Fab FX: The ruined NYC that Nathan sees in a Maury-induced hallucination.
Trivia: That actually is Noah Gray-Cabey tickling the ivories. He was a piano-playing prodigy at the age of three.
Did You Spot? The Clairebear-shaped hole? This is the first episode not to feature our favourite invulnerable cheerleader.
Speculation: Kristen Bell’s character can do the blue sparky thing like Peter. The two of them must have had a previous encounter for Peter to have absorbed her powers.
Best Line:
Mohinda: "Sometimes, despite ourselves, we run. What if the nightmare gives chase? What do we do then?"
Nick Setchfield