The TV Zone

Finally! One of those great “whoa!” moments that takes you completely by surprise and takes your breath away. Like last fall when they cut to a shot of cheerleader Claire lying on a table and chatting away with her rib cage cut completely open. Whoa!

“Heroes” did it again last night when Matt’s in-the-marked-for-death-picture dad lured his cop kid and Nathan Petrelli past a door in his Philadelphia apartment that led to -- everywhere! Matt found himself in a humongous jail cell, while Nathan was on that Manhattan rooftop overlooking the (forthcoming) apocalypse. It all ended up being a dream -- daddy is Molly’s “nightmare man,” after all -- but it was a doozy of a twist, utterly unexpected.

More please! After laying track the past few weeks, “Heroes” is finally zipping along. We also got a great dose of wonder and joy in Micah and his copycat cousin Monica, who’s just discovering her abilities. Turns out that reintroduction feels crucial to the show. With everybody else jaded or uber-motivated On A Mission, Monica represents that aching-heart intimacy the story needs to stay personally affective, to keep from lapsing into pure genre adventure. She reminds us what the show is really about -- people in crisis, perplexed by their sudden “powers,” overwhelmed, fearful, sometimes excited, but afraid of losing themselves by becoming entirely other persons.

Like Nathan. What’s up with the split personality? Is he going all Niki on us? And the older generation of “heroes” represented by Suresh’s boss Bob and the Petrellis’ mom and Matt’s dad, the latter actually invoking the catchphrase “save the world” last night -- good guys? Bad guys? For that matter, are we sure The Company is evil? And what about lightning-fingered new girl Kristen Bell and her on-the-phone “daddy”?

There’s suddenly so much going on that we don’t even notice when half the cast is MIA. No H.R.G. and Haitian to speak of, no Claire, very little Hiro, no Sylar and the (I’m still not into them) Hondurans. They’ll all be back next week, but “Heroes” seems so full of rich characters that they can rotate to keep the show feeling fresh. Let’s enjoy it while we can. You know what’ll happen once they’re past November sweeps . . .

Watch the episode again here, or with fun video commentary from star Greg Grunberg (Matt) and producer Greg Beeman here.

[Above: Noah Gray-Cabey as Micah, Dana Davis as Monica, in NBC photo by Chris Haston.]