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This review may contain spoilers.

“Heroes” followed up its season premier Monday with a narcolepsy inducing hour of television that extended the storylines of the first, disappointing episode of the fourth season.

This was heavily dependent on the first one, so much so that a viewer just tuning in to “Heroes” at its normal time would have been totally lost ... and nothing of importance happened. “Heroes” is a serialized drama, so the episodes do follow a particular order. Still, I don’t think I’ve ever seen two concurrent episodes accomplish so little.

The episode focuses on the recovery of a compass that Danko has hidden in a safety deposit box. Noah (Jack Coleman) recruits Peter (Milo Ventimiglia) to help, but Peter is more interested in performing heroic exploits as paramedic extraordinaire. Noah begins to get friendly with Nikki, and if they become a couple, it will strain the limits of believability a bit too far.

Claire (Hayden Panettiere) bounces back nicely from the death of her roommate Annie, only to find one that is less annoying, but she makes up for it in creepiness. Obviously, Annie’s death is fishy, especially when a suicide note turns up that Claire did not see earlier. Naturally, Claire decides to figure out if her roommate was murdered, or if she committed suicide.

Of course, she decides to do this by falling out the window herself, and, predictably, she is seen reassembling herself by her roommate. If this sounds an awful lot like what went on in season one, well, you are right. The storyline holds potential, but apparently, the writers don’t care to come up with anything new.

Hiro (Masi Oka) goes back in time to the night of a carnival, which happens to be the point that it was revealed to him that he would be a hero someday. Apparently, this is why he’s dying. No, it was never explained clearly. Samuel (Robert Knepper) travels back, with the help of a dying fellow carnie, and convinces Hiro that he can change some details of the past.

Rather than changing his life’s course, in yet another meeting with his younger self, Hiro instead prevents Ando's slush from spilling on his sister, which makes her hate Ando for the rest of his life. No, I am not making this up. Sadly, this isn’t the worst development of the night.

In the weakest storyline, Matt Parkman starts to have vision of Sylar (Zachary Quinto), who apparently left a bit of himself stuck in Matt’s (Greg Grunberg) mind. While Parkman refuses to use his powers to solve crimes, he does succumb to his power to convince the water delivery guy to leave his wife alone. Yes, it is as dumb as it sounds.

As a regular viewer of “Heroes”, I can’t imagine a worse start to a season. In two hours, about all that was learned of any real significance is that Hiro is supposedly dying. If the show doesn’t improve soon, there won’t be enough viewers to even care.

What Worked

Well, they did play “An Honest Mistake”, a cool song by The Bravery, though it is a few years old. Other than that, I am stumped.

What Didn’t Work

The trip back in time so that Hiro could patch up the relationship between Ando and Hiro’s sister was incredibly stupid. I am getting very tired of people with God-like powers whining, complaining, and squandering their powers on pointless, trivial, idiotic tasks like this.

Similarly, Matt Parkman is willing to look like a lunatic in front of countless co-workers and steadfastly refuses to use his powers, even if it means catching criminals. But he falls off the wagon trying to keep his wife from cheating with the water delivery guy? It didn’t make a bit of sense. It seems having great power makes people incredibly selfish and ignorant.

Giving Credit Where Credit Is Due

"Heroes" stars Jack Coleman, Hayden Panettiere, Ali Larter, Adrian Pasdar, Masi Oka, and Milo Ventimiglia. “Jump, Push, Fall” was written by Adam Armus and Kay Foster. The episode was directed by Ed Bianchi.
"Heroes" airs Mondays at 9 p.m. on NBC.