In all the years I’ve watched Heroes, I’ve experienced a variety of emotions.  Some episodes thrilled, some disappointed.  Others made me wonder and some were basically boring.  “Once upon a time in Texas” was the first time an episode ticked me off.

The show centered around Hiro trying to rescue his long lost love, Charlie.  For those who weren’t around in the beginning, Charlie was a cute red-head waitress from season one whom Hiro met on the day she died.  So determined to rescue her, he goes back six months in time and properly falls in love with her and the feeling is mutual.  This storyline is explored in the only Heroes’ novel, “Saving Charlie”.

In the end, he failed to save her, but three years later, he tried again and this time he saved her.  It took some time and he had to keep history in tact and make a deal with the devil of Heroes to do it, but after it was all over, he saved her.  I have to admit, I liked Charlie.  I remember thinking back then, “forget the Cheerleader, save the waitress.”  So while I did not think it would happen, I liked the idea of saving Charlie.

Then, after he saves her, and it looks like his dreams are coming true, the other shoe drops.  Of course it does; it’s not the end of the season.  We can’t have a happy ending yet.

But this is what ticked me off.  The Ink Man from the Carnival showed up and kidnapped Charlie.  One of his carnies had the power of time travel too and with his dying act, he hid her somewhere in time.

Now Hiro must serve the Ink Man to find his long-lost love.

This annoyed me to no end.  I get the idea of unrequited love.  I also get the idea of heroes suffering.  I even get the idea that it’s the in-story reason for moving the Carnival storyline along.  Still, it annoyed me.

I was ready for Charlie to die.  The actress who plays Charlie,  Jayma Mays, stars on Glee; she wasn’t coming back for an on-going role.  But this was just too much pulling on the strings of one’s heart.  And worse, it was too much of a cliche.  Boy gets girl, boy loses girl.  The only way to top off this cliche is in the final episode, Hiro saves Charlie and they both ride off into the sunset.

If there was any “jump the shark” moment in Heroes, this is it.  Part of me wants to say, “I’m done.”

The other storyline of the night, doesn’t help either.  It was a piece about Noah’s little “non-physical” affair with a co-worker around the time of Charlie’s death.  The co-worker is played by Elisabeth Rohm,  from Law and Order and the first two seasons of Angel.  Checking out IMDB, she’s only in this episode, so I have to wonder, why?  Why are they showing this incident in Noah’s life?  If she was coming back into his life in the modern day time frame, I’d get it.  But right now this seems like a pointless story.

So, between a cliche that annoyed me, and a pointless story, the only thing positive I can say about this episode is that it was well written and hardly boring.  At some points it was funny. 

That’s not enough.  I want more; I want originality, a point, and even hope.  Yeah, I want tension.  I want the unexpected and the build up.  This isn’t doing that.  I want more.