“Heroes:” “How to Stop an Exploding Man”

… Except that technically, on Monday’s season finale of “Heroes,” they didn’t stop the exploding man. They just changed the place where he exploded. So we still need to know exactly how to stop an exploding man, you know, for future reference.

Other questions/comments (obviously, if you TiVo’d the episode, you won’t want to read any further until you’ve actually seen it):

* I didn’t see the past couple of episodes, so can anyone tell me if they explained why the streets of New York were completely empty except for the occasional “Heroes” cast member? Because, usually, they’re, you know, not.

* For a while, it seemed, they had dialed back on the corny narration, but, boyoboy, they ladled it on tonight: “Why are we here? What is the soul? Why do we dream?” At least that, of course, was followed by a replay of Lindermann’s messy lobotomy. Answer: “The soul is what gets jazzed when watching a guy’s brain get sucked out of his skull.”

* Plotting seemed alternately sloppy – Sylar allows himself to get played, again, by Hiro?; Peter’s unexplained journey through the past in order to receive key plot points – and fairly clever in the way they managed to get so much of the cast in the same place for the final showdown (though how did Claire know where to turn up?).

* Re: Peter’s journey through the past: He’s told, “In the end, all that really matters is love.” Aw, c’mon, not quite: In the end, all that really matters on “Heroes” is an average of one grisly scene and one unforeseen plot twist per episode. Even Tina Turner has long suspected that love has nothing to do with it, and I doubt she’s ever seen the show.

* So there’s a little girl who knows where everyone else with secret abilities is on the planet. Of all the superpowers available out there, how much must it suck to get handed that essentially useless and largely self-endangering one?

* Nathan and Peter’s mom must’ve dealt in with the bad guys – they seemed awfully anxious to go blow themselves up. And so “Heroes” scratches Milo Ventimiglia? Kiss the teen girl demographic goodbye come next season.

* Claire was revealed to be Peter’s niece, and there were a few moments of almost-kinda frisson between them earlier in the season, and she couldn’t bring herself to shoot him, even if it meant saving the world, though clearly not for familial reasons. Discuss.

* Every series would be a hit if it featured one Ali Larter v. herself catfight per episode.

* You know, Sylar just doesn’t seem that clever a guy to roust his way through the “Heroes” lineup as easily as he did. That pronounced forehead of his suggests he could star on “Cavemen” sans makeup. Yet take a look at his performance tonight:

Round 1: Sylar v. Ando. No contest; a knockout prevented only by Sylar’s typically lunkheaded villainy w/r/t prolonging Ando’s torture.
Round 2: Sylar v. Hiro. Aborted mid-clash, due again to Sylar’s villainously vainglorious preening. Hiro and Ando escape.
Round 3: Sylar v. Parkman. No contest: Down goes Parkman! Down goes Parkman!
Round 4: Sylar v. Bennett (“Call me ‘Noah’”): No contest, though credit HRG with creating, apparently out of thin air, a sling for his bum arm. Maybe he has secret powers, after all: the ability to conjure over-the-counter medical supplies. (OK, so there’s one even lamer than that little girl’s.)
Round 5: Sylar v. Peter. Again, no contest: Milo is forced into a moment of extreme overacting, and Sylar even manages those extra few game-changing seconds of villainous gloating: “Turns out you’re the villain, Peter – I’m the hero.”
Round 6: Sylar v. Hiro II: The Quickening: At best, a draw. Sylar takes the shiv, but apparently escapes and transforms himself into a cockroach, while Hiro disappears until an afterthought of a coda of an epilogue finds him popping up in 17th-century Japan.

So there you have it: Unhinged doofus Sylar v. “Heroes”’ fighting elite, and Sylar wins in a TKO. Maybe in season two the “Heroes’ll” find a proper Professor X, a really smart guy to properly herd them when battling hyper-powered morons.

* OK, so we pretty much know Peter and Nathan won’t be back for season two, but the rest of the estimable body count was a cheat: D.L. seemed to have been offed in a previous episode, and he’s still hanging in there. Parkman took a chestful of his own gunfire, but they resolutely refused to write him off definitively. Sylar got poleaxed, and yet, during the episode-ending mumbo-jumbo, it was suggested he managed a messy getaway, too, although he seemed to have morphed himself into a cockroach. (Yet another pointless superpower!) (This ending recalled the last shot of “The Departed,” where the rat scuttled on the windowsill.) They even brought back the long-dead Simone, suggesting that on “Heroes,” there’s no such thing as too dead.

* OK, so here’s your next assignment: Next season, in addition to “Heroes,” NBC will fill the spaces in between new episodes with something called “Heroes: Origins,” which will offer stand-alone shows introducing potential new characters with different powers for whom viewers can vote into future episodes of the series. So let’s help them out, shall we, with suggestions for future heroes and their secret abilities.

I’m currently developing a handful, including a woman who can chew nervously at her cuticles while maintaining nails that look immaculately manicured, and an tremulous guy who, in times of moderate danger, can transform himself into a gosling so adorable no evildoer can render it harm.

Somehow, I suspect, you can do better, and, as they say at England’s The Guardian, “comment is free,” so offer us your worst, or best, or most middling. We invite it all.

* Oh, and re: HBO’s commercial for “John from Cincinnati” during the episode: Given all the “Heroes”’ abilities, being capable of hovering a couple of inches off the ground hardly seems all that big a deal.