Other uses of Anticipatory Suspense

There's more to this anticipation thread...

Episode 2 of Heroes: Mohinder is explaining his dead father's thesis on the human genome to his father's neighbour, showing the map of the world upon which coloured pins and coloured string has been attached. Mohinder is developing some exposition when... the phone goes, the answerphone picks up. The caller leaves no message but the neighbour sees that there are saved messages.

She plays them - the first regards Mohinder's father's lizard - which was due to be taken somewhere, for something - probably back to a lab... They're about to discuss it when the next message plays - it's from Sylar (we've already heard about him through another plot strand involving a murdered couple - one skewered by lots of household implements, the other frozen with his head sawn off... his brain missing. Sylar is blamed). On the message, Mohinder's father picks up and they have a short conversation developing the serial killer element. It finishes and Mohinder begins to talk about Sylar, and his father's "Patient Zero". Now then, patient zero is the key to understanding the subplot of Heroes regarding certain humans becoming special in some way. But, as he's about to go into more detail, there's a loud crash and both Mohinder and the neighbour spin around... to find the lizard has made an appearance.

So, we change tack. We'll have to learn about Patient Zero later... meanwhile the neighbour puts the lizard back in his aquarium thing and discovers a USB memory stick hidden there.

The lizard has served two purposes... to stop the conversation on Sylar and Patient Zero, and to help uncover the memory stick - which yields Mohinder's father's genome detection utility (which tracks special humans), and is purportedly the reason why the sinister people are after him and probably killed the father. Actually, there's three reasons... the third being that as Mohinder and the neighbour search for the lizard on the floor, they bump into one another, and regard each other for a moment - possibly foreshadowing of a burgeoning relationship... maybe not, but you get the idea.