In this episode of Heroes …
Hiro is still looking for his sword, and in the process, he and Ando get kidnapped by some men in a van, who it turns out work for Hiro’s father, George Takei (“Oh MY!”). Of course, the fact that the NBC marketing department already revealed this casting weeks ago took all the steam and surprise out of this particular plotline for me. I wonder when the networks will figure out that people who watch TV shows actually LIKE surprises?
Two weeks of show time have passed since the last episode of Heroes. During that time, Peter has been in a coma, Niki’s been in jail, Matt has been staking out Primatech Paper in search of Sylar, the radioactive guy has been practicing his powers, Claire has been pretending to not have a memory, and Hiro has been looking for the sword that will help him regain full use of his powers.
In this episode of Heroes, Matt the Cop finally joins the fray, interrogating both Peter and Claire. Unfortunately, he’s frustrated in both instances. Peter’s power mimicking ability creates some nasty telepathic feedback for him, and Claire and her father are under the telepathic protection of “The Haitian”. Who, by the way, needs a name already. Seriously. Unless maybe he has one, but has wiped it out of the heads of everybody who’s ever heard it?
Six months ago, on Heroes …
Eden had long hair. Peter became a male nurse. Nathan regretted buying a convertible. Claire received the cheerleader outfit that she wouldn’t take off for six months. Matt ate a dozen doughnuts. Hiro couldn’t save the waitress he had grown to love. Niki the recovering alcoholic took on her dead sister’s personality as an alter ego. D.L. wasn’t in jail yet. Papa Suresh wasn’t dead yet. And Isaac apparently wasn’t even born yet.
In this week’s Heroes, Sylar pointed his finger at somebody’s head and starting slicing the top of their skull off!!! That was awesome. You know, in a really sick way. It was just that annoying other cheerleader anyway, so it’s hard to feel bad. This episode is what I imagine the X-Men movies would look like if John Hughes wrote them. The popular girl who accepts the freaks & geeks (& gays) becomes the homecoming queen. But the bitchy homophobic popular girl is punched in the eye and gets scalped. (Cue Simple Minds song, “Hey hey hey HEY …”)
This week on Heroes, Hiro falls in love with a waitress, Photographic Memory Girl. They flirt and bond like crazy, and in the end, he has to go back in time to prevent Sylar from making her a pop-top. So then where are they now? And why did they leave Ando behind?
Heroes took an interesting turn and slipped away from the Sylar hunt into kind of an X-Files “freak of the week” mode this episode. Based on all the pins we saw on Suresh’s map, I wondered if/when this would happen. After all, they can’t all be heroes, right? As a mind-reader, Matt is even better suited to be Mulder than Mulder was. But if Clea Duvall isn’t going to get more than a guest-starring credit any time soon, I suspect that “Scully” won’t live long enough to build up any sexual tension between the two of them.
This week’s episode of Heroes confirmed for us that Eden is indeed working for Claire’s father. Although his surprised reaction to hearing that the “heroes” have been told to save his daughter made me think for the first time that maybe he’s not a bad guy? Is it possible that when everything shakes out, he could end up being the “Professor X” to this group of “mutant” misfits? I mean, he’s clearly deceptive and secretive … but I suppose that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s bad.
One of the many things I loved about this episode of Heroes is how it just went balls up and committed to a large multi-season plot arc in the first five minutes. Essentially, what Future Hiro spells out for Peter is that what’s happening now — “Save the Cheerleader” and whatnot — is only the tip of the iceberg for all of them, plot-wise. Get past this, and it’s a whole new world.
Did anybody else utter a loud, “OHHHHH,” as they watched Heroes last night and learned that Peter’s superpower isn’t actually flying, but mimicking the superpower of whoever’s near him? Because I did. This was very clever on the part of the writers. Peter has been built up in the summer-long marketing blitz as the one who can fly. And despite decades of reading comic books, I went right along with that, and didn’t even pick up on the fact that he’d scribbled that little premonition picture when he was in the hospital after having been near Isaac. Anyway, this is going to raise all sorts of juicy possibilities down the line.