That's A Lot of Information to Get in a Double Episode

Ladies and gentleman, boys and girls, let me start this post off with an apology. I was traveling for work during the week with poor internet access and as such did not have time to take notes and post. I apologize. On the bright side, I'm going to spend the rest of this rainy afternoon catching up on posts, so if you don't wind up reading this until Monday, you'll have a lot to keep you busy. That being said, let's dive in with the first show I missed: Heroes.

Quite frankly, I'm glad that I didn't watch Heroes until this morning, because there is a hell of a lot of stuff to talk about and dissect. I'll start very broadly and say that overall I liked, but didn't love the episode. It felt to me like the producers were quickly trying to tie up a number of last season's plot lines while simultaneously trying to set in motion a whole new set of stories, which translates in an episode that feels a bit uneven, but still entertains. I will say that I think the episode got stronger as it went on, which bodes well for the future. Now to get more specific.

Future Peter, Current Peter, and Time Travel
Ok, so Future Peter shot Nathan to prevent him from telling the world about the existence of those with powers, thus preventing the creation of the future that Future Peter came from, which would mean that by shooting him, Future Peter effectively ended his own existence, thus making it impossible for him to have existed in the first place, which should mean Nathan never got shot, right? As you can see, time paradoxes confuse the shit out of me, so I will table my disbelief for the rest of the discussion. Additionally, Future Peter takes Current Peter and puts him in the body of one the "villains" (more on them later), to hide him and keep him safe, which begs the question: what happened to the villain?

Furthermore, Mama Petrelli is very aware that Future Peter has been trying to pose as her son, and thus keeps yelling at him to get back to his own timeline, since his presence is having a "Butterfly Effect" which is screwing with the timeline. (Those of you who are pop culture savants will remember the 2004 film of the same name starring Ashton Kutcher dealing with similar time-related problems. For those of you who need an overview of what the Butterfly Effect entails, click here). So basically to summarize, Future Peter, in the hopes of setting everything right, has actually (potentially) fucked things up even worse.

Claire, Sylar, and the Meaning of Being Human
In the other main plot, Sylar pays Claire a visit to attempt to steal her powers. I'm going to be honest, most of this plot reminded of the movie Scream, with Claire running around the house with a knife trying to escape the serial killer stalking her. Eventually he gets to her and opens her brain, and this, boys and girls, is where things start to get interesting. We finally get to see how Sylar gets powers, and it does not, unfortunately involve him eating people's brains. It does, however, align closely with his former past as a watchmaker: Sylar needs to see/feel the neural connections in people's brains so that he can rearrange his own neural network to mimic the powers. The fact that his victims had to die as a result was an inconvenient coincidence. Since Claire can regenerate, she doesn't have to die. (Btw, how creepy was it watching Sylar put Claire's hair back on her? Ewww.) Unfortunately, Sylar's little research into her brain has someone affected Claire's ability to feel pain, which she said was the only thing that made her feel human. (If you're interested on another, very different show's take on pain and being human, see the season 3 Grey's Anatomy episode "Sometime's a Fantasy"--it was the one with Abigail Breslin. Good stuff). Claire seems to feel violated in the worst way, and spends the rest of the episode looking for a purpose, something to do so that she can feel again. Future Peter refuses to teach her how to fight, and HRG refuses to let her become his partner, but I think Claire is going to find in a teacher in her birth mother, who will be staying with her and the family to protect them while HRG is away. Let me just say that I am so happy to Jessalyn Gilsig back on TV. I think she's a wonderful actress and deserves a show of her own sometime soon. Networks, are you listening?

Spider-Suresh, Wonder Twin, and Playing God
Now this is where I started to get confused. Sylar is stealing powers by looking at people's brains, but Suresh says that he could give people powers by injecting them with some kind of hormone that will transform them, meaning that......well I'm not sure. So from what I remember from AP Bio, genes code for proteins which do everything else in the body. Proteins in turn produce those hormones, which then make stuff happen internally (I think this is why Mohinder referenced the 'Flight or Fight' response). But then if you inject the hormones into a person without powers, what happens to them when the hormones break down? Don't they just go back to being normal? I think that may be what we started to see at the end of the episode. But my question is, how do we reconcile that with Sylar's brain thing? I would like to see that explained.

Back to the story, Suresh uses Wonder Twin Maya (who's accent has totally changed by the way, don't think I didn't notice, show) to isolate the hormones that produce powers, and then proceeds to inject himself with them to turn himself into Spider-Suresh. Maya at first was all "oh no, don't do that, it's evil" but then after seeing Spider-Suresh with his shirt off became all "Oh baby take me now." I'm still in favor of getting Maya off this show, since I never liked her and there are too many other characters to deal with.

Nathan Finds God
After coming back to life after being shot (presumably because of the blood transfusion he got from Peter last season), Nathan becomes a huge believer in miracles and thinks that people with powers are angels from God, and that now they must stay quiet about their powers since the general populace shouldn't know about the "angels." Nathan also seems to have gone schizophrenic, since he begins talking to Linderman, who died at the end of season 1. For a while I thought maybe someone had revived Linderman, but in the end he turns out merely to be a figment of Nathan's imagination (I think). This does not bode well for Nathan given his new job, which leads me to.....

Crazy Bitch Has Got Another Fucking Personality
Let me start out by saying I like Ali Larter. She seems like a nice lady, and fairly decent actress, especially given all of the crackpot things people keep doing with her character. Apparently Niki now goes by the name Tracy Strauss, and she's now a political advisor (and bedfellow) to the Governor of NY. Which makes me say: WTF? How did she go from dying in a burning building to becoming a political aide to the governor in a time span of what seems like about one week? Unless she's not actually Niki and it's a case of identical strangers. That I would almost buy, but if she is supposed to be Niki? Really? WTF? Niki/Tracy convinces the governor that he should appoint Nathan to the empty Senate seat, because apparently that's what you do with schizophrenic politicians who are recovering from being shot. Whatever. On her way to NY to meet with Nathan, she's accosted by a reporter who draws a connection between the "K Street Ice Queen" and the "stripper from Vegas" (Niki). Niki/Tracy warns him not to publish the story or else she would destroy him. The reporter doesn't listen and asks "The Ice Queen" for a statement one more time. This makes Niki/Tracey mad, which leads her to turn the guy into a block of ice which shatters, killing him without leaving any evidence. Did you pick up on how he kept calling her ice queen and then her power was ice? That was clever, show, so clever.....not. The ice power is a possible explanation for how Tracy could be Niki, but quite frankly I hope she's not, because this whole multiple personality thing is played out. Maybe she's Niki's long lost twin. That would be preferable.

Mama Petrelli's in Charge Now. Oh Fuck.
We learn alot about Mama Petrelli in this episode. First off, her power is seeing the future in dreams. Not a bad one, I must admit. She's also hell bent on getting Future Peter back to the future, after having a vision of all of the Heroes dying down in Level 5 at the hands of Niki/Tracey, Adam Monroe, Bob Parkman (Matt's Dad), and one of the villains who escaped when Sylar invaded the Company's HQ. After Elle's dad is killed by Sylar, she also becomes head of the Company and is tasked with tracking the villains down. She fires Elle (I hope that is not the last we see of Kristen Bell, especially after her awesome electric fit knocked Sylar out). Oh and yeah, apparently she's SYLAR'S MOTHER!!! W? T? F? This feels like a jump the shark moment folks, but I'm definitely willing to see how it plays out.

Hiro is going to have to save the......YAWN
Hiro is now head of his father's company, but is bored and wants to get back to world saving. Guess what happens? That's right folks, a deus ex machina in the form of the Nakamura family laywer with a MESSAGE FROM THE GRAVE from Lieutant Sulu telling Hiro not to open the secret safe. After Hiro opens the secret safe, he finds another DVD from Sulu telling him to guard one half of some secret world-ending formula or else. Approximately two seconds later, a little blonde speedster runs in steals the formula and (supposedly) our hearts as well, although I'm not really a fan since this Hiro thing is starting to get old. Anyway, Hiro decides that he must travel to the future to see the effects of whatever that formula thing was so that he can figure out how to stop it. In the future, Future Hiro gets killed by a Future Ando with powers seconds before it looks like the world blows up. Yeah. Been there, done that. Hiro then spends the rest of the episode being mean to Ando and trying to track Blondie down. It was boring.

Parkman is in the African Desert
Future Peter sends Parkman to a desert in Africa. He wanders around until an African tribesman who's got some good quips finds him and makes him walk. That's literally all the happened.

We've got a new picture
So in the scenes with Parkman and Mohinder, we see a painting of the world splitting in two (with the split looking a lot like the Heroes symbol...coincidence I think not). I think we're going to be seeing a lot more of that thing as time goes on, but fuck if I know what it means.


And so boys and girls, as we can see a lot of shit happened and I have no idea what it means, but I will keep watching to find out. I'll leave you with some quotes:



"You can always give it to me. I'm extremely interested in money." --Ando. Hah.

"Are you goonna eat it?" "Eat your brain? Claire that's digusting."--Claire and Sylar

"You don't pay me for sex, governor, I give that for free." Tracy/Niki

"What are you doing?" "What does it look like? Trying to get hit by a train!"--Peter and Claire

"You come from America. You know Britney Spears?"--African dude.

"No service here. Should have gone with Sprint."-African dude.