Overview:
Mohinder resumes his university post in India, but falls asleep a lot and dreams of a boy with a football. Hiro meets a waitress who absorbs vast tracts of information. Sylar gives her the scalp treatment, so Hiro travels back in time to save her. He goes a little further back than intended. Isaac feels the Eden rehab love, but Daddy Bennet doesn’t care if Isaac’s rehabilitated. He just wants to save the cheerleader. Meanwhile, RadioTed and Matt compare notes about their experiences. Possibly the strongest episode so far, with a tight script, excellent performances, and development to several key story arcs.
Review:
I praise the quality of the writing on this show all the time, so I’ll sound like a broken record if I mention it again.
But screw that. I’ll say it anyway.
Generally, the writing on this show has been exceptional. It’s not perfect, not all the time. The show doesn’t always get Peter and Mohinder right, and Simone … well, she’s Simone.
But generally, the writing is good. The characters are consistent. The scenes flow naturally. The dialogue sounds believable. The plot is well crafted and unpredictable.
Although that’s the case nearly every week, you can still tell when it’s a Tim Kring script. My guess is the guy is changing one or two lines in every episode, a la Joss Whedon on Buffy and Angel. But when Kring writes more than just portions of the script - when he writes the whole episode - you can tell. Everything that’s usually good becomes outstanding. The jokes become funnier. The sentimental moments become more poignant. The conflict between the characters becomes more intense.
And then there’s the twist to the plot, which seems to be a staple part of every episode on the show. “Seven Minutes To Midnight” ends with the usual “Plot Twist + To Be Continued…” formula, but beyond that there are a ton of surprises which no one could have seen coming.
I don’t mean Daddy Bennet revealing what a protective father he is. I don’t mean Hiro going back in time and showing up at Charlie’s birthday party. I’m talking about the minor details. The stuff which detracted from this show’s potential to be the strongest television show currently on the air. The inconsistencies which Kring fixed this week.
Matt’s story arc actually has some resonance with the other story threads.
Isaac finally gets more than a couple of token scenes.
Nora Zehetner seriously has a chance to … act?!
Whether those issues bugged you in the past or not, Kring this week works them into what could very possibly be the show’s finest episode so far.
He didn’t even leave out waffles. Woo-hoo.
Onto the scene-by-scene:
Previously on Heroes … We see a clip of RadioTed in the hospital clasping a scared-out-of-her-wits nurse and burning radioactive fingermarks onto her arm. Recap Guy’s exact words, and I swear I’m not making this up: “An extraordinary hero is discovered.”
A few moments later, Recap Guy qualifies this observation by referring to Daddy Bennet as “the face of evil.”
It’s nice that the recap makes these distinctions for us. Nice that we don’t need to think about this stuff and, you know, figure it out for ourselves.
Wouldn’t it be better to let the audience decide who’s a hero and who’s evil? I mean, heck, at this point, there’s an equal chance we’ll get a clip telling us how Sylar’s “an extraordinary new hero” and Hiro’s “the face of evil.” If the recap’s going to label the characters this way, it could at least label them correctly.
Voice-over Mohinder returns, alongside Corporeal-Mohinder. If Eden’s in Texas this week, who’s feeding Lizard-Mohinder? WSPA, are you hearing me? I want you to check that apartment in Manhattan RIGHT NOW. And while you’re at it, could you check if there’s a bowl of macaroni and cheese in the fridge? If there is, and if it’s edible, could you send it my way?
Voice-over Mohinder starts off by telling us that the Earth “is large.” I think it’s the first thing he’s said which makes sense to me. The voice-over continues to talk about how we try to run from fate and God and find a place “where all is safe again, quiet and warm.”
The camera opens up on a pair of hands holding a yellow urn. A caption appears underneath the urn and tells us that it has a name: Mohinder Suresh. Like the character that Sendhil Ramamurthy plays.
The camera pulls back to reveal that Mohinder is in Kanyakumari, India, emptying his father’s ashes into the sea. The episode’s title appears in the sand and disappears with the tide. It’s a beautiful, elegant opening, and one where (for once) the voice-over bears some relation to the episode’s focus on Mohinder running from his destiny.
The toga-clad entourage heads up the beach and Mohinder is left with Mama Suresh, who gently tells her sobbing boy not to look back, that his father has moved on to the next life.
Meanwhile, in a location which isn’t Kanyakumari, India, Isaac wakes up in a bed to find Eden watching over him. Eden applies a cloth to his head and tells him he’s doing great. Apparently, he’ll be “clean in no time.”
This isn’t the blue lab we were expecting. And it’s not the performance we were expecting. Nora Zehetner somehow gets a handle on her role this week and brings some feeling to the character. It’s likely easier for Zehetner now that she’s no longer floundering in the mess of playing a spy pretending to be a friend while working for a covert organization which seems corrupt but which might in fact be trying to help a bunch of people. Because that’s not at all convoluted. But then, it’s also fortunate that the character actually plays a significant part in the plot this week, as opposed to the spy who stands around waiting for Mohinder to blab important information which she can then forward to Daddy Bennet.
Eden applies shaving cream to Isaac’s cheek while he asks her whether he’ll be able to paint without heroin. Eden reassures him that the drugs were “just a facilitator,” and that together they won’t let “that mural on the floor” come true.
Aw, and there I was praising the good writing on this show. A mural on the floor? They’re forcing me here. Why, Heroes, WHYYY?!?
mural, noun
a painting that is painted directly onto a wall.
From French, muraille, from Latin, murus wall.
Eden skips over the faux-pas in the script by telling Isaac that she knows what she’s talking about: “I went through the same thing myself.” So, what, she too was once a clairvoyant junkie artiste? Or does she mean she was caught in a nuclear explosion like the one in the ‘mural on the floor’? Either way, that line makes no sense.
Dramatic music plays as Eden walks into the next room and glances at the paintings collected there: New York exploding. Hiro and Ando at Claire’s Homecoming. Peter dodging locker doors. Claire running from an ominous shadow.
Then a new painting of a red-haired waitress carrying plates.
In a smooth transition, the scene cuts to the Burnt Toast Diner in Midland, Texas, where the same waitress is now bringing scrambled eggs, bacon and toast to two cops sitting at a table. The toast doesn’t look burned, but it’s a great name for a diner. Key locations next week: the Bloody Steak House, the Rotten Man’s Inconvenience Store, and the Moldy Cheese Cafe.
Anonymous Waitress becomes Charlie, the girl who knows that Gandhi’s burial ground is Kanyakumari (which is wrong, but still makes her look brainy, so don’t look it up), and that Henry Fonda won Best Actor at the Academy Awards in 1981. She even knows credit card numbers. . I love this girl. Heck, I want to marry this girl. She’s gorgeous, she exudes charm and charisma, and Jayma Mays played the quirky-animated part so well that I genuinely wished she would become a cast regular.
But nooooo … You guys had to slice her scalp off, didn’t you? You’ll keep Simone around to fold her arms and pout for the rest of the show’s run, but THIS ONE you kill off?!
At another table, Ando and Hiro discuss French fries and
WAFFLES! WOO-HOO!
Hiro provides the exposition which I guess the show felt was due: so in case you didn’t know, Hiro and Ando are on a mission to meet Peter in New York (which somehow leads to a detour in Texas) and will eventually help him to save a cheerleader.
Charlie stops at their table and strikes up a conversation. Conveniently for the plot, it leads to her practicing what she’s learning from a Japanese phrase book. The line about receiving the phrase book on her birthday six months earlier seemed trivial, but a lot of you are convinced that Hiro will give it to her when he travels back in time. Nice detail. If it’s true, it shows how intricately the story is being written.
Hiro claps frantically and coos with delight when Charlie asks in Japanese for “one Bento Box with shrimp, please.” As she continues, it emerges that part of Charlie’s ability is the retention of information. So, she’s got a really, really good memory. As super-powers go, that’s got to be one of the better ones. It’s better than, say, getting a mug to slide across a table.
The plot is clear: we know that Sylar’s in the cafe, and we know he’s going to do something baaad. But doesn’t a suspicious-looking guy with a cap in a corner of the cafe communicate that anyway? It’s like the recap, it’s as if the show doesn’t trust our ability to figure stuff out on our own.
Beyond that, this was just a really lame way to convey Sylar’s power. It’s a little underwhelming to cut from two heroes with really cool powers to a guy whose power is bringing a mug to his hand with the power of his mind. If nothing else, you have to wonder how the mug which was filled with steaming coffee could move at that speed and come to an abrupt stop without spilling over.
In Kanyakumari, Mohinder sits on the steps of a temple near the beach and talks with Nirand. It’s a nice nod to continuity after Shishir Kurup’s appearance in “Genesis”, but it also sets up a scene which helps to explain Mohinder’s change in perspective while he was in New York. When he tells Nirand that there were “no answers for me there,” it helps to clarify that Mohinder gave up on his mission out of frustration. When he says that “everyone there seems so lonely, including me,” it helps to clarify that Mohinder’s disillusionment about his research was compounded with isolation.
It’s plausible, it’s well written, and it creates a believable rationale behind Mohinder’s decision to leave New York. But it still doesn’t explain Mohinder’s sudden loss of faith after he pursued his father’s research so adamantly.
The larger problem is the fact that this exposition appears only now. This is the dialogue we needed to hear when Mohinder was in New York. It’s what we needed to know when Mohinder decided he wasn’t going to follow the leads in Papa Suresh’s diary, that he wasn’t going to follow Nathan after he found a picture of him on Sylar’s map, that he wasn’t going to help Peter explore his ability. Mohinder’s skepticism and sarcasm then would have made more sense if we’d known they stemmed from loneliness and exasperation. They were inferred, sure. But without being established in dialogue, Mohinder’s actions at the time - giving up on his father’s research and abandoning Peter on the subway - just seemed inconsistent.
That said, this episode also fails to explain a key part of Mohinder’s character arc: how he adopted his father’s ideas and took up his research in the first place. Mohinder’s perspective now - that Papa Suresh’s theories were unfounded - is essentially what he’d told his father to begin with. It’s what happened between then and now which still needs to be resolved; it’s the events leading up to Mohinder’s departure for New York which still need clarification. There’s still no reason why Mohinder went from calling his dad’s quest “a fool’s errand” to adopting his theories about levitation and tissue regeneration and spouting them out to students in lectures.
In a morbid move, Mohinder takes Papa Suresh’s office at the university and begins packing up his father’s belongings. This leads to the astonishing discovery that Papa Suresh’s computer has been left on since he died, and that it was left with the same cryptic how-to-find-the-heroes algorithm so carefully hidden on a portable hard drive in New York.
Which fails to make any coherent sense on two levels. First, it makes the university look like idiots who don’t care that they’re burning up fossil fuels while one of their dead professor’s computers remains permanently running. Papa Suresh had been in New York for months, at least. And you’re telling me his computer was left on and ready to reactivate with a mouse-click that entire time?
Second, it makes Papa Suresh look like the kind of idiot who’d go to the trouble of hiding his research on a portable hard drive in his lizard’s tank in New York but leave the same program loaded onto his still-running university computer in India, ready to be found by anyone who entered his office and clicked on the mouse after Papa Suresh had relocated half-way across the world.
“Are you sure you want to quit?” That’s more than just ironic. That’s hilarious.
Mira shows up at the door to the office and provides requisite expository information: she thought that Papa Suresh’s theories were nuts, but that his son was a hottie. She and Mohinder used to talk late into the night about “cutting-edge research.” Ooh, exciting! Mohinder recalls that these discussions were “the world’s worst pillow-talk.” Mira becomes all, “Honey, it’s not pillow-talk anymore. I’ve been promoted at The Company! I work with The Partners! Join us, and we will complete your training! With our combined strength, we can end this destructive conflict and BRING ORDER TO THE GALAXY!”
Mohinder’s all, “I’LL NEVER JOIN YOU!”
“IF YOU ONLY YOU KNEW THE POWER OF THE DARK SIDE!”
Mira’s only condition to joining The Company involves Mohinder dropping Papa Suresh’s theories. All bets on whether Mira’s evil are immediately off. The only question now is how long it’ll take for Mohinder to figure it out.
The Anonymous FBI Boss at the house where Molly Edwards was found in “Don’t Look Back” returns. She’s thoroughly peeved, and gives AudreyClea one hour to uncover RadioTed’s plans for nuclear terrorism and world domination.
AudreyClea, meanwhile, is peeved at Matt for that punch he threw at Rusedski last week.
“But don’t you understaaaand? He was only a stand-in! The real one’s at the Australian Open!”
AudreyClea jumps right to business by taking Matt to an interrogation cell where they’re going to talk to RadioTed. He hasn’t cooperated with anyone else, but since Matt demonstrated the ability to communicate with his comatose wife and dredge up memories of the “American Beauty” album, we figure he might have more luck.
Masi Oka gets to play the adorable side of Hiro in a scene which is delightful yet oddly disappointing. Hiro continues to read Japanese phrases with Charlie at the diner, working in a cute homage to Saturday Night Fever and correcting her pronunciation. More over-enthusiastic clapping ensues, followed by Hiro’s trademark adjustment of his glasses. Having played bubbly and enthusiastic, determined and courageous and distraught and confused, another role for Oka to bring to his repertoire is hopelessly smitten: so he gazes into Charlie’s eyes and admires how quickly she learns.
Then the part which disappoints: Hiro sells out.
He tells Charlie that he has a secret, and based on his actions so far, you figure he’s going to tell her the truth. He’ll tell her because (1) he’s already told the flying man and a kid at a car crash without worrying about the ramifications, and (2) he’s incapable of subterfuge or deceit. Except when it involves gambling to finance his mission and save the cheerleader.
So we’re waiting for Hiro to tell Charlie about bending space and time and the POOKA in New York and the Nissan Versa which will take them to Pitter and Meester Eeezuk who he’ll help to save a cheerleader. Only Hiro decides that Charlie’s too lovely to tell his secret to, and he’s afraid she’ll think he’s crazy. So he settles for telling her that his ability is teaching Japanese to anyone. Which is an awesome ability, but it’s not exactly the revelation we were hoping for. Hiro’s now just another one of the crowd who lies to the people he cares about.
But Hiro’s dishonesty is redeemed by Charlie’s heart-melting giggle and the shy response she gets from Hiro when she calls him “sweet.” It really is a pleasure to watch two such endearing characters share a scene. It brings out Hiro’s romantic side, but it also makes Charlie’s death all the more agonizing because we wish there could have been more scenes like it.
There’d better be more when Hiro goes back in time to save her.
Sylar watches this scene and presumably tries to figure out what Hiro and Ando are saying to one another as they shout in Japanese across the room. In the meantime, RadioTed gets a glass of water slammed on the table in front of him at FBI Central. He’s very upset that he didn’t get to attend his wife’s funeral. It’s saddening, but the potential for it to elicit any feeling from the audience is limited by the fact that we know nothing about the character. It’s the problem which undermined the scene with Karen in the hospital last week; we’re expected to sympathize with characters we feel no emotional attachment to.
RadioTed gets upset because “nothing matters,” and the glass of water which his hands are wrapped around begins to boil. The prospect of bubbling water overflowing onto the floor alarms AudreyClea and Matt so much that one of them pulls a gun while the other desperately tells RadioTed that he’s not going through this alone. Uh, guys? The same bubbling water is in your kettle every morning. Does it need a gun pointed at it?
What we suspected last week is confirmed: RadioTed was captured and tested by Daddy Bennet, just like Matt. Good plot development. It creates some relevance to the Matt story last week, and it helps to build the suspense about Daddy Bennet’s organization.
At the office where computers never shut down, Mohinder begins packing away Papa Suresh’s research. He dismantles the map containing holes where the pins used to mark the location of a super-hero. Then, rather than continue packing or binning items, Mohinder begins reading them. The files from “Genesis” about Rapid Cellular Regeneration and Tissue Regeneration are still there, and it turns out that Mohinder did bring Papa Suresh’s diary back from New York, and that it still contains the key Mohinder found inside it in “One Giant Leap”.
Mohinder’s clean-out/perusal session is so taxing that he nods off. Shouldn’t he be planning lectures or grading papers or something? And if not, he’s still supposed to be at the center of an on-the-edge-of-your-seat exploration of ordinary people with extraordinary abilities. Just saying, LOOK ALIVE, will you?!
Mohinder has a made-realistic-for-television dream which is less of a dream than a flashback. We see how Mohinder said goodbye to Papa Suresh before he left for New York, bickering with him over the way he was becoming a laughing stock and abandoning his family and career for the sake of chasing “a theory that is pure fantasy.”
Papa Suresh comes out of it looking like an idealistic believer following theories which everyone else thought were crazy. Mohinder comes out of it looking like a skeptical, caustic and unsympathetic son, although it now seems like he’s returned to being exactly that way again; so why the Mohinder who’s dreaming this scene looks so sorrowful for the way he treated his father is a little odd. The implication this week is that Mohinder is starting to wonder whether he should have given up on following his father’s research, but given the way he’s trying to convince himself and everyone else that his father really WAS chasing a fantasy, it’s almost strange that the two Mohinders - the present-day one and the one who told his father he was a fool - aren’t slapping one another on the back and telling themselves how right they are.
This dream/flashback segues into another dream in a garden, where Papa Suresh is telling Mama Suresh that he’s having doubts about dropping everything and moving to New York. Mama Suresh reveals the big twist by telling Papa Suresh that Mohinder “will never take her place in [his] eyes.”
Then the scene with the kid whose name turns out to be Sanjog Iyer. Sanjog likes throwing footballs around in people’s dreams, then catching them and running off. It’s an attempt at meaningful symbolism amid dreams which turn out to be exact reconstructions. But when no one in the real world can persuade Mohinder that his father wasn’t crazy and that his theories weren’t a pile of garbage - which Mohinder seemed to also believe a couple of weeks earlier - a kid with a football can convince him otherwise.
You know what’s dragging this story thread down? It’s Mohinder himself. It’s the way he went from admonishing his eccentric father to BECOMING his eccentric father to turning back into his previous skeptical self and admonishing his now-dead eccentric father, and by extension his own previous eccentric self. It’s great how the character changes his perspective and struggles with self-doubt; that stuff is believable. The problem is it’s not being handled terribly well, and Mohinder just ends up looking inconsistent because of it.
At FBI Central, RadioTed tells his terrifying story about a hotel bar, a Haitian student, a road trip to Arizona and a bunch of flowers that wilted and died. Matt sympathizes, and tells RadioTed that a similar experience befell him. The by-now-not-so-shocking revelation emerges that they were both abducted by the same group. Now, Matt’s hearing things he shouldn’t be. “Things that could ruin lives. Things that could ruin marriages.” It would make Matt a victim to the machinations of “the face of evil” if it wasn’t undermined by the fact that MATT HAS ACTIVELY BEEN USING HIS ABILITY TO HEAR THESE THINGS.
AudreyClea seems to grasp that Matt’s talking about his own marriage. She gets an expression of faux-concern, as if to say, “Darn, that’s so sad … OK, HERE’S MY WAY IN!”
Still, Matt’s scenes with RadioTed this week took the story thread forward a number of paces: Matt got to use his ability to reason with a criminal, as he did last week with RadioTed and in “Hiros” with the guy at the convenience store. Beyond that, there’s now the strong implication that Matt will be instrumental in locating the Haitian and connecting him to Daddy Bennet and his organization’s activity.
It turns out that part of Daddy Bennet’s research is in a warehouse at his day job, Primatech Paper Co. Do the staff there KNOW what he’s doing in that warehouse? Do they think he’s swiping his card, walking into the office-in-a-warehouse and sitting there working with spreadsheets and e-mails? Or are the elevator guy and Rufus and the lady in the hallway all in on the fact that there’s a rehab clinic on their premises?
However it works, this entire scene showcased the detail that gives Heroes its authenticity. The rolls of paper in the elevator, the security guard asking for a signature to his parking sticker, the lady who Daddy Bennet bumps into in the hallway – everything about the scene brought a vividness and reality to it.
The show goes from outstanding sets to outstanding performances as Jack Coleman turns his character’s bad guy vibe upside down and becomes a helpless father desperate to save his daughter. Does it make Daddy Bennet into a hero? Of course not. Does it make him into one of the heroes’ allies? Of course not. But when Eden asks Daddy Bennet if he’s ready to meet Isaac ‚Äì when Daddy Bennet’s facial muscles soften and he gives that uneasy look of concern at the painting of Claire ‚Äì that’s when we know the guy has a vulnerability.
That’s when he stops being “the face of evil.”
So can Recap Guy just knock that %*@# off at the start of every episode?
There’s some weird stuff going on with the timeline in this episode. It seems like at least a day has passed for Mohinder. Several hours have passed for Matt. Isaac has woken up and been trying to paint for a good long while. Hiro and Ando, on the other hand, seem to be trapped in some kind of time bubble in which about ten minutes have passed. They’re only now getting round to their meal, and Sylar seems to be drinking the same cup of coffee he was in the teaser.
So Hiro and Ando are enjoying their meal and Charlie goes to a store room to open a tin of Hays fruit salad. It’s an invented name from what I can tell. The show is clearly learning how to avoid lawsuits after the garbage compactor debacle.
Sylar shows up behind Charlie and slices her scalp off. Blood trickles down her cheek and nose and she keels over. Bye bye, Charlie.
I have no words. How could the show do that to such a likeable character?
Charlie’s body is found by another waitress. The cops, who I’ll assume have by now completed their crossword (and boy, are they ever going to think about Kanyakumari the same way again), go running to the store room to find out what happened.
Then, most heartbreaking of all, Hiro returns from the restroom, excitedly rubbing his hands together, like, “OK, let’s get back to that phrase book!” And you feel for the guy. More than when he got behind the wheel of the Nissan Versa and realized he couldn’t drive. More than when he was in despair at watching the Gambler’s Club die.
This was Hiro’s puppy love. And she was fun and witty and charming. And that b*****d who took 40 minutes (including commercials) to get through one cup of coffee just tore out her brain.
Why, Sylar? Why couldn’t you take Simone instead?
In the land where dreams become exact reconstructions with footballs, Mohinder asks Mama Suresh if his dream was true. She’s tactful enough not to ask why he was falling asleep when he should have been preparing lectures and grading papers.
Mohinder wants to know how she could have allowed Papa Suresh “to abandon everything, just like that.” It sounds dramatic, but when you think about it, it’s a little inconsistent. I mean, it’s not like Papa Suresh decided to abandon everything “just like that”; there was the crazy theories phase, there was the laughing stock phase, there was the arguing-with-Mohinder phase, there was the getting-fired-from-the-university phase and the Mohinder-taking-over-from-his-father phase. It’s not like he decided to up and leave “just like that.” It seems like it was actually a rather gradual process.
Mama Suresh reveals that Mohinder had a sister who died when he was 2 years old. Everyone found it “too painful to talk about,” and no one wanted Baby Mohinder wondering whether Papa Suresh loved the “special” kid more than him. Which, by the sound of it, he did.
We get to the cornerstone for Daddy Bennet’s development. The moment when he changes from shady and inscrutable to earnest and pleading.
Daddy Bennet points to Isaac’s three cheerleader paintings: the close-up of her looking scared out of her wits, the one where she’s running from a huge shadow, and the one with her lying upside down in a pool of blood. Isaac decides it’s not the right time to protest that he didn’t paint that last one. That he could never paint something that bad. That he’s mortified by Daddy Bennet’s readiness to attribute that first-grade easel slop to an artist like him.
But Jack Coleman’s on a roll. Don’t stop him now.
Daddy Bennet points to the ominous shadow. That’s Sylar who Isaac painted there. He’s gonna kill Claire tomorrow night at her Homecoming Game.
Well, if Daddy Bennet’s so sure, why not just rush Claire to a suite at the Montecito and keep her as far away from Homecoming as he can? Daddy Bennet seems awfully complacent about letting these things run their course.
Daddy Bennet tells Isaac that Sylar is hunting down every person with special abilities one by one. The only way to stop him is for Isaac to start painting, and this time paint some darned clue to where Sylar is or how he can be apprehended.
Which makes sense in theory. But Daddy Bennet is seriously grasping at straws by asking Isaac to paint something which will happen before tomorrow night when we know that the majority of Issac’s paintings have involved events which occur weeks or months ahead.
Isaac explains that if he’s not high, he’s not painting. And he won’t be getting high anytime soon, even if Daddy Bennet presents him with a drug set and gives him hopeful looks. The fact that Isaac resists that offer speaks volumes for his strength of will after Eden pointed out in the previous scene that his brain was still craving heroin.
But this is the springboard for Jack Coleman’s performance, which now moves up a notch and manages to take Nora Zehetner’s performance up a notch with it.
Daddy Bennet takes off his glasses and recounts how Claire’s parents died, and how it seemed as if being left with a baby girl was God’s way of reaching out to him and giving him and Sandra “a miracle.”
And Mr. Muggles isn’t equally miraculous? Is there something less miraculous about little Lyle? There’s a lot of paternal favoritism going on this week, and I’m not sure what kind of message it sends.
But this scene was a masterstroke on so many levels. It revealed how far back Daddy Bennet’s connection to the heroes goes. It confirmed that Claire’s bio-parents in “Better Halves” were undoubtedly frauds. Most importantly, it established how much Claire means to Daddy Bennet. When he tells Isaac that he’s begging him, and Coleman’s lip quivers, you know it’s not a pretense. You know he’s not just saying this to garner Isaac’s help in catching Sylar. There have already been a bunch of outstanding performances on this show in just eight episodes, but in this scene, Coleman delivered one of the finest.
Mohinder falls asleep in his office again. Sanjog Iyer shows up, leads him outside the campus and shows Mohinder the scene in a Manhattan alley where Papa Suresh had his head bashed against his taxi window and his neck snapped by Sylar. Mohinder watches this in horror, evoking all of the grief that Sendhil Ramamurthy was trying to work up in the opening scene but seemed like he couldn’t.
The taxi cab disappears, and Sanjog hands Mohinder a key. The same key which Mohinder found stashed in Papa Suresh’s diary, and which failed to open Sylar’s apartment in New York but could still have some purpose. Yes, the key might look normal, but even keys on this show are special.
Claire shows up at Primatech asking for help with paper for a banner. It now occurs to me that no one ever wonders why Daddy Bennet is getting calls on his cellphone in the middle of the day, or making extended trips across the country, or watching recordings on portable DVD players when no one was looking. Is he just dismissing this stuff as part of his job at a paper firm? I get that Daddy Bennet’s job is important and all, but come on. It’s not that exciting a business.
Eden shows up in the hallway where Daddy Bennet and Claire are talking about banners. Eden gets this look that says, “Oh %*@#, that’s the freak! Please, kid, don’t ram a two-foot steel rod through my neck to see if I’m invincible too!”
Daddy Bennet parts ways with his daughter in the hall and returns to the secret rehab clinic where Isaac isn’t having any luck painting without heroin. Daddy Bennet says it’s time to do things his way, and it upsets Eden so much that Nora Zehetner gets the chance to (and brace yourself for this) act.
I kid you not. Here be a fine performance for Eden McCain.
Eden begins protesting that Isaac worked so hard to get off the drugs, and that Daddy Bennet can’t force him back onto them. It turns out that Eden is going to be the one who forces him. “NO!” shouts Eden. It’s the most honest reaction this show ever got out of Zehetner.
We learn that Eden’s ability is coercion. Meaning all she needs to do is whisper in Isaac’s ear, and suddenly he’s shooting up and getting the glazed eyes and applying paint to the canvas again.
Which makes Daddy Bennet a b*****d for endangering Isaac’s life and making him a junkie again on the off-chance that it’ll produce clues to his daughter’s assailant. But on the other hand, it also reaffirms the extent of his love for Claire if he’s willing to sacrifice another person’s life to save her.
In other slightly less compelling story threads, Matt finally talks to Janice about her affair with Rusedski. Well, it’s great that he finally decides to talk to her rather than just get take what he wants from her thoughts. Reassuringly, the soap-opera aspect of Matt’s thread is interrupted by the more promising revelation that RadioTed has broken out of his escort on the way to Homeland Security. And if he’s an extraordinary hero, as the recap would have us believe, his arc will hopefully add some much-needed drama to Matt’s.
Mohinder discovers that his magic key opens the locked drawer in Papa Suresh’s office. Apparently, Sanjog is connected to a bunch of articles about the importance of sleep. Fascinating. Mohinder’s likely to figure it all out after more naps and numerous skipped lectures.
It’s not that these portions of the episode didn’t work, because in a lot of ways they did. Mohinder’s background was explored, Matt’s involvement in Daddy Bennet’s research was connected to another test subject, and Isaac’s rehabilitation (before it all went to hell) showed that there’s a compassionate - albeit still ruthless - side to Daddy Bennet.
But there’s one story thread this week which dominated the others. For the way it was written, for the way it was performed, and for the story possibilities which it opens up.
At the Scalpless Waitress Diner, Charlie’s corpse is led out on a stretcher. The camera lingers on a photo of her on the wall, showing her with a birthday hat and cake. It’s an Important Detail For The Plot. Hiro gives his second mournful performance within three weeks, and to my surprise, the first of those two performances - the one which I thought would never be mentioned again - has an impact on the second. Here, we see Hiro’s guilt over the Dead Gambler’s Club prompt his decision to save Charlie. We see Hiro asking himself whether he deserves his powers if he doesn’t have the courage and determination to use them. Well written, well delivered, and above all consistent with the character based on both his trauma in “Better Halves” and the solemn demeanor of his future self. I am impressed.
So Hiro ends up traveling six months into the past instead of one day, changing Charlie’s birthday photo so that he’s now standing next to her and sharing her cake. It’s a neat twist to the plot because Hiro will have teleported to a point before the show’s timeframe began, but it’s also significant because he’s expected to be back in time for the Homecoming showdown with Sylar.
The amazing part of this twist to Hiro’s story is that it was totally unexpected. Before Hiro teleports, Ando gets in a line about them already having one mission and not needing another. In a way, that’s the irony. The show has already overloaded itself with characters and story threads, to the point where it can no longer pack them all into one episode, and where they’re vying for screen time and needing to take turns each week.
In light of that, you’d figure that introducing another complication to the plot would only make the various story arcs more fragmented. The thing is, this complication was so remarkably well done, and it was so beautifully realized, that you find yourself not caring if it takes screen time from the other characters. Within one episode, this separate story managed to become as compelling and emotionally involving as the entire save-the-cheerleader arc.
And that’s saying something. It’s saying something when, inside of one episode, Tim Kring managed to incorporate an unrelated story thread with a new character and make us care about it enough to want to see it unfold alongside the ongoing story arcs.
5 out of 5