Overview:

Hiro fools Daphne and Knox into thinking he stabbed Ando, although it turns out he used a collapsible blade and some fake blood. Daphne assigns Hiro to bring in Usutu, invites Mohinder to join Team Pinehearst (right before Tracy goes cryo on his ass), and meets Matt, the last of which is all kinds of aww. Meanwhile, Doyle traps Meredith, Claire and Sandra and forces them to play Russian roulette until one of them gets shot. Finally, Papa Petrelli dusts Adam (literally), clambers out of bed and greets Peter with a hug that saps his son’s abilities right out of him.

Review:

So, it occurred to me that there wasn’t a single Dumb As Peter Award to hand out last week. It might be that I was going too easy on the characters, or that the writing on this show is getting smarter, and in turn that the characters are getting smarter.

That more or less holds true this week, although Mohinder’s still saddled with a redundant storyline and Peter’s still an idiot. But then, we have Adam going skeletal, we have the Peter/Sylar super-smackdown that fans had been waiting for since “Homecoming,” and we have the daddy of all villains showing up to scare the heck out of the characters and the audience. And we have Hiro getting clobbered over the head repeatedly. So, in the end, a couple of characters acting dumb doesn’t drag the episode down too far.

V.O. Mohinder returns! With a monologue that defines itself by everything it doesn’t say!

“In every journey, the traveler” — and the show’s writers — “must ask: was the right path taken?”

“Many roads are long and winding …” … and convoluted and meandering, particularly when they involve Ireland or feudal Japan …

“Filled with those who have lost their way …” … or who’ve been written inconsistently or had their character arcs retconned altogether.

“Some forge their own course …” … while some have it mapped out with the help of mystery-goop-and-auditory-induced visions of the future …

” … Guided by faith …” … or a clairvoyant artist and a turtle …

“… Seeking not a location, but a kindred soul …” … and a chance to behold sweet love!

“Others step together …” — or sleep together — “… finding safety in the arms of another …” … or getting their asses frozen …

“A few remove themselves from the trail to avoid the path of temptation …” … which works out well when it means Mama Petrelli offering up human sacrifices …

“… But those who watch the track too closely fail to see where it led them, and are often too well surprised by their destination …” … although sometimes that leads to annoying characters getting cocooned and limited to minimal dialogue, which really isn’t such a bad place to end up.

The Cantina turns out to be The Angry Skunk Bar. Depending on your reaction to the imminent reveal — which will vary from relief at Ando being alive to anger over the prospect of him being killed off in the first place — you may find “The Delighted Skunk Bar” a more fitting title. Either way, there’s something cathartic about Hiro suffering blunt trauma to the head this week.

Should Daphne have realized that Hiro stopped time? The implication seems to be that she can only keep up with him if she’s already moving at superspeed, which I can buy. Daphne and Knox not wondering why Hiro suddenly gets the scrunched-up face? You have to assume they dismiss it as Hiro being consumed with grief over killing his friend.

Teleporting to a novelty store to grab a fake sword and fake blood was a smart twist. I find it hard to believe that Hiro possesses the initiative and cunning to come up with a plan like that, but even if he does, Hiro’s still dead to me. He doesn’t pay for the stuff! That’s tickets to a German movie AND props from a novelty store! Criminal!

Hiro returns to the Cantina to warn Past-Ando he’s about to get fake-stabbed, which raises Ando’s stature even higher: it means Ando held onto the secret the whole time he and Hiro were drinking, and that his look of horror when Hiro stabbed him was a much more convincing act than Hiro’s look of remorse over killing his best friend.

Knox bails and leaves Daphne to give her “OHMYGODYOUKILLEDHIM!?!” reaction, and kudos to Brea Grant because …

… even something as simple as that conveys something about the character. For all the antagonism between Daphne and Hiro, Daphne’s expression here implies she looked up to Hiro for his principles, and that her illusion of Hiro as incorruptible has now been shattered. She’s in the same boat as most of us.

Hiro’s slow on the uptake but finally gets a smile of nostalgia when he makes the connection between Usutu and Meester Eeezuk. Which is kind of cold when you recall that Isaac — as far as Hiro knows — is still waiting for someone to find his scalpless corpse at the Apartment of Clairvoyance.

Daphne speedyzips away and Hiro gives Ando a gentle kick to let him know he can breathe.

Hiro: “Now you know how it feels to be killed by your best friend.”

Ando: “Good, so we’re even.”

Am I the only one who was bothered by this? We went through four episodes of Hiro holding a grudge against Ando for stabbing him in the future and Ando holding a grudge against Hiro for something he hadn’t even done yet — and here it’s almost played for laughs. Ando telling Hiro that they’re even dignifies Hiro’s resentment — a resentment that was unfounded to begin with — but it also implies that the payback for an Ellectro-zapping in the future is a fake-killing in the present. Somehow, it seemed like this scene was trying to neatly resolve the animosity between Hiro and Ando. It’s a relief to see Hiro and Ando get over their mistrust because it was getting old fast, but at the same time it would have been good to see their friendship renewed in a way that didn’t trivialize the tension between them since the premiere.

Canine Central. We have what’s essentially the same scene as last week with the dialogue and reactions assigned to different characters. Claire gets Sandra’s dialogue and panics over the danger that Meredith’s in, Sandra exudes Meredith’s rationality, Claire gets ready to charge to the rescue the way Sandra wanted to last week, and Sandra does what she should have done last week when the superpowered one gets ready to ditch her at home again — she insists on joining the rescue effort. Which is in character, even if it never seemed like Sandra liked Meredith all that much, but also makes Sandra even more awesome, because Ashley Crow pulls it off in a way that doesn’t make Sandra look cocky or arrogant so much as resolute and determined.

We cut to “Doyle’s Marionette Theatre,” which is established by the chyron AND by the big-ass sign outside the building, and kind of makes me wonder whether The Company thought to check for its escaped Level 5 inmates at their homes and workplaces. In any case, psychotic torture games aside, this is one gorgeous set. Between this and the way the Lair of Clairvoyance has pretty much been webbed into one giant cocoon this week, Ruth Ammon really deserves another nomination by the Art Directors Guild for this episode.

Doyle: “Meredith Gordon, as God is my witness, I’m going to make you love me again.”

The “again” raises several questions. He’s probably deluding himself, but you do wonder for a moment whether it was Doyle’s puppeteering or Meredith’s loose morals that led to there ever being a perceived “first time” between them.

Kudos to David H Lawrence, because in spite of the way he plays Doyle as deranged and grotesque for the majority of this episode, the switch he manages — from hopeless kid with a crush to perverse torturer — brings the full horror of these scenes to life. The smile and spark in his eyes in this first scene resemble something bordering on human feeling — just enough for you to imagine this monster growing up. You can see Doyle being the loser who was bullied for being fat, and you can see Meredith being the unattainable beauty queen who made the mistake of feeling sorry for Doyle and saying “hi” to him just once. And when you see Doyle in this episode telling Meredith about his fantasy wedding, you can almost imagine how, under different circumstances and if Meredith was sufficiently drunk, that kind of naive childish excitement might have seemed endearing.

Or not. Mostly he’s just a lunatic and you wonder how Meredith could have fallen for this guy without him controlling her.

Meredith threatens to kill Doyle if he doesn’t let her go, which, coming from Meredith, is quite believable. And after this …

… I was surprised Meredith was able to hold herself back and not seize the first opportunity she had to torch the guy. In this instance, after entrapment and self-mutilation and forcing a mother to shoot her daughter, it seemed like a retribution that most of the characters — and most of the audience — would have understood.

Knox brings Adam to the Helix Compound and lets the guy worry over his reputation. Which, looking back, becomes even funnier when you realize he’s about to have the life sucked out of him. But it’s also a little sad that David Anders came back for barely one episode and managed to pull off Adam’s transition from manipulative menace to lovable rogue so effectively.

Adam realizes that Arthur’s still alive — and, like everything relating to the ElderSupers, it screams THERE IS A FRICKIN’ GOLDMINE OF A BACKSTORY HERE AND WILL YOU GUYS PLEASE JUST TELL IT ALREADY?!

Is killing off Adam a wasted opportunity? It depends on your fondness for the character and how far you saw his potential to drive the plot, particularly in the shadow of a guy who’s evidently going to out-menace both Adam and Sylar as the show’s central villain. I saw it more as the show making a statement: that for once it isn’t going to drag out a character’s storyline just because he’s played by a talented actor who’s available and beloved by the fanbase.

Unbelievably cool. One of the best effects the show has come up with. Smooth, progressive and completely believable: you can see the flesh dissolving before the skeleton starts to crumble away. And, sure, you could bash the science of it by arguing that the show exchanged plausibility for coolness: with Adam’s regeneration gone, it would have made more sense for his cells to now start ageing normally and for Adam to live out a mortal life until someone came along and stabbed or poisoned or beat him to death. But sometimes the effect is such that you forgive plausibility in favor of what was an unashamed wow factor.

Aaaand opening sequence, and JFK, and Turtle Rendezvous. Sweet love awaits!

Daphne dumps her Pinehearst files in the trash and gets ready to run. It’s really not clear to me what’s stopping her. Unless Team Pinehearst has the SuperGPS Molly Whammy working for them, I don’t see why racing back to the CG Eiffel Tower and using her earnings to buy one of these isn’t an option for Daphne.

Specter-Linderman shows up to dissuade Daphne from the chateau. Daphne laments how she corrupted “a good guy” and turned him into a murderer.

Specter-Linderman: “You’ve done so much for us, we’ve done so much for you …”

Sometimes I feel bad for Malcolm McDowell. I mean, this? And “No pain, no gain”? … is some unforgivably thankless dialogue he’s been given. I choose to believe that Maury’s forcing Specter-Linderman to deliver this godawful material at Arthur’s behest, and that, behind the scenes, they’re both giggling like schoolgirls while they get the former Company boss to sing nursery rhymes.

We get a glimpse of Maury a few feet away, and his expression when he sees Matt is …

… one of regret? Like, “That’s my son over there, and I’m not angry that he trapped me in my own nightmare. I’m just sorry I can’t go over there and give him a big hug. One that won’t suck his abilities right out of him!” For a character as cryptic as Maury, it’s a surprisingly troubled look.

Matt comes down the escalator with the turtle in a cage — which, aww — and runs through his checklist of things to do: “Find Daphne, save her life, get her to fall in love with me … check that Molly’s safe, catch up with Mohinder, call the ex-wife to see how her and the kid are doing, let Barry Shabaka Henley know I’m OK, stop that b*****d Future-Peter from teleporting anyone else to an African desert … What am I forgetting? I know I’m forgetting something! Oh, crap — I NEED TO STOP THAT EXPLOSION THAT KILLS 200,000 PEOPLE!”

Let’s assume he was either thinking of all of those things or that it was just cut for dialogue. It doesn’t really matter when Matt and Daphne meet, because who cares if the romance makes no sense? Turtle, let the sweet romance begin!

They get a little table for themselves and the turtle. Daphne recounts Matt’s life story, which is intended to show that Team Pinehearst knows everything about Matt, but more importantly:

She understands him! Matt’s bowled over by how much this beautiful, young, nubile woman understands him — more than that old trollop Janice ever did!

She sees him for who he is! This is a meaningful bond betwixt minds!

But then, alas, the revelation! This isn’t about them? She is too dear for possessing! Sweet love, thou hast been thwarted!

Matt ineptly describes the “dream” that was “real,” and the turtle in the dream, and how he and Daphne were soul mates. And the turtle’s like, “Don’t drag me into this! Use the Bard! Win her over with poetry!”

Daphne dismisses Matt as a stalker and speedyzips away, then speedyzips back when Matt tells her about Daniella. A-ha! The turtle was right! From fairest creatures we desire increase, that thereby beauty’s rose might never die!

Daphne asks Matt to park his ass in the airport for the rest of the day, which he immediately agrees to. Let this sad interim like the ocean be which parts the shore!

Fresh from the revelation that they were human experiments, Nathan and Tracy visit the Apartment of Clairvoyance to solicit Mohinder’s expert medical opinion. Mohinder’s like, “I’m relieved to see you’re OK, Niki — oh, #%@*! I just remembered how I found a cure to your lethal virus but got distracted and left you dying in New Orleans! Where’s my mind been these last few days?”

Nathan tells Mohinder that Tracy’s not Niki. Tracy tells Mohinder that Niki was her sister and that she’s not Niki. Mohinder asks Tracy if she’s telling him she’s not Niki.

Oh, I give up.

*PING!*

DUMB AS PETER! And from now on, ANYONE who needs to be told twice that this woman is not Niki gets an award.

Tracy selects the most expensive-looking piece of equipment in the lab to demonstrate her ability on, which should cause Mohinder immense anguish but results in …

… an insane smile. Mohinder is animated, excited, entranced at the possibilities. Frankly, I feel all of those things in almost equal measure because we finally get to see some kind of reaction from him. After episodes in which it was impossible to tell if he felt anything, there’s finally an indication that Normal Mohinder’s still in there. Which is reassuring, if a little vilifying for a character who was apparently in control of his actions when he cocooned his neighbor and new love interest, and when he now jabs Tracy and Nathan with needles and watches them collapse while he stands there with arms folded.

The sad part is the dialogue and drama in this scene explain why Mohinder’s story thread is useless all by themselves: everything about it is being done somewhere else on the show — and more effectively. Tracy tells Mohinder there’s a scientist out there who knows how to do what Mohinder’s trying to do — without rattlesnake sound effects as an accompaniment to the results. We know there’s a woman currently in a comatose state who’s racked with guilt over what she inflicted on the people she tested on — without elaborate cocoons built around them. And we now know there’s a badass villain out there who can suck people’s abilities right out of them, either robbing them of a gift or liberating them from a curse.

Pretty much every aspect of Mohinder’s storyline duplicates what’s being done elsewhere on the show. It’s intended to emphasize the parallels and ties between the story threads, but it ends up making Mohinder’s story look more redundant than ever.

Daphne visits The Basement to spring Flint and Sylar out. She mentions security, but besides a couple of angry voices before she speedyzips Flint away, it doesn’t look like anyone actually works at The Company anymore. We can assume that either Arthur gave Daphne the access codes she’d need to reach Level 5, or that it’s relatively easy to waltz into a top-secret bunker and let the world’s most vicious superpowered criminals out.

What kind of psychoanalytical profiles are in these folders that Daphne’s being given? Whatever information she has, she seems to know exactly what to tell her assignments in order to sway them: she taps into Matt’s lack of career fulfillment, she promises Sylar a boss who’ll accept him the way he is, and she guarantees Mohinder the scientific answers he’s looking for. If the profiles she’s been given don’t come with a section titled “Say THIS To Persuade Them,” Daphne’s remarkably perceptive when it comes to telling prospective candidates for Team Pinehearst exactly what they want to hear.

Sylar resists the temptation to scalp this superpowered vixen, choosing instead to convey that he is Very Conflicted before he visits the Midas Study, finds Mama Petrelli with an open folder displaying Papa Petrelli’s profile (the way she was before Arthur worked the Nightmare Paralysis on her), transports her to Company Medical and wakes up Peter.

All of which symphonically assert that Sylar is A Nice Guy. At this point, you either believe it or you don’t. The fact that Sylar chooses to stay where he is, tries to make Angela comfortable when he can’t help her and risks another broken neck from his out-of-control brother in order to find out what’s wrong with their mother is probably about as convincing an argument as the show could make that Sylar has reformed.

Hiro and Ando teleport to the Desert of Clairvoyance. Ando has changed out of his fake-bloodied shirt, but the replacement’s surprisingly understated, particularly after some of the sharp suits we saw Ando wearing last season. Since they’re traveling to a hot climate and Hiro clearly has no compunction about stealing when it suits The Greater Good, I think we should have seen Ando opting to expand his horizons with something like this.

Hiro finds the painting of Matt holding Daphne in his arms and wonders why the guy looks so familiar, apparently forgetting the time they worked together to stop Peter and Adam, and the time this guy tortured him in an obsolete future. But, hey, “They all look the same to me”? It is funny, if only as a jab at the number of times viewers confused D.L. with the Haitian.

Ando voices his reluctance over kidnapping “an innocent man” just to retrieve Papa Sulu’s half of The Formula. Which again goes to show how Ando keeps everything in perspective while Hiro bumbles through every obstacle he encounters, but also makes you wonder whether it wouldn’t be easier for Hiro to teleport to the moment Ando walked into Papa Sulu’s office and simply instruct Ando not to let his friend open the safe. If he trusted Ando to die convincingly, he can trust him to curb Hiro’s obsession with adventure just once.

Or, you know, teleport to the Helix Compound, discover the identity of The Boss, then teleport back to the Midas Study to tell anyone who isn’t comatose that they need to be very, very afraid.

Ando gets the Doubtful Face. We all do. But as with the other weaker elements of this episode, it’s immediately effaced by something so sublime in its awesomeness that it’s hard to care.

That?… is the most awesome screensaver ever. Even better than Adam choking the life out of Hiro last week.

No, wait: this is even better. Could someone loop this moment, add in the “BONK!” sound effect and put it on YouTube? Because this is so hilariously therapeutic I could watch it all day.

Ando — again loyal to a fault — waits with his friend until Hiro regains consciousness. Interestingly, someone seems to have laid out a blanket where Hiro’s lying. I can’t figure out if that’s Ando being an amazing friend or Usutu trying to alleviate his guilt over the fun he’s having thwacking Hiro.

Hiro — now apparently suffering from a concussion and plunged to depths of dumbness no one ever knew he could reach — lets Ando furnish him with a plan: teleport to one minute before he originally tried to ambush Usutu and take Usutu by surprise.

“One Minute Before Hiro Got Hit”? Funny. Mostly because the chyron gives this crazy plan an undeserved level of dignity, but also because it’s so spontaneous, and because we wonder why Hiro never tried something like this before.

Cute. I love how Usutu paints himself holding the shovel like a baseball bat, and the wide-eyed cluelessness he gives Hiro.

Hiro gets the “Oh no!” look of dismay. You know you should object to the fact that Hiro isn’t fast enough to stop time, but you can forgive his ineptitude after the first blow to the head …

… and now you pretty much have to forgive ANYTHING Hiro does, because, damn, this is going to have lasting repercussions.

Daphne speedyzips back to JFK, as near as I can tell just to make sure her sweet poetry-quoting turtle is still waiting for her. He is. Daphne then speedyzips to the Apartment of Clairvoyance to hand Mohinder an invite to the Helix Compound. It seems Team Pinehearst is after Mohinder’s research, database and contacts. I didn’t realize he had any of those things, just an outdated list of names and a microscope. The rest of it’s Company property.

Should Daphne have done something to help Tracy and Nathan? She sees them tied up, tells Mohinder he’s a jerk and then … leaves. I guess she’s following her instructions to the letter and not getting involved in the shadiness she comes across, but you would’ve thought she’d at least use her speed to untie the poor suckers.

Claire and Sandra pull up outside a building with a giant sign that reads “DOYLE’S MARIONETTE THEATRE.” Seriously: no one at The Company thought to look here?

Sandra advocates a plan. Claire advocates rushing in. I’m starting to think Sandra would make an outstanding Company agent, and that the reason Claire ends up joining Pinehearst is because The Company refuses to recruit anyone so reckless.

Having happily tasered a guy who had no hostages last week, I’m not sure why Claire pauses for such an abnormal length of time before shooting Doyle. It might be that she wasn’t sure she could reverse Doyle’s hold on Meredith if he was unconscious, but even then, you have to figure it’s something Claire could worry about after she’d stunned Doyle and tied him to a chair.

*PING!*

Claire gets a Dumb As Peter Award for exercising made-for-TV hesitation.

The Russian roulette scene starts out phenomenal and ends up predictable. Out of context, it’s a scene that flies on the strength of the performances. In context, it’s a scene that relies on the performances when it should have been supported by tension arising from the predicament.

Claire’s torn up, Doyle’s loving every moment of it, and we’re left wondering if the show’s about to chalk up another death next to Adam’s. Even after it turns out to be an empty cylinder, you’re left reeling from the tension because the prospect of Claire shooting her bio-mom carried real weight.

Then it stops being about the predicament and falls back on the performances. Props to Ashley and Hayden for selling this scene, because:

Sandra’s a wreck, even knowing her daughter’s going to survive after she gets shot.

And Claire’s torn up over having to watch her mom pull the trigger on her own child.

Out of context, it tears you up. It’s horrifying, it’s tragic, and it continues to bridge the transition from Claire to Future-Claire, because you figure a big reason she becomes so messed up is situations like this: where she’s powerless, vulnerable, begging for mercy and watching people she cares about tortured and killed by creeps which The Company’s too ineffectual and incompetent to stop.

If you put it into context, the scene loses almost all of its impact: Claire’s been shot before — we’ve seen it, Sandra’s seen it, and Meredith’s probably shrewd enough to have figured it out. So it’s not like there’s any real tension behind this scene — the only person who doesn’t know how it’s going to end is Doyle, and the only thing driving the scene forward is the power of the actors. Which is incredibly powerful, but it’s not something the show should rely on in the absence of any real tension. The outcome is so predictable that the tension evaporates and you’re left waiting for the scene to reach its foregone conclusion.

Sandra’s hand trembles as she pulls the trigger, Doyle gives this little sigh of delight as he tells the surviving women how much “fun” that was, and we’re reminded that, for all of the show’s preoccupation with moral ambiguity and redemption, there are characters who can’t be humanized, and there are characters who sadistically delight in inflicting pain and suffering for their own sake. And even though this scene lacked the impact it should have had, it’s disturbing enough to make us challenge why Meredith waited for Noah to show up and tranquilize Doyle instead of setting him alight the moment she was free.

Meredith gushes with praise over how “amazing” Claire was and how she “saved” them and how all of her “heart” comes from Sandra. I can’t help finding this a little false because Claire going mercenary is the reason they ended up trapped here in the first place, and hesitating to taser Doyle is what led to the Russian roulette predicament, and telling Sandra to shoot her isn’t so much about “heart” as it is about trademark Crafty Bennet Scheming.

Noah learns that Claire apprehended Doyle and gets this priceless “WTF?!” expression, then claims that Claire has “the wrong idea” about him. This not long after she watched him tell a guy to kill or be killed. I think Claire has the right idea, but I’m still surprised she didn’t emulate her father when it came to the killing part, because, really, this is one instance where it would have been justified.

Meredith becomes a Company Woman. On the one hand, woohoo; on the other, Noah now has three partners to choose from.

Sylar makes Angela comfortable at Company Medical, visits Peter in The Basement, wakes Peter from his chemically-induced coma, then accompanies Peter to Company Medical to worry over Mama Petrelli. As far as I can tell, throughout this entire sequence of events, NO ONE attempts to stop two Level 5 inmates while they’re roaming the Company facility, transporting the head of the organization from one end of the building to another and accessing restricted areas with classified files. Just saying — if this place does have security, they all deserve to be fired.

Sylar laments that their comatose mom is “the only person who ever accepted [him] for what [he] is,” and Zach Quinto’s sincerity when he delivers that line is so convincing that the show seems to be trying harder than ever to make you believe he means it.

Peter reads Angela’s mind, scrawls the double-helix onto the nearest scrap of paper and resolves to go after whoever’s responsible for putting his mom in this state, which makes him angry enough to give Sylar the super-smackdown when he gets in the way.

I’d be surprised if we see an effects extravaganza like this again anytime soon. You have to figure the show borrowed the budget from several upcoming episodes, probably banking on the fact that Papa Petrelli is way too cool to show off any of the abilities he usurped from his boy, and therefore that no one’s really going to use any of these effects on-screen for a while. It’s a beautifully-executed scene, but also a surprisingly brutal and disturbing one, particularly for the way it’s now hammering home a role reversal that pitches Sylar as the pacifist victim and Peter as the belligerent wildcard.

I feel sorry for Nathan for missing out on all this. It’s not like he’s missing any deep emotional attachment, but it’s as if he’s been shunted onto the periphery of the storyline without even knowing Sylar’s his brother, and the way he’s been forgotten while Peter and Sylar duke it out makes it look like he’s been marginalized as Peter’s brother in favor of Sylar. The brotherly drama feels incomplete.

Apartment of Clairvoyance. Mohinder is suddenly imbued with Maya’s Five Facets of Character. Tracy manages to tap into [Facet #3] guilt by telling him she knows what he’s thinking, then [Facet #1] fear as she prompts him into admitting that it “all got out of control” and was “so unnecessary.” I personally feel that cocooning Maya was entirely necessary and possibly the best creative decision the show will make all season, but that’s beside the point. The point is that Tracy now taps into [Facet #4] naive infatuation, luring Mohinder into holding her hand in a Moment of Quiet Solidarity.

“Foooooooooled you!”

I think I just fell in love with Tracy all over again. That was so awesomely devious. Dumb-As-Mohinder Mohinder earns a

*PING!*

Dumb As Peter Award for letting himself be played.

Tracy freezes her way out of the restraints. Neat touch, and a resourceful use of her ability. Tracy and Nathan then dodge a flying table, which is kind of hilarious, but also signals the onset of Mohinder’s [Facet #5] anger. With Maya stuck in a cocoon, Mohinder has undertaken immense emotive versatility. It’s preferable to not knowing whether it’s really Mohinder and whether he’s feeling anything at all, but it would have been nice to know what Mohinder’s actually trying to achieve by putting his test subjects in cocoons and sticking needles into them. This storyline feels predicated on the horror of its central character turning into a mutant rather than on any coherent idea or outcome. We don’t know what it’s about or where it’s going, and, perhaps more alarmingly, we don’t really care.

Turtle Rendezvous. Matt and his poetic companion wait until night. Daphne speedyzips in to tell Matt that he wouldn’t fit in with Team Pinehearst. This in spite of the fact that Matt has a history of theft, coercion, manipulating people into doing what he wants and cheating his way into getting what he wants. I’d say he’s ideal material, but that’s me. Daphne tells him he wouldn’t be among good people, and that he seems like a sweet guy. Sweet love, renew they force! She has no idea that Matt once forced a little girl to finish her cereal against her will! Tis better to be vile than vile-esteem’d!

Matt warns Daphne that, someday, Pinehearst will get her killed. Her and about 199,199 other people. Dammit, Matt, FOCUS!

The issue of what Team Pinehearst has over Daphne comes up, and judging from Daphne’s expression here …

… it’s something pretty darn big. I love how Brea Grant can make us want to know her whole backstory with a single look.

Desert of Clairvoyance. Do you think Hiro and Ando waited for the sun to go down, or did they cheat and teleport a few hours forward in time?

Usutu reveals he was testing Hiro to help him rely less on his ability and more on his common sense. This strikes me as hopeless, but well done to Usutu for trying. I have several entertaining screensavers because of it.

It looks like Arthur, Knox and Flint, but the guy at the top right could be anyone. He’s got Sylar’s bushy eyebrows but Peter’s iron jaw. And the crinkle in the forehead might be Future-Peter’s scar or it might just be a crinkle in the forehead. And the mustache and the goatee are probably just creative liberties which Usutu took while Hiro was unconscious. It’s a shame Usutu couldn’t provide more of a commentary to this gallery he set up in the desert.

Helix Compound. Peter teleports to the entrance and activates the Doctor Fantastic invisibility. This effects bonanza is delightful, but I can’t help thinking it only came about because either (a) the show realized it was going to save a fortune over the next few episodes and decided to blow its FX budget in one go, or (b) the prospect of Peter losing his abilities prompted the writers to consider how many abilities they’ve been underutilizing all this time.

Arthur: “The bad guys are here.”

Perfect delivery. As great as the casting was when it came to Zach Quinto and David Anders, this scene is an indication that casting Robert Forster was the show hitting a jackpot.

Papa Petrelli harps on about how he’s looking at “criminals” and “villains.” As if on cue, Peter barges in, hands sizzling. Nicely done, show — are you ditching the subtlety altogether? Why not have a neon sign over his head?

“Dad? How’s this possible? You’re dead!”

Good! Well done, Peter! Keep going! Shapeshifter? Illusionist? Time-traveler? Regenerative healer? Whichever it is, he has unsavory associates and he’s connected to whatever put Angela into her current state!

To be fair, it’s an emotional moment. Peter’s confused, he’s overwhelmed with shock and relief and joy to discover that his dad’s alive, and Milo plays the moment extremely well. But come on — this is what the Dumb As Peter was invented for.

*PING!*

Do NOT hug the guy just because he looks like your father, Peter!

Peter gets the look of a frightened kid who wants to bury himself in his dad’s arms and close his eyes and hope all the bad in the world goes away. As dumb as Peter is for actually doing that in this instance, it’s well played, and it demonstrates what this show does best: family drama in the foreground with superpowers in the background.

Robert Forster slips out of the off-the-charts menace and into this disarmingly warm dear-old-dad persona that completely … and utterly … fools his own son.

And Peter’s multiplicity of abilities comes to an end? Well done, show! Did not see that coming. Maybe I’m cynical, but I saw several seasons of amnesia, bodyswapping and idiocy holding Peter back, and this is SO much better.

Will Peter get his abilities back? Did he only lose the abilities he absorbed, or did he lose the empathic mimicry itself? Has Arthur helped Peter in a roundabout way by removing The Hunger along with Sylar’s intuitive aptitude? Perhaps more importantly, is it a blessing in disguise if Arthur just dethroned the close-to-omnipotent superhero of the show and gave the closest thing it has to a protagonist the opportunity to develop as a character?

All questions we’re left asking, but the best questions we could be asking. Instead of questions borne out of plot holes or inconsistencies or weak storylines, they’re questions that invite us to continue watching. Bringing Arthur back was always an inevitable plot device that you knew the show would resort to eventually, but making him the one to drain Peter’s abilities doesn’t feel contrived so much as fateful. The way Forster plays him, Arthur’s a villain who scares the bejesus out of us even without abilities, and with Sylar becoming a murky hero and Adam getting dusted, the show has created its ultimate villain — one whose villainy emerges out of innate menace and charisma. Given the predominant theme of the volume, the fact that the villain turns out to be the original hero’s father seems like a fateful and fitting irony.

I’m docking minor points for the Mohinder storyline, which needs to find some kind of direction because it’s dragging the rest of the show down, and for the Doyle storyline, which started out well but ended up feeling predictable and losing the tension it should have had.

Otherwise, outstanding, and a promising sign of where the show might be going.

4 out of 5

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 23rd, 2008 at 9:21 PM and is filed under Season 3. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.