It’s not as unbelievable as you think. Gretchen’s an insecure girl, and one that seems to need someone to attach in order to define herself. It’s not surprising that she would have had several boyfriends through high school, and also not surprising that those relationships did not work out. Either she didn’t find what she was looking for, or the young man realized that Gretchen was crazy.

Great theory, very well thought out. It would enrich Matt’s character arc and, as you point out, it would say something about the similarity between him and Maury if it were true.

“… instead of “Sylar” tricking Matt in to releasing control of his body, Matt just gave up…”

This is why I think it would be a much more interesting option. The impression we got from this episode is that Matt’s attempt to save his marriage is failing, so it would make sense for Matt to find something or someone to blame for that, and the imaginary voice of a psycho-killer taking up residence in his head and then gaining control of his body is probably the best excuse his subconscious could have come up with.

The tragedy is in the way the voice ends up telling Matt that, as you say, it’s his own perceived shortcomings that make his happy future with Janice impossible.

What I really want to see from Heroes is people with extraordinary powers using those powers, not whining about how tough their life is now that they have awesome powers. If Radioac-Ted wants to complain, I won’t begrudge him that, but Parkman has long been the poster child for the reluctant hero and it’s made me terribly intolerant of him. He should be using his telepathy to become the greatest detective ever and feeling good about all the people he’s helping; instead, he spends most of his time denying his power, pretending its an addiction, whining about his lot in life or otherwise chumping it up. So it’s reached the point where the only time I enjoy anything Matt’s doing is when he’s being ridiculed by Sylar for being such a chump. So I loved that portion of this episode.

I’ll admit though, I hadn’t thought of the fact that the first thing Sylar should have done when gaining control of Matt’s body was hightail it out of there and not schtupp Janice *shudder*. That realization does bring it down a notch for me, but frankly, I’m never not going to enjoy a storyline that involves Sylar making fun of Parkman.

Samuel remains a fascinating and well drawn character, but he REALLY needs some clarification regarding his motivation and ultimate plan, and soon. This episode seemed to set him as Heroes’ Magneto, a figure gathering his people to protect them from persecution while maintaining some kind of sinister agenda. He’s a great character, fun to enjoy, but man alive, we are WAY past the point of knowing what his ultimate goal is (in a lot of ways, he’s the opposite of Danko, a character we knew little about OTHER than his ultimate goal).

My only hope is that if the show is building towards a carnival vs. Heroes showdown at the season’s conclusion, and this is the last season, they throw budgetary constraints to the wind and give us a super-powered battle royale instead of the Kirby Plaza skirmish or watching Claire watching a fight.

That’s exactly what I was thinking. Those six or seven boyfriends weren’t the captain of the football team or the Prom King, but I have no problem believing it’s possible for a girl like Gretchen w/self esteem issues that isn’t afraid of, ahem, experimenting, to have had six or seven boyfriends in high school.

I’ve thought about the Matt/Sylar thread, and I’ve decided that the only way for this ep to make sense as part of what as been so far a very well thought out and executed season is that it absolutely is NOT Sylar’s actual consciousness in Matt’s head. All the pieces still fit — Matt lived with Mohinder long enough to have heard the “fatha’s resuuch” line enough for “Sylar”’s comeback to be Matt’s own dismissal of the possibility of Mohinder helping him out. All of the ingenuity/deviousness/omniscience that “Sylar” has been showing can very easily be simply putting a face on Matt’s demons — even to the point where yes, Matt is imagining/fearing a handsome, amoral bad boy infiltrating his life (and wife). And that Matt has to continuously justify to himself completely wiping a person from existence — evil as that person may be — and that “Sylar” seems to pretty much be muwahaha-ing in exactly the way Matt would imagine an Bad Guy to act to a Cop all ( for me ) points to guilt + low self-esteem + reality-altering mental powers = Hallucination I can’t get rid of.

Which basically means that instead of “Sylar” tricking Matt in to releasing control of his body, Matt just gave up, drank himself into oblivion, and woke up saying “Screw this, why shouldn’t I have what I want”, furthering his downward spiral.

Plus Maury just “got up and left” one day? And how many times has Matt just “got up and left” with perfectly good reasons once you knew them? Fairly sure that 2.07 proved that the Rule of Ted doesn’t apply to telepaths being stuck in their own nightmares any more than regular folk, albeit in 1080p HD with Dolby 5.1 Surround Sound. Does the fact that Angela almost immediately went to “Put my son in this guys body” imply that she’d seen Maury do the same thing already? Would tie in nicely with the “whatever it is you people do line” in 4.01.

I think if they stick with the idea of making Sylar — ultimate evil to Matt — a hallucinatory manifestation of everyone of Matt’s perceived shortcomings — which they’ve been pretty consistent about detailing as far back as 1.10 — that we’ll look back at this thread in the this ep in a completely different light. Here’s hoping!

I also felt that Claire’s storyline both hit and missed. She’s showing signs of the intelligent, calm person she should’ve been these past couple of seasons, and I think they haven’t played up the lesbian storyline past a point of believability yet. But at the same time, the whole slaughterhouse thing was just..meh.

And this is going to be redundant, but Noah/Tracy/Jeremy’s storyline was A+.

Anything is possible, I would think they would take the entire memory - and even if they did he still had a picture of her, again anything is possible, I just want to know - the past is far more interesting than the present, but also because of how it reflects on the present, but I fear they will never show us.

If that were true, the implication seems to be that Zimmerman recovered a smattering of memories of Barbara and his involvement with The Company over time, probably the same way Peter recovered his memories in 2.08, by recalling the person he cared about the most.

But Peter was able to heal himself because he “had the power all along” - but instead of clicking his heels he was able to jump start the power - for not knowing he had it - was like a tree in the forest - if he didn’t know he had it, did he really have it at all. If an empath never meets another person with a ability was he ever an empath at all. lol. Adam just jump started what he already had. An empath, an adam or Claire, or a Linderman or a Jeremy would be the only one to bring about Haitian-ed memories - or from the 1960’s to who knows how long - Charles

That might just be the show’s way of not getting ~*sidetracked*~ with the backstory, but it could also be an indication that he’s Sylar’s consciousness without any recollection of what he’s done.