November 26th, 2009 by Otto Berkeley
Peter and Sylathan join Angela for Thanksgiving, and finally prize a confession out of her about the Sylathan Debacle. We learn that Angela still has a heart beneath that steely exterior, although it doesn’t do her much good when Sylar reemerges and decides to make good on his promise to kill everyone involved in his out-of-body experience. Sylar scarfs down pie, kisses Angela (!) and comes moments away from slicing her head open, only to be stopped by Sylathan when he regains control of his body and flies away.
Lydia strips for Hiro and asks him to touch her (no, really!), and then they travel back in time and discover that Samuel killed Joseph. Who gets a cookie for calling it, like, 10 episodes ago? Well, a lot of us, but I’m one of them!
Samuel watches Mohinder’s film reel, gathers the carnies for Thanksgiving and responds to Edgar’s anger by pinning Joseph’s murder on him, whereupon Hiro saves Edgar’s life, stands up to Samuel and gets Damien-whammied. This leads to Hiro experiencing a few memory flashes, yammering a bit and then teleporting away.
Noah stalks Lauren at a supermarket and persuades her to cook Thanksgiving dinner at his apartment. Sandra and her new boyfriend show up, as do Claire and a playmate for Mr. Muggles. The dinner is fraught with tension, especially when Claire announces she’s planning to drop out of college, but the scene turns hilarious when Claire decides to be melodramatic and slices her wrist open.
Noah tries to dissuade Claire from a visit to the carnival, and Claire pretends to agree, but even when Gretchen shows up and makes amends with her, Claire remains determined to meet the murderous bunch. Oh, Claire.
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November 19th, 2009 by Otto Berkeley
Through flashbacks, we learn that Mohinder returned to India two months ago, hooked up with Mira and started rewatching footage from the Coyote Sands film reel. Armed with the information on this reel, and using a Magik Compass which he built –
– Just take a moment to let that last part sink in, because I swear I’m not making it up –
Mohinder visits the carnival in search of an individual capable of harnessing superpowered energy and becoming very, very powerful.
This individual turns out to be Samuel, although Joseph has apparently been keeping his brother in the dark all these years to prevent him from becoming a megalomaniac. Which I guess he now is.
Present-Samuel sends Hiro back in time to retrieve the film reel, although Hiro also saves Mohinder’s life while he’s at it. Mohinder doesn’t agree with Hiro’s decision to cooperate with Samuel, however, so Hiro puts him in a psychiatric hospital.
René betrays Angela and tells Peter where to find Nathan’s body. Peter and Sylathan find Matt in hospital, heal him and demand answers, but Sylar uses the opportunity to jump into Sylathan’s body (I think; he doesn’t immediately make his presence known). With the truth out in the open, Sylathan’s faced with the realization that he’s a monster.
Tracy visits Noah’s apartment after her ability begins to go haywire, but only finds Claire (doing her laundry!). Tracy freezes Claire, breaks off her foot, then bonds with Claire and decides she’s ready to join the carnival.
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November 12th, 2009 by Otto Berkeley
Sylar coerces Ghost-Matt into revealing how he separated Sylar’s consciousness from his body. Sylar’s on his way to find Nathan in New York when Ghost-Matt alerts the police by scribbling a death threat on a napkin. Which gets Sylar shot. Which is to say, it gets Matt shot. Goodbye, Matt! It’s been a wonderful three-and-a-half years! We hope to see you in many flashbacks and dream sequences!
Ooh, cool promo for next week! Looks like Matt survives those fatal gunshot wounds thanks to Pe-
Wait, what?! ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!
Peter uses the Be-Healed Whammy to save lots of patients at the hospital, but also helps Emma to treat a girl with a pneumothorax. Reassured by her success, Emma unpacks her doctor’s uniform and forgives herself for allowing her nephew to drown when he was a kid.
Gretchen freaks out after the Slaughterhouse Incident and books a flight home. Claire pleads with her to stay, but to no avail. Samuel catches Claire at her most vulnerable and, after a stand-off with Noah, leaves Claire wondering how she can hope for a normal life without anyone who understands what she’s going through.
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November 5th, 2009 by Otto Berkeley
SPOILER WARNING! The discussion thread after this review may (and probably will) contain reference to the impending departure of one of the show’s regular cast members. There is NO direct reference to this in the review, but if you don’t want to be spoiled, please proceed with caution.
Hiro stops Sylar from scalping Charlie and negotiates with him.
^ ^ No, really. That’s what happens, and as insane as it sounds, the way it plays out, it works. Hiro offers to tell Sylar how he dies, Sylar agrees not to kill Charlie, and in the end Sylar uses a combination of intuitive aptitude and telekinesis to remove Charlie’s aneurysm.
Then Sylar leaves. Which is a little odd, but who cares, because the rest is awesome.
Turns out that back when Daddy Bennet was trying to save Claire from getting scalped at homecoming, he was also busy nearly having an affair with a gorgeous blonde. (Who would have guessed?) It ends with the blonde voluntarily getting herself Haitian-whammied. Sadly, that privilege doesn’t extend to the audience.
Time-traveling Arnold (that’s the crusty old guy at the carnival) is about to die. Samuel panics because he needs a time-traveler to help him rewrite a particular part of history, so he kidnaps Charlie, pulls a Caitlin on her (!) and coerces Hiro into helping him.
Mohinder’s been absent from the show for two months because he’s dead. Somehow, Samuel is connected to this.
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October 29th, 2009 by Otto Berkeley
Rebecca takes Claire, Gretchen and two other sorority pledges to a slaughterhouse as part of their initiation. They wander around a lot, one of them gets splattered with fake blood, and then Rebecca tries to choke Gretchen. Claire fends Rebecca off with a meat hook, and the two other pledges learn that members of their sorority can turn invisible and extricate themselves from steel rods.
Tracy visits Georgia to help persuade the sheriff to release Jeremy, but Jeremy kills a guy as he leaves the police station, prompting the deputy to chain him to a truck and drag him across town. Between this and her chance meeting with Samuel, Tracy starts to wonder whether the carnival might be the best place for everyone with an ability.
Sylar takes control of Matt’s body and has sex with Janice (!). Matt discovers that alcohol weakens Sylar’s influence and proceeds to get wrecked (!!). Then Matt finds out that Sylar has permanently taken control of his body, turning him into Matt-in-Matt’s-head-with-Sylar-controlling-his-body-but-looking-like-Matt (-except-for-us-because-to-us-he-still-looks-like-Sylar) (!!!). (Wait, WHAT?!)
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October 22nd, 2009 by Otto Berkeley
Samuel instructs one of the carnival’s members to reverse-Haitian-whammy Sylar into retrieving his memories. He’s successful, and Sylar relives the final moments of his victims, going berserk for a while before deciding to join the carnival and hooking up with Lydia.
Edgar doesn’t like Sylar, but he’s good enough to get Lubbock off his back.
Claire visits Noah with her laundry. (This is an actual part of the plot.)
Peter absorbs Hiro’s ability, and he and Noah try to save Hiro by visiting a kid in Georgia who can work the Linderman Be-Healed Whammy. It turns out Jeremy can also kill as arbitrarily as he heals (his dead parents would attest to this if they could), but Noah convinces him to channel his ability and save Peter from a fatal gunshot wound. Peter absorbs Jeremy’s ability and returns to heal Hiro, but apparently Hiro’s ability isn’t amused by its owner’s stint as a magician, because it teleports him to Charlie in Midland three years ago.
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October 15th, 2009 by Otto Berkeley
Sylar re-emerges with no memory of who he is or what he’s done. Detective Ernie Hudson brings him in and ID’s him as Aunt Virginia’s murderer, whereupon Sylar rediscovers his abilities, escapes into a forest and somehow bumps into Samuel and the carnival in the middle of nowhere.
Peter rescues Emma when she nearly gets hit by a bus and inadvertently absorbs her ability. There’s a touching scene in which Peter and Emma play a piano together, but the blossoming romance stutters to a halt when Peter echoes Louise Fletcher (who turns out to be Emma’s mom (!)) and urges Emma to get away from her filing room. This annoys Emma enough to tear up walls while playing her cello.
Claire and Gretchen join a sorority, unaware that one of their members, Rebecca, has been instructed by Samuel to isolate Claire and maneuver her into joining the carnival. It also turns out that Rebecca can turn invisible, that she pushed Annie out of her window, and that she wants Claire to know about Gretchen researching Claire on the web. Only the last of those comes to Claire’s attention, which leads to Gretchen revealing her crush on Claire and kissing her.
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October 8th, 2009 by Otto Berkeley
Angela brings Sylathan a box of Nathan’s belongings in the hope that they’ll restore lots of memories and prevent Sylar from reemerging. One item, however, restores a Haitian-whammied memory of the time Teen-Nathan watched Millie’s daughter slip and kill herself in a pool. When Millie finds out, she has Sylathan shot, causing him to morph back into Sylar’s form.
Claire visits Noah and helps him to realize all the good he accomplished as a Company Man. Reassured, Noah begins gathering information about the carnival.
Hiro tries to talk a suicidal ex-employee out of jumping off the Yamagato rooftop. He fails, goes back in time to prevent the guy from wanting to jump in the first place, then fails on 46 subsequent attempts. Finally, Hiro realizes that talking can make a difference, and decides to tell Kimiko he’s dying. The heartfelt moment is cut short when Hiro gets another killer migraine and disappears.
Peter visits Noah for advice about his Magik Compass Tattoo. Only now the tattoo’s gone, so Peter goes away again.
Tracy visits Bruce Boxleitner and asks for her old job back, then changes her mind and decides she doesn’t want her old job back.
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October 1st, 2009 by Otto Berkeley
Samuel decides that Peter’s the ideal candidate to replace Joseph at the carnival. After a heartfelt conversation, Samuel agrees to drop the lawsuit he concocted against Peter and offers a hand in friendship. Which Peter of course accepts, and which leads to Peter developing a Magik Tattoo on his arm. Oh, Peter.
While reeling from both the aforementioned lawsuit and the accusation that he’s staging his rescues, Peter meets Emma. We learn that Emma is hearing-impaired, but that she recently developed the ability to see sounds. This ability is at its most striking in a scene where Emma randomly picks up a cello in Central Park and watches the colors radiate off the instrument as she plays.
Noah visits Claire, and in the process of inviting his daughter to lunch somehow ends up inviting her annoying friend. Gretchen assumes that Noah knows nothing of his daughter’s ability, and her remarks prompt Noah to begin planning a hasty Haitian Whammy. Claire turns this offer down (why? WHY?) and instead decides to come clean with Gretchen and ask her to be her new roommate. Naturally, Gretchen couldn’t be more delighted.
Matt and his supervisor raid a drug dealer’s home, but the raid goes awry when Ghost-Sylar confuses Matt into thinking there’s a dead child hidden under the stairs. After realizing that his brutal beating of the suspect is unwarranted and likely to lead to dismissal, Matt placates his supervisor with a Parkman Whammy, giving Ghost-Sylar one more reason to gloat.
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September 25th, 2009 by Otto Berkeley
Having officiated a key from Željko’s innards, Noah enlists Peter’s help in retrieving Samuel’s Magik Compass. Edgar intervenes, Peter absorbs his ability, they fight, and Peter fends Edgar off. Then, the moment Peter’s not around, Edgar swipes the Magik Compass and puts Noah in hospital. They probably should have thought that plan through more carefully. Whoops!
Samuel visits Present-Hiro on the Night of the Slushy Incident and helps him alter history. The upshot is Ando and Kimiko are now together. Encouraged by his inadvertent success, Hiro decides it’s his mission to rewrite history more extensively.
Gretchen is adamant about proving that Annie was murdered, which prompts Claire to recreate Annie’s death by jumping out of a window and unwittingly revealing her ability to Gretchen.
Ghost-Sylar taunts Matt into making himself look like a lunatic at a recovery group, then goads him into threatening a suspect during an interrogation and Parkman-whammying Janice’s water delivery boy.
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