Heroes, Week Four

Spoilers ahoy!

Highlights

The episode as a whole was fairly well done. The opening with Matt the PsiCop (possibly my least favorite character on the show) in the clutches of Claire's dad (CD) & the Mystery Man (MM) was OK (although, it was a lazy way to connect Matt with Claire). The general consensus amongst some people I've talked to & the forums is that MM is not Sylar, but maybe D.L., Niki's husband & Micah's father. I'd read in one forum that it's thought that D.L. is also a Super with the power to phase (walk through walls for all you non-geek [read: normal] people) & that's how he escaped from prison. I'm thinking, though, that if this is indeed D.L., then maybe his power isn't phasing, but something more along the lines of power siphoning, with a little bit of being able to shield himself (& people within a certain proximity to him) from mind reading thrown in there for good measure & that he didn't escape from prison, but the eee-vil organization that CD works for got him out to work for them.

(My cubemate, Miguelito, apparently found some evidence against MM being D.L. While searching through the forums, he found posts stating that D.L. is supposed to show up in the 6th episode. Also, he looked for pix of the actor playing D.L., Leonard Roberts, & concluded that he looks nothing like MM. Good going Miguelito; way to crush the theory!)

There's the indication that whoever CD works for has been watching Matt &, maybe, the others. Is it possible that Claire wasn't chosen to be adopted by CD, but rather was assigned to him in order to monitor her & possibly ferret out her biological family? Hmm...

Speaking of Claire, she seems to have bounced back nicely from her little accident & date with the coroner. (For more on that, see the gripes section) (Oh yeah, I gots me a bone to pick!)

We got to see a bit more of Niki's alter ego in action, lending more credence to the similarities between her & Bruce Banner/the Incredible Hulk. I haven't figured out yet if Good Niki has any control over when Evil Niki shows up. I'm thinking that, like the Hulk, Evil Niki manifests herself when Good Niki is stressed out or in danger, although, not because she's trying to protect Good Niki, but rather out of self-preservation. Think about it: Evil Niki's in a bit of a bind if Good Niki kicks the oxygen habit. I'm still thinking that Good Niki will end up being overpowered by Evil Niki, possibly joining up with the bad guys in some way, & then will redeem herself with a sacrificial, heroic death.

My favorite part of the show of course involved my favorite Super, Hiro (Super. Hiro. Super Hiro! Ha! I'm so clever!) & Ando in Vegas. After Ando figures out that they can cheat the casino & other players (& convinces Hiro to go along with it), they rake in money left & right, ending with them being thrown out of the casino. Shortly after that, they run into one of the high rollers that they cheated (by stealing his cards). Ando, trying to bluff their way out of the situation, I guess, tells the guy & his entourage that Hiro has great powers & not to mess with them. The end result is Hiro, not understanding what Ando just said, getting his clock punched & the two of them being carried off.

Peter finally finds Mohinder (inadvertently, as he was actually looking for Mohinder's father) & confirms what the geeks had suspected - he's a mimic. This was hinted at early in the series by the fact that Peter couldn't fly when he jumped off the building until he was close enough to Nathan & (as was pointed out to me by Miguelito) when he was in the hospital, on morphine, he began drawing a picture of him walking on air after having been around Isaac, the Junkie Precog, that later came to pass. Score one for the geeks!

Meanwhile, over at Isaac's, he tries to convince his ex that he's painting the future, has seen the destruction of New York & has to do something to stop it. To be a hero. Later, he shoots up & starts seeing future events, this one involving Claire being chased by a big shadow. Now, what gets me with Isaac & precogs in comics & fantasy in general, is that they always manage to see what's going on just before 'something' happens. They never seem to be able to see who's doing it. Lousy precogs...

We later see Claire, back at school, confronting the quarterback who, it turns out, has a bit of a history of not understanding the word 'No'. Claire meets up with him in the same place that Isaac had painted earlier. I guess we were supposed the think that this was his vision coming true, but this proves to not be the case. Claire turns on her come hither charms & we next find her driving the QB's car at ludicrous speed, confronting him about the other night. He, being the slime bucket that he is, tries to blame it on her. She responds to his inability to accept responsibility for his actions by driving his car into a wall at Warp 10.

The end? Well, Future Ninja Hiro looked rockin' & had quite the firm grasp of the English language.

And I was completely baffled.

A fine, confusing ending, in typical Heroes fashion.

Gripes? I got 'em

OK, let's get the gripes out of the way.

First up, Claire. When we last saw her, she was splayed open on an examination table with a branch still poking out of her head. The branch was removed & she came to almost immediately. This week, we see the beginning of the autopsy & are given a (rather feeble) reason for the procedure: it seems that after her school's star quarterback got a little grabby & she accidentally impaled her head on a stick, he stripped her down & left her body in a nearby creek. She was found & taken to the morgue as a Jane Doe (which is why nobody - family-wise, at least - noticed she was missing), where the coroner determined that her death was by drowning & the stick in her head was a secondary injury, explaining, I guess, why it wasn't removed initially & why the autopsy was necessary. The stick is pulled out & the wound heals.

Now, as I said earlier, on last week's episode, Claire came to immediately after the stickectomy. This week, it takes her just long enough to allow the medical examiner to leave the room & not see Claire come back to the land of the living.

How convenient.

To me, that's just sloppy scripting &/or pacing. I can buy that Claire's body had to start repairing itself &, given the damage that she'd sustained, it'd take a little longer than, say, mending a broken finger. But with the way that the previous episode ended...well, it was horribly inconsistent. I mean, last week the examiner pulled the stick out & left like she'd pulled the pin on a grenade & was running for cover! This time, she had time to pull the stick out, look it over, make a note about it, wipe her hands off & then go tend to a telephone call. I've got two words for the makers of Heroes - Continuity Director.

Next up...um...well, I guess that's it for the gripes. Wow, short & sweet this week.

Problems?

I've really only one to add to my previously expressed list: things are becoming a wee bit predictable.

I brought this up to T after Monday's episode, saying that either A) the writers are lazy, B) the storyline's just waaay too predictable or C) I (& the rest of the geeks out there figuring out what's been going on) have read waaay too many comic books over time. Her response?

"It's just you. Not all of us have read a thousand comic books."

Thanks, Babe...

New Theories?

Yes, I do have a new one, thanks for asking.

This one involves Isaac. OK, we know he's a junkie. We know he gets these 'visions' when he's high & then he paints them or puts them into comic book form. What if the whole reality that's going on around him, with all of these people gaining fantastic powers, doesn't really exist? More to the point, what if that reality is all his making? What if this all turns out to be one of his 'trips'? Yes, just like St. Elsewhere. Or Newhart.

Boy, won't he be surprised when he wakes up next to Suzanne Pleshette?

Or what if reality isn't one of his drug induced hallucinations, but he is actually creating all of the strange things going on in the world with his magic Paintbrush o' Omnipotence?

Or maybe I'm looking too hard into this.

That might be it...