Television is the new movies
Heroes Season Recap Part 1
Posted Monday, April 9, 2007
When Jericho took a long break I decided near the end of the break to give everyone a refresher on what had happened so far. With Heroes returning in 2 weeks I thought I'd do the same thing. Look out next week for part 2. Recaps courtesy of Television Without Pity. Click the pictures to see what I thought of the episode.
Genesis
Man. Being a superhero sucks more than you'd think. And it's not nearly as fun as it should be. And in the case of several of our new heroes, it’s downright painful and resembles someone taking a really high-pressured crap.
In tonight's premiere episode, we meet the son of a prominent professor who was "disappeared" while he was researching the possibility of human beings with supernatural powers; an indestructible cheerleader who can walk through fire without getting burned and whose bones have an annoying tendency to poke through her skin; a cyber-porn yummy mummy who either has the ability to divide herself in two and kill people or is actually totally schizoid; a whiny Emo hospice worker who thinks he can fly; his bitchy brother with political aspirations; a heroin addict with visions of the future; and a rather charming Japanese Star Trek geek who not only believes in his superpowers, but actually seems to understand them AND be able to control them.
An eclipse of the sun seems to be involved, but just how is never really articulated. And the kind of evil shadowy government bad guy also appears to be the adoptive father of the indestructible rah-rah girl but his story isn't clear yet. In the end, Emo decides to jump off the edge of a building in order to make his mark on the world (or the pavement) but instead of flying away like Superman without a cape, he just plummets down and is about to land on his bitchy brother when the bitchy brother actually swoops up to save him. Looks like this is one politician who will be soaring through the polls!
Don't Look Back
Peter the little bitch wakes up in the hospital. Nathan is on hand to tell him that Peter jumped, and Nathan climbed up a fire escape or something to catch him. Later, their mother shows up to tell Peter that their father killed himself, and that Peter was always her favourite child. Once he's sprung, Peter goes straight back out to the next tall building he can find, and when his brother shows up, he confronts him about their father's suicide (Nathan knew), and begs Nathan to tell him that he flew. Nathan's like, "We both flew," and Peter's like, "Whatever," and then Nathan kind of points at him, and we pull back to see that Peter's kind of hovering over the roof of the building. Niki wakes up in her crime scene, unable to remember anything that happened. When Micah calls her to come get him, she grabs her video camera and takes off, but she can't help pulling over on the way to review the tape. Unfortunately, the image fuzzes out at the moment we can hear the killing start. Then the phone rings again, and Niki is told Micah called her four hours ago. She finally gets him, and when they return to the house to get a few things before lamming it, she discovers that her split-off reflection, or whatever (Ikin?), cleaned everything up, left her the keys to a classic convertible with the corpses in the trunk, and even provided a map to a good spot where Niki can bury them in a shallow grave. When she gets there, though, she sees someone's left their corpses there before. Some other cheerleader takes credit for Claire's hot save; at home, her evil dad tells her they'll start looking into finding her biological parents, and we also see that he stole the suicide attempt tape from Claire's nerdy videographer. Mohinder comes home to find someone sketchy messing around in the guise of an exterminator. There's a scuffle out in the hall, and a conveniently passing pixie-haired cutie appears to help settle things in Mohinder's favour. She tells him she was friends with his dad, and an exposition ensues about the elder Suresh's research, but I have to say I couldn't really concentrate on it because I was sure the exterminator was a red herring to make Mohinder trust the pixie, the real agent! Let's see if I end up being right. Across the country, we finally meet Matt Parkman (Greg Grunberg woo!), a beat cop and family man who keeps failing the detectives' exam even though he can hear people's thoughts -- a talent he uses to find a girl presumed abducted from a crime scene he's guarding. The girls' parents were murdered in a totally grisly way: the mother is pinned sideways to the stair railing, and the father is frozen solid, the top of his head cut off and his brain removed. The lady detectives blame Sylar (oh yeah -- there was also a short conversation between Dad Suresh and Sylar on the former's answering machine, in which Sylar was all "You made me a killer," blah blah), until they get suspicious of Matt, thinking he staged the crime scene to make himself a hero (hee) and get a promotion out of it, but he blames the crime on Sylar, and they're all, "No one knows about him!" and he's like, "I heard you," and then the detective played by Clea DuVall arrests him. And FINALLY, Hiro is super-psyched to be in New York, but then freaked out when he spots a comic book that depicts his whole storyline, starting from back in "Genesis." He follows the address in the back of the book to the artist, junkie Isaac. But when he gets there, he finds that Isaac has been frozen solid, the top of his head cut off and his brain removed, and then the cops burst in. A translator calls back to Japan to talk to Hiro's co-worker, who says he hasn't seen Hiro in five weeks. Hiro's all like, "No, it's October 2," and the cops show him a newspaper (trumpeting Nathan's election victory) dated November 8, and then the apocalypse happens, and Hiro freaks out and teleports back to Japan, the day he left.
One Giant Leap
Hiro convinces Buddy to travel with him to America in order to save the world. He also does this awesome time-stopping trick to save a little girls life, and it's cool and adorable, all at the same time. Nathan tells everyone that Peter's flying trip was really a botched suicide attempt, and the brothers are now at odds with each other. Peter also makes out with Simone after he tells her he's in love with her and she decides that heroin addicts make lousy boyfriends.
Niki buries her dead out in the desert, only to find a big skull ring on one of the corpses that's already six feet under. The ring belonged to one of the members of Niki's husband's gang. Her hubby apparently stole a bunch of moola from the one mobster in Vegas that everyone steals/borrows from and then killed his own gang. Matt proves to Clea that he can read minds when he listens in on her thoughts of low self-esteem. Sylar shows up and tries to steal the little girl from last week, and Clea and chases him down. He uses his Jedi mind tricks to get Clea to put her own gun to her head. Matt shoots him dead and Clea is saved, but Sylar just gets up like nothing happened and runs off. We never see his face, so god only knows who the hell he really is or if we'll ever find out.
Mohinder pays a visit to Sylar's pad in Queens, and he and Pixie discover that not only is Sylar a neat freak who likes plastic-covered furniture, but he's also just a FREAK, a freak who collects specimens of things in dusty jars, has a map of all the Heroes on his wall just like Papa Suresh, and has a gargantuan guilt complex, judging by all the "I have sinned" scratches on his bathroom tiles. Suresh calls in the police, but by the time they get there, Sylar the Super Neat has cleaned the place out.
And finally, Claire gets frisky with a jockstrap quarterback, but decides she's not ready to go all the way. He's quite the little rape artist, though, and he attacks her. Unfortunately, he drives her jugular right into a gardening tool. Even more unfortunately, she comes to on the coroner's table after the tool is removed and looks down at her chest to see that she's been flayed like a Christmas goose. How the hell she'll recover from that one, I don't know. Not so invincible now, huh, Claire?
Collision
Matt gets kidnapped by BGM and the scary Bald Black Man. They seem to be interested in testing him for stuff until he gets all manic on them and BBM is ordered by BGM to erase his memory. Claire wakes up on the coroner's table and rather easily stitches herself together again, only to be faced with her would-be rapist at school. She somewhat calmly guides him into his own car and leads him to his death when she drives said car directly into a building.
Niki goes to see Linderman, only to be told by one of his henchwomen that her debt will be erased if she just puts Nathan Petrelli in a compromising position in a hotel room. Niki balks at this, but ikiN takes over at a crucial point and performs the necessary deed. Unfortunately, after they fall asleep, BGM shows up with BBM and BGM instructs him to "just take the one." Which one he takes, we'll find out later, I'm sure.
Hiro and Ando hit Vegas, and Hiro stops time to prevent Ando from losing all their money. Ando kind of digs this part of Hiro's talent and asks him to do it again so they can win more money. He does, but it ends badly when one of the sore losers from the poker table knocks Hiro down in an alley.
Peter and Mohinder meet, and Peter figures out that he might be absorbing people's powers; he convinces Mohinder to travel with him to Isaac's apartment but, on the way, something goes wonky on the train and everything's bathed in blue while time stops. Hiro shows up in a shiny black outfit, with shiny black hair, and speaks perfect English. "My name is Hiro Nakamura and I'm from the future. I have a message for you."
Hiro's
Future Hiro delivers a message to Peter that he has to visit Isaac and save the cheerleader in order to save the world. Nathan gets kidnapped by Bad Glasses Man and Creepy Bald Guy of Silence, only to escape by flying off into the air with a sonic boom. It's so totally cool. Also? Adrian Pasdar shirtless. Need I say more? Hiro witnesses Nathan's landing, and they share a few moments of utter hilarity. Claire tells her father what happened with Jock the Rapist, and he orders Creepy Bald Guy of Silence to erase the kids memory so he'll forget his lust for attacking girls.
Matt uses his mad thought-reading skillz to predict every possible thing that his wife could want, including a steak dinner and hot monkey love on the sofa. Unfortunately, when he goes to get ice cream at the convenience store, he overhears the thoughts of a guy about to hold the place up. He freaks the thug out by reading his mind and prevents the crime, but then totally mucks it all up by picking up the gun and letting his mind be overrun by everyone's thoughts.
Niki has no recollection of her sex-o-licious evening with Nathan, but she apologizes anyway and swears she just wants to be a good person. She heads home, only to discover that her no-good husband could be on his way to visit her. She still thinks that it's him that's doing all the bad stuff that ikiN is doing, so the idea of him coming by for pot roast doesn't thrill her. He eventually shows up, even with all the cop cars outside, and it would seem that he has a little heroic ability of his own. That might include being able to walk through walls.
Peter visits Isaac and realizes that he can siphon off Isaac's prognosticating ability without all the messy heroin getting in the way. He completes a painting while his eyes are filmed over, and in it, Claire appears to be dead. Hiro calls while he's there, and Peter delivers a message that Future Hiro ordered him to back in the past. Or future. Or…something. Hee.
Better Halves
Peter tells Hiro and Ando the "save the cheerleader" message, and about his encounter with FutureHiro. Hiro is excited to learn that he will one day have a sword. Peter and Isaac figure out that Isaac's paintings fit together like a comic book (you don't say!), but that a panel is missing; Simone has it. Back in Las Vegas, the High Roller takes Hiro and Ando to a backroom poker game, ordering them to cheat the other players. Ando sees that one of the players has a gun under the table pointed at him, and they take off to the john to freak out about it, but while they are in there, someone shows up (we'll come back to that), kills everyone outside to death, bro, and tip-taps out of there before Hiro and Ando can emerge. Hiro gets the guilts that he didn't save the people who apparently intended to kill him and his friend, but Ando tells him that when he gets better at bending time and space, he can come back for a do-over. D.L. tells Niki that although he planned the big heist for which he's been imprisoned, he got cold feet and bailed out; he doesn't know who framed him, except that it was a woman. Oh my God, you guys, who could it be?! Niki believes him, and they have a nice evening together, after which D.L. tells her her he heard her sneak out in the middle of the night. Oh my God, you guys, where could she have gone?! After a lovely breakfast at home -- at which D.L. tells Micah that no prison can hold him -- D.L. takes Niki with him to some hideout to investigate his enframening. It's the poker backroom, and it's littered with torn-apart bodies. Niki tells D.L. how much it resembles her own garage crime scene, tearfully confessing that she did it, but he doesn't believe her. Later, Niki and ikiN have a chat in which ikiN tells her what we've already figured out: ikiN pulled off the whole damn heist, and now wants Niki to get the money and take off with Micah before D.L. can put the pieces together and take Micah himself. Niki recovers the money from the attic, but when she's hopped back down with it into the bedroom, D.L. is totally there! ikiN takes over to smash him across the face with the briefcase full of cash, but when she turns her back on him, he disappears...into the wall! Superhero fight! It gets a bit less cool when Micah walks in on his superparents totally trying to kill each other, but the fight comes to a swift end when D.L. reaches through ikiN's skin to squeeze her guts, and then leaves her for dead. Mohinder leaves New York, but not before getting all smooched up by Pixie. Bennet sets up a meet-and-greet between Claire and her bio-parents. She tries to get them to admit that they have superpowers, but all she gets from them are family histories of regular, non-super diseases. However, Mrs. Bennet tells Claire, after they've left, that when she was a baby, the Bennets tried to track down Claire's bio-parents, without success, because they thought she might have some chromosomal damage; when Claire presses her for more information, Mrs. Bennet just says that Claire had a cough. While Bennet is fully spying on the conversation, he gets a call from...Pixie! Called it. She passes on her intel about the flying Petrelli, FutureHiro, and precognitive junkie Isaac, as well as the "save the cheerleader" message. Bennet tells Pixie to "bring in the precog" -- so just as Isaac is revealing his painting of gut-squozen Niki/ikiN, complete with a tattoo he had painted and then painted over (sloppy, Isaac. Reeeeeal sloppy), Pixie shows up at his door, claiming to be a big fan.
Better Halves
Let's start with Matt, who's back this week; he's trying to work things out with his wife, only...she's cheating on him. With his partner. FOR SHAME, MRS. MATT. He's also trying to work things out with his mind-reading power, which is getting harder to control, and when he and Clea Duvall come up on a dude Clea thinks is Syler, it's really...a new Hero? Radioactive Man? Who killed his wife with radiation?
Elsewhere, we finally meet Mrs. Nathan Petrelli, played by Rena "Showkiller" Sofer -- seems like the big secret there is that she got in a car accident that may or may not have been Nathan's fault. The whole NatPet clan sits down to a super-fake brunch with a journalist, during which Nathan's tryst with ikiN is almost revealed, but Peter -- not invited to brunch initially, and fairly bitter about it -- covers for Nathan. although it's pretty clear Rena doesn't believe the story. Later, Nathan admits to what happened with him in the desert, and that he flew away, and Peter wants him to get the missing Isaac painting back from Linderman, which Nathan says he can't do, but we hear him on the phone and it sounds like Linderman gives it up. Confused? Me too.
Simone's father dies. Simone is passive-aggressive and boring some more.
Isaac is AWOL.
D.L. has 'napped Micah from Niki. Micah is piiiissed and thinks his dad is a villain, until D.L. saves a girl from a burning car by morphing through the glass -- with an assist by the suddenly appearing Hiro, who freezes time to help. Then Micah believes.
Then Micah totally games a non-working pay phone, which means he has powers too. He calls his mom; ikiN picks up; Micah is completely onto her and asks to speak to his mom; ikin is like, "No dice, shorty," and says the usual threatening stuff. D.L. busts Micah during this call but doesn't seem to get that his son knows Hero-fu.
Oh, and ikiN has a name: Jessica.
Seven Minutes To Midnight
Matt -- on suspension after punching his wife's boyfriend -- is brought in to the FBI to interrogate Ted. He's told he only gets an hour before DHS takes over on the assumption that Ted is radioactive because he's a terrorist who's been messing around with bomb materials. Matt discovers that Ted's experience of turning super -- drunk, Haitian guy, passed out for a few days, wake up with big headache and weird powers -- is very like Matt's own; also, they both now have neck tattoos that look like two hash marks. Unfortunately, Matt doesn't get the FBI the info it wants in time, but although Ted gets hauled off, in the time it takes Matt to go home and have an awkward conversation with his wife about her infidelity (upshot: they're going to try to make a go of it anyway), Ted starts a fire in the vehicle he's being transported in and takes off to avoid being Gitmoed. Mohinder, back in India, sends off his father's remains and makes to go back to work. We meet Mira, spparently a lost love, who discredited his father's research and is now in some big fancy job at a private genetic research company. She tells Mohinder she can get him in, as long as he doesn't make with the crazy talk about Chandra's research. Mohinder then discovers (or at least this is how it appears to me) that his power is to figure shit out in semi-waking dreams, with the assistance of a kid with a soccer ball who may or may not be Boy Mohinder; at any rate, his dreams lead him to take a key he found in Chandra's stuff and use it to open a locked desk drawer, in the back of which he finds a file full of sleep studies and a photo of the soccer kid. It's kind of awesome that the guy with the boring exposition disease turns out to be Nap Man. In Texas, we see Bennet go in to his office -- a paper company/shady front -- where Eden has been helping Isaac through heroin withdrawal. Bennet tells Isaac he believes that Isaac really can paint the future, and tells him that the cheerleader Isaac's been painting is Claire. Her Homecoming Dance is the next day, and Bennet fears that she's going to be killed there unless Isaac paints what is to happen so that Bennet can prevent it. Isaac tries, but can't get his precog powers working without heroin, so Bennet gets him some and tells Eden to give it to him. She gets pissed; Bennet darkly hints that he got her off junk so she owes him, and a now super-pissed Eden does indeed get Isaac to shoot up again, possibly by whispering something super-persuasive into his ear that we don't hear. Anyway, the heroin does get Isaac all cloudy-eyed and painting again. Bennet also tells Isaac that there are a bunch of special people around the world that Bennet has been trying to protect from (without using his name) Sylar, who's been killing supers. Finally: in Midland, Texas, we meet Charlie, a diner waitress who's recently noticed that she has an extraordinarily awesome memory. She waits on Ando and Hiro, the latter of whom cutely develops a giant crush on her. Also studying her carefully? Sylar, who waits for her to go to the back and then cuts the top of her head off, killing her. Hiro tells Ando that she was killed the same way he saw Isaac killed in the future, so he says he's going to go back in time and prevent her death. He promises to be back five seconds later, but Ando tells him Hiro doesn't know how to control his powers well enough to try that shit yet...and Ando turns out to be right, and is left loitering around the diner waiting for Hiro. At least we know that Hiro has been successful in going backward, because we see a snapshot on the diner bulletin board of Hiro a while back at Charlie's birthday party.
Homecoming
Simone delivers the lost Linderman painting to Nathan, only to have Nathan splash it with black paint before we can see what's on the canvas. Simone totally tattles on Nathan to Peter and then shows him a PHOTO of the painting, like, she couldn't have DONE THAT BEFORE? Whatever. In the painting, Peter appears to die at 8:12 in the evening. Peter decides to go to Odessa. ikiN/Jessica goes to the desert to play with guns and practice shooting DL's brains out with a sniper rifle. While at a roadside diner, Micah tells DL all about his mother's split personality issues. Mohinder has a change of heart with regard to his father's research and decides that he's going to follow in his father's footsteps after all. This leads to him discovering the list of all the heroes on his father's computer.
Peter calls Hiro and Ando and tells them to get to Odessa, Texas but quick. Hiro's in the past, unfortunately, but Ando says they're already in Texas, so Peter should just fly out on the next teleporter available and come see what the Alamo's all about! Then Ando actually sees the picture of Hiro and Charlie on the wall and realizes that Hiro might not be coming back. He asks a waitress where Hiro is and she has no idea, saying that Hiro disappeared weeks ago. Isaac's drug-induced painting from last week elicits unsatisfactory results for Bennet, so he decides to have Eden "take out" Sylar while he makes sure that Claire doesn't leaves the house on homecoming night. This plan backfires slightly when Bennet inexplicably grounds Claire and sends her to her room and Zach shows up to rescue her from her imprisonment.
Peter ends up at Odessa High after briefly meeting up with Ando at the diner. He runs into Claire, but is under the incorrect assumption that Jackie is actually the cheerleader to save. Sylar has the same wrong idea and, once Peter's out of range, he attacks Jackie, attempting to slice off the top of her head. Claire intervenes to try and save the bitch, only to have Sylar throw her against a wall. Claire, of course, begins to regenerate and, when she stands, Sylar realizes his mistake and comes after her. Peter steps between them, only to run away once Sylar starts mind-flinging a bunch of locker doors at him. In the end, Claire gets away, Peter and Sylar fight and fall off a roof, Sylar disappears, Peter regenerates because he touched Claire (ew, not like that!), Claire decides to tell her father the truth about her abilities, Peter gets arrested because bloody guys who run around screaming at cheerleaders are clearly the devil, and Sylar comes up against Eden who persuades him to take a little nap at the hands of the Haitian.
For our finale, we catch up with ikiN just as she takes a shot at DL from her sniper's perch…then we catch up with Ando who's getting another cup of coffee at the Burnt Toast Diner…then we catch up with Hiro, who's just arrived in the past, six months ago to be exact, and told Charlie that he's there to save her life. "Six months earlier" says the placard, which just happens to be the title of next week's episode…
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