Heroes: Damn The Plot Holes

86 Hours Ago…

This guy was much handsomer.

The first question I have is, why 86? Are they trying to come up with their own Lostian mysterious numbers? 86 is a good choice, since we’re 86 Nathan now and might be 86 Heroes before much longer. It’s also roughly the number of hours behind I am in my recaps. How many days is 86 hours? That’s three days plus 14 hours. Is it still Thanksgiving weekend in Heroes-land or did we just skip over the holidays?

So. 86 hours ago. Peter stands on a dark road somewhere outside of New York.

WAY outside of New York City.

HRG gets out of the car. “I want to see him,” Peter says, which means-yep, it’s Nathan’s body in the trunk. The one they kept in the freezer for just such an occasion. HRG says the plane’s ready, which I assume is the one they crashed to fake Nathan’s death.

PILOT REALITY CHECK: I happen to have a pilot’s license. I also have two kids, and no disposable time or money, so the only thing it’s good for right now is picking apart stuff like this. In order for this staged plane crash to work, they need:

• Someone to fly the plane. Any idiot can steer a plane in the daytime as long as they don’t have to land. Flying at night is trickier. Flying to a certain unpopulated spot is also nontrivial. Everyone in an action show is a pilot, though, so I guess that’s covered.

• Same someone to jump out of it right before it crashes. I guess that would be Peter, if he can still fly (himself). I can’t remember what power he has right now.

• A private airfield to take off from, where no one will remember NOT seeing Nathan when the NTSB comes around asking questions.

• Radio silence. No talking to pesky air traffic controllers, which is legal as long as the weather is OK and you stay away from big airports.

• OK, so I guess you could just mangle the plane, dump it in the woods and stick Nathan’s body in it. No flying, but, you’d still need:

-Lots of cash to pay off the NTSB and the media when they try to figure out why a high-profile person crashed a perfectly good airplane. *Cough*JFK*cough* Contrary to popular belief, small planes don’t just fall out of the sky. No, really, they don’t. The reason plane crashes make the news is because they never happen.

Seriously. A staged plane crash has got to be the most needlessly complicated fake death there is. Why not just set his house on fire? HRG’s already proved he can do that. But on Heroes, we do things with style. The hard way. Damn the plot holes, skip 86 hours ahead. Now we’re at Nathan’s wake. Or his second funeral. I don’t know how rich folks like the Petrellis do these things.

Hey, it’s Nathan’s ex and kids! Better late than never.

A random woman gives Peter condolences, and the camera lingers on her just long enough to make sure we know she’ll be coming back at some point. But right now we’re off to…

Carnival

Samuel’s doodling with his magic ink. It flows around the page all by itself and makes a picture, and now I’m all mixed up. The magic ink pictures and tattoos are all Samuel’s power? What does he need Lydia’s skin for, besides dubious sex appeal? And this picture could be any of the women guest-starring on the show this season. I mean that could be Lydia, or Emma, or Lauren. They all look vaguely alike. But I bet that’s the Vanessa chick he talked about last hour.

Samuel’s masterpiece is ruined by a giant flying Doyle crash-landing on the desk. With Nathan dead, people flying through the air can only mean one thing: Sylar. And two supervillains in one scene means lots of mustache-twirling and arguing about who’s going to be more powerful. Sylar aims his Finger of Doom, but it misfires. I mean he actually looks at it like it’s a gun that’s out of bullets. Sam takes the opportunity to conjure up a dust storm and sandblast Sylar’s face off.

Ah’ll Be Bock.

HRG shows up and offers Claire a ride to Nathan’s third funeral, which I guess is in DC since this scene is in Claire’s dorm room. I guess they’re just going to go ahead and have one funeral for each time Nathan’s died on the show. Claire would rather HRG didn’t come to this one at all, thanks. She’s mad because he was party to the whole Fathan thing and didn’t tell her that the guy she thought was her father… was actually her father’s killer. Just another branch on the Heroes Family Tree.

Over at funeral #3, Peter is staring out the window when Ma tells him that she keeps looking out of it too, thinking Nathan is going to fly in at any minute. Why? We saw Nathan actually use his power what, maybe ten times in four seasons? Anyway. We Petrellis do not handle death very well, says Ma, which explains why she’s had no luck plotting the deaths of pretty much everyone she’s related to. Peter’s mad at everyone except the one person he should be mad at. Seriously. Fathan jumping off that building accomplished absolutely zip. Hello? Shotgun? Claire arrives and she and Peter retreat to the kitchen to cut lemons and be angry together. You know when Claire is spewing foul obscenities like “dammit” that she’s in a bitchy mood. She’s so busy venting that she cuts her finger. It doesn’t heal, and it hurts. Sorry, says Peter, I still have the Haitian’s power, I’ll just turn that off for ya. (Scratch my argument about Peter jumping out of the plane before it crashed.) The whole Peter-can-only-use-one-power-at-a-time thing is silly, but at least they’re playing it for a laugh.

Claire says no, she’ll just take a Band-Aid for old time’s sake. Speaking of old times, she reminisces about her relationship with Nathan, which is funny because they never spent much time together, except for that bender down in Mexico. “He gave me endless grief for dating a guy who could fly. Said I had daddy issues.” “Whatever happened to that kid?” asks Peter. Come on, this is Heroes. If you have to ask why a character vanished into thin air, you’re on the wrong show. “He goes to NYU. We’re Facebook friends.” So she graduated from MySpace. Anybody looked up her Facebook page? Maybe we can find out what color her bra is, or how many sheep she has in FarmVille. (No joy; she has a fan page, but not a personal page. I only checked to save you guys the shame.)

Meanwhile across town, a mysterious Edgar-shaped shadow zips past HRG’s window. He zooms into the room with knives a-flashing, but HRG is waiting with his Tazer. “Won’t get fooled again.”

No no no. You’re supposed to take off the glasses and play The Who while you say your one-liners.

After the break, HRG waits for Lauren in his favorite sushi joint, flashing cash and talking Japanese to the owner. He’s always wanted to try that thing where you eat sushi off a naked woman. The owner is like ohhhh, if the Iron Maiden is involved, something’s about to go down, and bails in a hurry. Iron Maiden indeed. And Tracy was the Ice Queen. Bennet sure can pick ‘em. When Lauren shows up, HRG asks her if she brought the sodium pentothal. Sushi, truth serum and a fast English guy tied up in the freezer. They’re really making up for lost date nights tonight.

Carnival

Samuel is bothered because Sylar couldn’t kill him. Hey, it’s better than the alternative, right? Sylar’s changed somehow, and he wants Lydia to do what Lydia does best, which is cozy up to the new kid and get in his head. “I’m not some piece of flesh you can just toss around,” she says, except of course that’s exactly what she is. Also, she didn’t seem to mind so much the last time Sylar was around. Back then he was a refugee from Dollhouse and not a psycho serial killer, so maybe that’s different. Off she goes to wake Sylar up for a little smoochy smoochy, and off comes the top. Faster than you can say…

We have liftoff!

So if you remember, her power actually has little if anything to do with tattoos. Those are just an excuse for her to rip her top off. She has to get close to you for it to work. I know they call Peter an empath, but this is more like what an empath really is. I think. Anyway, as they make out, we get to see her power working. She gets flashes off his brain and realizes he’s lonely and looking for love. Well, isn’t that convenient. Sylar uses his power back on her. You see what people want, he says. Desires, hopes, a tall nonfat two-pump no-whip mocha with a shot of peppermint. No, that’s not what I want. It’s just what Ms. Copyhacker makes me recite before I’m allowed to order for her at Starbucks. And now Sylar has Lydia’s power. “I don’t need to kill-it’s just something I like to do.” Big talk. Why didn’t he bogart Sam’s power then, or Doyle’s? Those would be way better.

Nathan’s Wake

Mama P apologizes to Claire that there are no photos of her sitting around.

But if there were, they’d probably look like this. So count yourself lucky.

Ma’s worried about Peter and how well he’s handling the grieving process. She asks Claire to keep an eye on him. So Claire goes up to the roof to find Unca Pete, but he’s gone already. He heard a crime in progress on his police scanner and he’s gone to save somebody. I’m not so sure the Haitian’s power will be much use against a guy with a gun. Luckily, Claire has picked up Jack Bauer’s power of being five minutes away from everything, so she’s on the scene immediately. She finds Peter helping a gunshot victim and wonders why Peter’s skipping the wake to play hero.

It’s the bangs. The bangs compel me.

Back in the freezer of the sushi joint (and it kinda bothers me that a sushi restaurant even has a freezer) HRG is carrying out one of his patented Morally Gray Interrogations. He wants to use him to get to Samuel. Lauren interrupts, saying he’s too emotional and the bad cop act is not getting them anywhere. Stop and think a minute, she says. They realize he doesn’t have a compass, and in the exc

If I was HRG, I might spend a little less time worrying about where Claire was and more time worrying about where Claire is right now. Because the perp, a gone-postal ex-employee, is pointing a gun at her. Instead of doing something useful like, I don’t know, erasing the guy’s memory, Peter tries to talk him down. He claims to have had a worse day, which is a joke. Peter’s not about to go to prison for shooting up an office. The maniac considers it for about two seconds, then shoots Peter anyway.

NOW you’re having a bad day.

Peter’s not dead, of course, because people who get shot at point-blank range never die on this show. Claire threatens to not let him borrow her power and heal up. Maybe he should’ve taken her power before he left the wake? She lets him twist a minute, lecturing him about how he needs to deal with his grief and all that stuff. It’s that time in every Heroes season where Claire goes all edgy. Inside of two episodes, she’ll be dyeing her hair brown and probably hooking up with Gretchen to boot. I kinda like Dark Claire. Well, except for the Gretchen part.

HRG goes back into the freezer to try out this new good-cop thing. He leaves the door open. Doesn’t that, like, let all the cold out? I think I see the Dharma logo on a few of those boxes.

Your name isn’t really Henry Gale, by chance?

HRG offers some tea and wants to know why Edgar was following him around. Edgar breaks down instantly (see what I mean about HRG’s negotiation skills?) and admits he was kicked out of the carnival. He’s trying to get back, but you can’t find it without a compass. They must not get a lot of customers. He’s not really a killer, he’s just a juggler. When jugglers go bad it isn’t a pretty sight. Edgar’s afraid Samuel is doing unspeakable things to the carnies in his absence and he hopes bringing HRG in will get him out of Sam’s doghouse. HRG wants to take Samuel out too, of course, so he offers to help him get back home.

Back Home

The newest carny is tearing up Sam’s trailer looking for ink. He wants a tattoo to find out why he can’t kill anybody. Sam takes this opportunity to mess with Sylar’s head and tells him about Vanessa, the woman in the drawing. “She’s out there. I’m afraid she’ll reject me, for who I am, for what I’ve done. that’s the way you think too.” He knows Hiro told him he would die alone, and it’s bothering him. I love villain bonding sessions.

Hug it out, bitches.

TIMELINE SANITY CHECK: In Sylar time, that happened way back in Season 1. Why would this just now be bothering him? He should have had problems killing people for the last three seasons. Which would pretty much undo all the last three seasons, so never mind. Sylar says give him a tattoo, and if it says he should stay, he’ll stay. “I’m a carny. I live for games of chance,” says Samuel. And “games of chance” are always rigged at carnivals. Just sayin.

Lauren and HRG are looking over the carnival plans that Edgar gave them. They’re still going to need a compass to get back though, and HRG refuses to take back the one Claire stole from him. This makes no sense whatsoever, but it doesn’t matter because Edgar says Lydia can let them in. I don’t know how they’re going to get in touch with her or how they know where to find the carnival. Probably just call her up on that Sprint phone she flashes in those Slow Burn episodes.

Edgar asks them to please make sure no one else at the carnival gets hurt. Instead of just nodding his head and lying like any reasonable person, HRG says oh, no big deal, they’ll just bag-n-tag everyone, deprogram their cult brains and find them all new homes.

You. Idiot.

Just because he drank your tea and ate your soup doesn’t mean you tell him everything. Edgar picks the lock on his handcuffs and runs out, taking the Death Star plans with him.

Oops.

Meanwhile, Sam pokes Sylar with his magic stick to see what Lydia’s power is going to tell him. And now I’m even more confused about that power. This tattoo is supposed to show what Sylar wants? Why don’t they just ask Lydia? And if Lydia’s power requires closeness, how do they use it to find other people? This power is like the Room of Requirement, it is whatever the plot needs it to be. Anyway, whatever or whoever the tattoo is, it makes Sylar think he doesn’t belong there. “I guess you were wrong,” Sylar says. Don’t bet on it. Samuel controls that ink, remember?

After Peter & Claire’s Pointless Adventure is over, they’re hanging up on the roof like superheroes often do after pointless adventures. Claire, hair blowing in the wind all incestuously romantic, says she should get back to school, unless Unca Pete wants her to stay awhile. He says he’ll be ok and to get back to school, except there is one teensy little favor she could do… give her ex-emotard boyfriend West a call?

Please no. Anything but Emotard. I’d sooner take Retchin.

HRG & Lauren are holding the bag after their own Pointless Adventure, HRG kicking himself for being nice to Edgar. You stupidhead, it wasn’t the nice that was the problem. It was the “hey, let’s dump all your closest friends into the Witness Protection Program, mmmkay?” HRG is still worried about Claire and can’t let Edgar go easily. Lauren tells him something about rebuilding bridges. I’m sorry, I can’t concentrate on the show, I’m too worked up about Emotard.

Time for the closing montage. Let’s knock this out in a hurry. Peter looks at a photo with Nathan in it. He starts floating up off the ground. So maybe Emotard gave him the power already and that’s all we’ll see of him. Samuel tapes up his drawing of Vanessa that Sylar tore, and adds it to a collection of at least a dozen in his drawer. Claire arrives back at her dorm room to find a note from Retchin saying she’s studying in the library. All alone. In a black lace nightie. OK, I’ll stop now. The camera pulls out of her window so we know someone’s outside watching her. Please not West. Or Peter. No, it’s Sylar. Now we can see his tattoo: it’s…

Lydia? Lauren? Emma? They all look alike on these tattoos.

What does Sylar want with Claire this time? Last season when he took her power he said he couldn’t kill her even if he wanted to. Maybe he thinks if he can kill her he can kill anyone. Who knows. I’ll stop right here and go straight on to the next episode’s recap. Back in a jiff!