Heroes: Couple’s Retreat

Tonight on Heroes: Copyhacker returned from the Trial of the Century! OK, well, it probably wouldn’t even make the late-night Court TV reruns, but it was enough to lock me inside a tiny jury room for a week, AWOL for recap duty, with 12 strangers and burnt coffee that smelled vaguely of mold and styrofoam. But hey, during the few hours I was free, I got to watch Heroes! So what happened this week? Well, before I answer that, Your Honor, let me take you back to last week, or, as I call it, the Lost Episode…

***DIDDLY FLASHBACK MUSIC***

Samuel went from zero to hero among the carnies by staging a shootout and blaming it all on HRG. Everyone and their brother showed up there, right on time to see HRG get dragged in quite theatrically by Copy Boy. Oh, and Lydia bought the farm. One guest star down. Too bad it wasn’t Gretchen, but there are still two episodes left. Sylar went out to LA (he can still fly, I think?) and begged Matt to take away his powers. I don’t know that it’s still begging if you threaten the guy’s wife, but anyway. Matt agreed, but after taking away his powers, he used his Papa Parkman power and locked Sylar up alone in his head. Then he started to brick him up in his basement…

Edgar Allan Poe much?

…but Peter showed up to haul Sylar off to help rescue Emma from the carnival. One thing led to another, and now Peter is stuck in Sylar’s head with Sylar, which pretty much hoses everything.

Which brings us to last night’s Episode, entitled The Wall. Maybe it’s The Wall in Parkman’s basement. Maybe Claire don’t need no education. Who knows. Anyway. On to the action! Peter is now stuck inside the Matrix in Sylar’s head…

But does he know kung fu?

Sylar is futzing around with a pile of watches in an apartment somewhere when he hears Peter banging on the street with a pipe or something. After the obligatory “I’m here to rescue you”, Sylar says he’s been stuck in the Matrix for three years and there’s no way out. YET ANOTHER GIMMICK SWIPED FROM STAR TREK ALERT: This is from like the best Trek episode ever, when Picard gets mindjobbed into living out an entire lifetime on an alien planet, while only a couple of hours pass in the real world. Peter’s pep talk about how he needs Sylar to save Charlie Emma falls on deaf ears, so Peter tries a Vulcan style mind meld on the new Mr. Spock to get him loose. Nothing happens. They used the same image earlier this season, if you’re keeping score.

So now Heroes is ripping off Heroes ripping off Star Trek.

T-Sam, Fearless Leader status restored, walks triumphant through the carnival with all his minions slapping him on the shoulder.

His hurt shoulder? Whoops.

At his trailer, Claire’s banging on the door making a ruckus about going to see her dad. She keeps protesting his innocence, but Samuel’s gonna show her how wrong she is, just you wait and see. So off they go to the Hall of Mirrors, where Samuel keeps his trusty Memory Projection Device, aka Damien the Guy With Dreads. For some reason, HRG’s memories play out in black and white, although Sylar’s were in color. Is HRG colorblind? HRG’s memories also come with subtitles, so we know the date.

I don’t think we need the subtitles for this one, thanks. The jacket and the sweater will do.

HRG, sans HRGs, is trying to sell a vintage Family Truckster to a nice young couple, and failing miserably because he’s just too nice. After sending them off to a cheaper lot, he notices his… wife?! waiting for him with big news.

You look pretty old for 25, honey.

She’s actually pregnant, if you have to ask. Old Young HRG is ecstatic. Claire, not so much. She keeps a stiff upper lip though, so Samuel fast-forwards to the next Deep Dark Secret. Old HRG is not looking forward to this. It’s still 1985, he still looks 50, and now a delivery guy uses superpowers to TK him into a wall and rob them. Now Candy or Katie or whatever her name is is dead by convenient impalement.

Main characters smash through glass all the time without a scratch. Guest stars not so lucky.

Back in Sylar’s head, the boys have been killing time for a month or so. Sylar gives Peter a 9th Wonders comic. If this were Season 1, or Lost, I’d be scouring the internets looking for a closeup screenshot of the cover.

Instead I just make fun of the matte-painted background.

Sylar mentions Emma and Peter punches him in the face. Does it bruise or even hurt when you get clocked in Dreamland? Sylar likes being here, Peter says, because he thinks he deserves it. Forget about your punishment, we have to go save Emma! And the world! And somewhere in there, the cheerleader, I assume. Sylar finally agrees to help. And as soon as he says that, this giant brick wall appears. OMG, says Peter, it’s the wall from Parkman’s basement!

Um. Don’t all brick walls look pretty much alike?

Back at the carnival, Lauren sneaks into the Doctor Trailer to pilfer some medical supplies and patch herself up. She runs into Emma, who calls herself a doctor, but let’s not nitpick the finer points. They obviously don’t use health insurance in this place anyway. Lauren tries to tell her story, and Emma gives her a way out by saying she can’t hear-and Lauren proceeds to explain anyway, that she’s hiding from Samuel and he Must Be Stopped. Using great big words that I’m sure every lip reader knows, like “galvanize”. The Big Man himself walks in while they’re having this conversation, of course, and Lauren hides behind the counter while Emma squeals to him in sign language. T-Sam sends Emma off so he can talk to Lauren in private.

Across town in the Memory Projector Room, T-Sam’s nefarious plan to turn Claire against Daddy is backfiring. Claire is positively oozing sympathy and understanding, so Damien fast-forwards one year. Now HRG is tracking people with powers (I refuse to use the word “specials” that they like so much, it’s just lame) all across the country. Using… wait for it… string and a map.

Did HRG and Mohinder and Sylar all watch the same cop shows as kids? I don’t remember ever seeing Crockett and Tubbs break out a ball of yarn.

Professor X and Cerebro have got nothing on this high-tech String Hero Detector, because it’s led HRG straight to a perfectly innocent-looking guy in a stairwell. HRG pulls a gun on him and says all you people with powers have got to hang out together, so take me to the scum who killed my wife. The guy uses his Generic Power of Blasting on HRG in self-defense and HRG shoots him dead. Good thing for HRG that CSI hasn’t been invented yet. All he has to do is wipe the gun down with a hanky and leave it at the crime scene and he’s free. Easy peasy. So now it’s No More Mr. Nice Used Car Salesman for HRG. Eric Roberts (what’s his name? Thompson? I think that’s it) is watching him take some customers to the woodshed and offers him a job with the Company.

2 Years Later

HRG and Eric Roberts are sitting in the sort of swanky smoke-filled restaurant you’d expect to see Hollywood gangsters in circa 1937. The inevitable clumsy exposition (“So, it’s been two years now. How ya like working with the invisible guy?”) reveals that HRG doesn’t trust super-people, and has maybe been killing a few more of them than is strictly necessary. Eric Roberts informs HRG that he has to settle down and start a family to take the edge off. In fact, there’s a perfectly eligible little honey named Sandra working over there at the bar! “It’s like… the Company arranged your marriage or something!” splutters Claire in maybe the worst line of Hayden P’s career. Even sillier than those Neutrogena commercials. So this is how they’re going to write HRG’s marriage out of the picture: pretend it never really mattered to him. But what about Lyle, I ask? Does no one care about Lyle? Injustice! HRG swears he loved his wife, it’s all in the past and none of it matters now. Good thing the next memory is… Thanksgiving weekend.

I’m beginning to see why everyone hates Gretchen. She’s obviously related to Jay Leno!

Looks like after Retch dropped off Claire at the carnival, HRG paid her a little visit and threatened her with a Haitianing. (That term doesn’t work as well as it would have a month ago.) At this point I have to wonder: why does the Haitian always hide outside the room when HRG is playing bad cop? How does he know the precise moment to step through the door? And how does he make that whooshing sound every time? Enough with the questions, we demand answers already! Anyway, this is the last straw for Claire, who runs out of the Memory Theater like it was playing the third Matrix movie.

Back in the Heroes version of the Matrix, Peter is beating on The Wall with a sledgehammer. (How about that clumsy segue, huh?) Sylar walks up and tells him he should eat something. Just as I’m wondering where they go in Dreamland to get food, or sledgehammers…

Or hair product…

Peter makes my point for me. They don’t need to eat, or sleep, and even though it seems like he’s been there for days, he knows it hasn’t been much time out in the Real World. Which is good, because he hasn’t even scratched The Wall yet. Commence Peter Pouting. “You get that look all the time,” Sylar says.

Yes. Yes he does. One of many Milo Faces.

This makes Peter realize that Sylar still has a few of Nathan’s memories floating around in his head, which is kind of a cool twist on the recurring “Peter and Sylar are separated at birth” thing they keep playing with. Nathan, I mean Sylar, apologizes for killing Nathan. Peter yells at him that it doesn’t change anything. Especially not those spiffy all-black wardrobes you guys are both partial to.

Back at the carnival, Lauren tries to talk T-Sam out of whatever dastardly plot he’s hatching up. No one has to get hurt, she says. Au contraire, my dear, Samuel knows what’s best for his own family. After all, he brought them all here so he could get all that power for his own personal gain and show those nasty normal people who’s boss and yada yada supervillain monologuing. “What did the world ever do to you?” Lauren wants to know. “They should’ve treated me better.”

At this point I realize they’re actually doing something kind of cool, which is setup a big showdown between Samuel and HRG. HRG hates people with powers, T-Sam hates regular people. Super technical writer term: HRG and Sam are what’s called foils. As are Peter and Sylar. And when they make it this obvious it kind of defeats the purpose. Copy Boy interrupts our literary master class to tell Samuel that Claire escaped the Memory Projector. No big deal, says T-Sam, we’re moving on. Time for the Greatest Show Ever. He tells Copy Boy “and his friends” to “take care” of Lauren.

Inside his own head, Sylar stares at The Wall and finally decides to help Peter. “I can’t bring Nathan back, but I can swing a sledgehammer.” Wow, this is just like their very own Couples’ Retreat.

Samuel tracks down Claire and pretends to apologize for showing her she has a Bad Dad. Claire, in turn, pretends to agree with him. “You’re my hero. Isn’t that what you want to hear?” Wow, Dark Claire has the power of sarcasm. Claire points out that if her dad had really shot Lydia, he would have shown her that memory too. Touche! We could have used her in court last week. Come to think of it, Memory Projector Damien would have been really handy. Gimme my dad and we’re outie, she says. Samuel drops the good guy mask since it’s not doing any good, and says he’s taking his dog-and-pony show to Central Park to terrorize all the normal people. I predict a Watchmen ripoff coming up in the finale. Claire takes off to go rescue Daddy, just as Copy Boy shows up to inform T-Sam that Lauren got away. Claire does another airport run across the carnival to untie HRG, and just as she gets him loose, T-Sam drops their trailer into a big hole in the ground.

STILL too soon.

So now Samuel’s off to wreak havoc in the Big Apple. He tells Copy Boy to stick around and look for a couple of meddling kids that want to interfere with their evil plans.

The Long Dark Night In Sylar’s Head

The boys are just sitting around looking at the wall that they haven’t been able to bust through. Peter tells Sylar happy birthday, even though it’s not his birthday, and drops a book as a present.

If this were Lost, I’d be racking my brain trying to figure out the hidden clues in this book. But this is Heroes so why bother.

Which reminds me: LOST is back!!! If you like Lost and you haven’t read one of Ack’s killer recaps, go. Do it. Now. I’ll wait.

Now that you’re back, and have wiped the beverage you snarfed out of your nose while laughing, let’s see how SyPete’s therapy is going. Sylar thinks his better half wants to hit him with that sledgehammer. That makes two of us, says Peter. He’s been in here approximately 200 years and he still can’t get over Sylar killing his brother. Sylar is like don’t you trust me by now? I’m done killing folks, I’m not that guy anymore. Don’t believe it for a second. Sylar’s character will be rebooted ten minutes into Season 5. If there is a Season 5. The Wall believes him, though, because it starts crumbling on the next blow. I guess you could say their relationship has had…

Peter wakes up in Parkman’s basement, hears Sylar banging on the other side of The Wall, and helps him bust out. A quick check of the watch shows they’ve only been stuck in there half a day, which avoids any inconvenient hygiene problems. So, do all those fake years stuck together count for anything? Answer: You bet your bangs! The boys are still besties so it’s off to go save Emma! … And… save the world? Remember the world? Only one problem…

Leaving so soon?

Back to the former location of the carnival (only one more episode to find out how they move that thing around), and the trailer is still buried there. Claire and HRG are stuck inside without cell service. Sounds like a first-world problem to me. At least they have a lantern.

So that’s it until the finale. By my count, there’s an awful lot of loose ends to be tied up in one more episode. Emma, Hiro, Charlie, Gretchen, did I leave anyone out? How long before Sylar reverts back to scumbaggery? Tune in next week!