Heroes: Rearranging Deck Chairs On The Titanic

So my Vegas hangover/jet lag is nowhere near gone, but it’s past time to make the recaps. I know you guys are patient and long-suffering-you watch Heroes, right?-so I won’t make you wait any longer. Tonight’s Heroes is called “The Fifth Stage”. Since Sylar mentioned it a couple episodes ago, I’m going to guess we’re talking about the fifth stage of grief, which is acceptance. The title card is all black, and just to beat the point into the ground, there was also an episode titled “Acceptance” way back in October.

As in, I accept that the awesomeness of Season 1 is dead and gone, never to return.

Lydia walks her inky legs right over to T-Sam to confront him with the truth. Well, just a little. She has her daughter’s safety to think of, so she’s not going to rock the boat. And that’s all she has to say about that. What happened to “We have to stop him” last episode? I guess that was before Edgar split and left her holding the bag? Speaking of Edgar, T-Sam needs a new sidekick. The new candidate looks vaguely like John C. Reilly.

OK maybe not. But he’s in everything else, I just had to check.

Samuel wants John C. Reilly’s little brother to be his new Number Two. This makes sense, because his power is being in two places at once. Or more. Although they’re running out of effects budget, so only one of them can be on screen at the same time. T-Sam wants the new guy to go steal HRG’s Primatech files so they can assimilate more supers into the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants.

HRG’s already run out of articles for his Wall of Shame (told you he would) and has resorted to just tacking up a bunch of pictures of compasses. None of this is actually relevant, but at least it looks cool. He writes himself a note.

It’s called magnetism. I looked it up on Wikipedia.

Booty knock. Lauren’s eye-banging Bennet before she even gets in the door. They’re going to the movies, but she’s way overdressed.

Unless the movie is Rocky Horror Picture Show.

HRG admits it’s been a long time since he dated. Which is ok because she just wants to skip straight to the part where she rips those glasses off his face. But first, she checks out his Wall of Shame and he tells her about the compass he got off Edgar, but it’s gone when he looks for it. He figures correctly that Claire stole it, “last night” at dinner, he says. So it’s Black Friday. Which explains why Lauren is wearing all that black. So the movie is off, but that’s OK because now the two of them can make their own buddy movie together, looking for Claire looking for Samuel. Lauren’s going to use her special CIA powers and attempt to locate Claire by her cell phone.

Meanwhile, Ma Petrelli shows up at the hospital to talk Peter out of going after Fathan/Sylar/whatever you want to call him this week.

That head wound is looking pretty good for just one day later.

The new chatty Haitian arrives right behind her. Does this guy have a job anymore now that the company is gone, other than just driving around the country doing mental IT? Maybe that’s why he had to start talking. I can totally see him leaning up against the counter at Chick-Fil-A looking suave and saying “my pleasure” every ten seconds. Peter borrows his power.

My pleasure. Would you like waffle fries with that?

Thelma and Louise roll into the carnival parking lot. “Well, you said I belonged in a freak show,” says Claire. Now that they’re actually there, Claire gets cold feet and wants to back out. Retchin is all OH HAY-UL NO, we’ve been driving for 21 hours and we’re going in. So where is the frickin carnival now? Last we heard, it was near DC. The Retch gets motivational. “We’ve been on the road for a day, but you’ve been on this road your whole life.”

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

That has got to be the most craptastic gem of dialogue I have ever heard. Who wrote this episode?

I rest my case.

T-Sam sticks his head out the carnival gate and does his corniest carny act, waving his hands around and the whole bit. Their carnival experience is on the house! Plus, if you order now: free popcorn! Best popcorn in the world, he says. OK, it’s popcorn. How hard is it to make decent popcorn? He begs them to just stay until they run out of popcorn. If I followed that rule at the movies, I wouldn’t even get through all the trailers. You can hear T-Sam’s recorded voice in the background talking about Lydia. He actually says “step right up”, even.

So Claire and Gretchen head to Lydia’s tent first. I’m sure there’s supposed to be some Showtime-soft-core-threesome subtext here, but that’s exactly what Kring wants us to think, so let’s just stick with the fortune-telling.

Sorry Tim. Not falling for it.

Claire takes Lydia by the hand and asks if she’s supposed to be there. Which is not vague AT ALL. A tattoo of Claire in cheerleader mode, with “Indestructible Girl” written on it carnival-poster style, appears on Lydia’s back. Hey wait. If Lydia makes the tats pop up on her own, why does T-Sam need to poke her with that stick? Lydia explains,”This isn’t the future, Claire. This is your desire.” Retchin is creeped out, maybe because Claire never told Lydia her name, and the girls hit the door. Lydia does her best conflicted face(s).

YAY I did what Samuel wanted.

BOO I did what Samuel wanted.

At the hospital, Peter gets in the elevator and says hello to a woman in scrubs. They stare at each other for a moment and then she grabs him by the throat. Heeeeyyy I bet that’s Sylar under there.

Nice Crocs!

The elevator door opens onto a convenient construction area and Nurse Sylar tosses Peter against the wall. Here come those stupid ticking clocks, and now Sylar is himself. And not wearing scrubs anymore. Funny, when he took the shapeshifting power from that guy last season, the clothes didn’t change with him. Remember the guy had a closet full of costumes? But I suppose the epic Peter vs. Sylar battle-which you can count on exactly twice a season like, well, clockwork-wouldn’t be the same with a supervillain in pink Crocs.

Another thing you can count on (especially in a Kring episode) is supervillain clichés.

You got me monologuing!

Peter interrupts the monologue with a 2×4 upside the head. Sylar can’t heal or use his TK, because Peter’s got the Haitian’s power-blocking powers. Looks like this epic superbattle is going to be a good old-fashioned Batman-style fistfight. Who’da thunk Peter was any good at those?

He isn’t.

Luckily, there just happens to be a ridiculously oversized nail gun nearby and Peter pins Sylar to a sheet of plywood with it.

I thought it was Black Friday, not Good Friday.

While Sylar screams like a little girl, Peter offers to give him his healing power back if he turns back into Fathan. “You’re gonna need a lot more nails,” Sylar scoffs. Peter threatens to starts sucking out bits of Sylar’s mind, while begging Fathan to help him out. Just erase the guy already. The Haitian never needed any help with that. Well, since you asked politely… Fathan’s back!

Now pucker up and give your big brother a kiss.

Carnival

See an old friend in that poster?

The girls are still eating their popcorn. Lightweights. I bet they can make a box last the whole movie. Gretchen is ready to leave, but Claire wants to see more. She could be the girl who gets sawed in half every night, she says. Now that sounds like fun. They pass an extra who looks kinda like Kevin James, trying the bottle-pitch game. The carny who runs this game, who’s like half his size, is TKing the ball off target every time. Gretchen finds this terribly unfair, at least until the carny helps the next little girl win a stuffed unicorn. Aww, well I guess that makes it all ok. Retchin is done with her popcorn, so “Looks like our time is up.”

At the rate y’all are going, Claire still has five minutes left.

T-Sam shows up on cue, gee, almost like this whole scene was staged. He offers to take them backstage and show them the living area. Cuz who doesn’t love RVs with those little chili pepper lights hanging from the awning? Claire is interested, Retchin isn’t, but follows Claire anyway like a good sidekick.

Also following Claire, but much farther behind, are HRG and Lauren. They haven’t made it out of the apartment yet, but Lauren’s used her spy kung fu to pin Claire’s cell location down to all of southern Ohio. This doesn’t help a whole lot, so HRG goes on a self-blame binge while Lauren looks through HRG’s box of bag-n-tag files. Why yes, the very box that T-Sam sent John C. Reilly’s little brother to fetch. Hey, who’s that knocking on the door RIGHT NOW?

Hello… hello… hellooooooo! (You know, barbershop. This guy could sing all the parts himself. Work with me.)

BTW, our friend Multiple Man is an old X-Men character (not to mention there was a whole different guy with the same power who appeared in the Heroes graphic novels a couple seasons ago). HRG doesn’t invite him in, but he conjures a copy of himself inside anyway. Now for the buddy movie part. You know how in the movies the cop partners are always using hand signals and nods and tossing each other weapons and stuff? That’s pretty much what HRG and Lauren are doing here. And again I have to wonder: if they were partners, Lauren should have a power, right? One Of Us One Of Them and all that stuff? Anyway, while they’re reloading and talking strategy in the bathroom, John C. Reilly’s little brother just walks out with the files. Guess he’s not as dumb as he looks.

Back at the carnival, it’s bedtime for the carny kids, and T-Sam has brought out a whole new personality for the occasion: T-Samwise the Hobbit Uncle. Claire listens to him tell a bedtime story and thinks the carnival is nowhere near as creepy behind the scenes. Kring can do irony! Who knew? While Thelma and Louise debate the ethics of using superpowers to rip off carnival-goers, an old friend wanders by.

You wanted creepy, you got creepy.

Claire explains to Retch that “he tried to get my mom to shoot me, but I got over it.” Uh-uh. That was one of the most disturbing Heroes scenes ever and Claire just got over it? I’m not buying that any more than I bought Domestic Sylar last season. Or was that Season 2? I get my crappy Heroes seasons mixed up.

T-Samwise (who can’t seem to string more than 4 words together) has a favor to ask Claire. “My dear? Won’t you? Tell the wee popkins? Another story? Before bed?” Claire has T-Samwise chuckling, and Retchin weeping, and the kids laughing, before she’s gotten a whole sentence out of her mouth. Something about a frog. Damn, she’s good.

Claire gets all caught up in her story (she’s the frog, BTW, in case you didn’t catch it) until T-Samwise tells the rugrats to give Aunt Claire Bear a hug and off to bed with ye. No sooner are the minors out of the way than in comes the angry King of Queens, yelling about the money he lost. Nope, this isn’t staged at all. More hobbit talk from T-Samwise. “Friend? We all. Have gifts. But the Good Lord? Forgot to hand out. A gift. To you.” This way of speaking pisses off Kevin James even more, which I totally understand because I find it very irritating myself. T-Samwise lets Doug beat him around a bit, without fighting back, so of course Claire jumps in to defend him. Dougie breaks a bottle and slashes Claire across the face with it, then runs away like a little girl when he sees Claire’s face heal up.

Initiation complete.

Petrelli Bros. Carnival

Peter and Fathan have escaped to Peter’s rooftop after the battle with Sylar. Fathan complains that he’s getting tired of fighting Sylar off. Sylar sneaks out for one sentence just to prove Fathan’s point. Dude. Peter has the Haitian’s power. Just erase Sylar already. What’s the problem? I mean, besides all those Sylar fans who would quit watching? They reminisce about the good old days of Season 1 when Heroes was cool. Fathan can’t hold Sylar back anymore, and one of them is going off this here ledge. Petrelli bromance is in the air one last time. Even the music is Titanic.

Which one is Kate and which one is Leo?

I am so throwing up in my mouth right now.

Promise me you’ll never let go, Pete.

After Fathan falls for about six minutes…

Which is an eternity of Milo faces…  

he smashes into a parked car, gets up and walks away. As Sylar.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, over?

Exactly what good did that do? Now Sylar is still alive and there’s no one to fight him. Why didn’t Fathan commit smart suicide, like blow his head off with a shotgun? Pretty sure Sylar can’t heal from that. Or just get Peter to erase everything out of his head. I can’t believe it. Who wrote this stupid episode again?

No, don’t remind me.

Anyway, I’m done with the Petrelli family. Nathan, you’re dead to me. I mean of course you’re dead, but you’re really dead to me. And Tim? You’re next.

T-Sam gloats as Claire wipes the fake blood off his face. He rambles about nothing in particular. His point is that if we can just get enough people with powers up in here, T-Sam can blow up the world and then everything will be irie. He only has until February though; I hear the season’s ending early this year.

Since T-Sam’s evil plan is going according to plan, Retch is ready to hit the road-but Claire wants to stay the rest of the weekend. Retch is jealous that Claire belongs somewhere and she doesn’t.

Don’t worry. You just got to college. I’m sure there’s an SCA chapter or a drama club with your name written all over it.

T-Sam gloats to Lydia as Retchin drives off. For the last time, if we’re lucky. Then something cool happens: the carnival disappears from the reflection in her rear window.

Now that’s interesting. Seems like the kind of thing you’d notice in the mirror though.

Then something else cool happens: Kevin James is dead in the back of his pickup.

Not that Kevin James dead would be cool. Paul Blart notwithstanding, I kinda like Kevin James. But work with me.

T-Sam gets the ending monologue, something about the Promised Land, while the whole carnival is standing around a grave. Is that Joseph’s grave again? Claire is with them. Doyle isn’t. The closing montage includes: Emma (remember her?) playing cello; Hiro, Ando and Mohinder running through the woods in… scrubs? WTF is that about?; Sylar suiting up in the black hat again; Tracy looking at her hands. And… we’re out for winter break.

Sorry your recap was so late this week, guys! I’m just trying to cut your Heroes withdrawal time a bit, cuz we’re on break until the first week of January. There’s a two-hour episode to kick off the rest of the season, and then Heroes moves back an hour to 9pm. Will this be the last hurrah for Heroes? The rumors are flying. Sit tight and see you in a month!