Heroes: Saw for Wussies

This week on Heroes, a lot of people die, a lot of movie plots are ripped off and Ando is inexplicably given more to do.

If you gotta go, go with freshly applied gloss.

Last week was a pretty good episode (comparatively), so I came into this week hoping that Heroes was starting to take itself seriously again. Then the hour began with Hiro and Parkman rapping.

We’re in for a shitstorm.

HEY! Sylar’s doing the opening monologue today. What gives? I miss Suresh’s smooky silk cfm voice. My bet is that Suresh refused because the producers forced him to put scales on his pretty pretty face. I hope they learned their lesson, because Sylar is good at a lot of things but bringing the cheese value needed to deliver a deep meaningful Heroes monologue isn’t one of them.

“On the sixth day,

God created man and Big Macs.

Now it’s up to us to figure it all out and count our points.

Right, wrong,

Good, evil,

Stretch marks and spanx or tight abdominals and summer nakedness.

In the end, good, evil, right, wrong, hideously fat or hideously thin,

What we choose is never what we really need

You can be bad and be rich, you can be good and get struck down in a crosswalk by a school bus.

You can lose all the weight you want to, but you are still stuck with baldness and giant ears.

For that is the ultimate cosmic joke.

The real gift that God has left behind.”

Damn, Sylar. Try a little positivity next time. I want to throw myself onto the 101. We open in Pinehurst with Papa P dead on the floor. Nathan comes in and finds Peter slumped over their dad doing his best to act. As usual, it’s tough to decipher what emotion he’s going for.

I hope I get home in time to catch the Charlie Brown Christmas. That Lucy’s a card.

Nathan tells him that it doesn’t matter that dad’s dead because he believes in his plan and has a team of people injecting soldiers with powers as they speak. Peter raises the gun to his brother, but Nathan tells him that they both know Peter couldn’t even commit suicide with the gun down his own throat. He’d shoot crooked and lose a toe or something. “It’s time to choose a side, Peter. You’re either with me…” He almost finishes with “or you’re against me” but then he remembers how well that worked out in the long term for our current President, who just got shoes thrown at his head by a smart ass reporter in Iraq. Instead, he just squints and asks for the gun. Since Peter’s a pickled pepper pussy, he cracks and hands the gun over. Then he punches Nathan instead and vows to stop him. So stop him, then. SHOOT! No? Fine. No one on this show ever learns their lesson.

At Primatech, HRG, Mama P, Meredith and Claire take rifles from the Ptech stock and plan to go over to Pinehurst to stop the formula from getting out. On their way towards the front door, they find a dead security guard. Ruh roh. Sylar is watching them from the room with all the security monitors, and he closes all of the emergency gates and locks them in the medical ward. What is this, Clue the Movie? Now we’re gonna find out they’re all being blackmailed and have to kill Wadsworth before he squeals to the coppers.

This show could use a dose of Madeline Khan, God bless her.

Sylar comes over the loudspeaker and tells them that he killed Papa P. Then violins start playing as he blahblahs about how no one likes him and they all think he’s a monster but it’s their fault he’s this way! Oh wah. Every killer is just so f ing damaged. You wanted more love in your childhood? Then you shouldn’t have been such a DISAPPOINTMENT, LOSER! Sylar is really giving his evil all in this scene, even going so far as delivering one of his lines in a country accent, and no I’m not kidding.

For a second, Claire thought they were being held hostage by Reba MacIntyre and shouted that she’s sorry about Reba’s cancellation but it’s time to get the f over it. Sylar agrees that Reba was cancelled before it’s time but gets his regular accent back and changes his course. He tells them that one by one before the episode is over, he will show them that they are all monsters too. Mama P raises her hand and takes a stab in the dark that the security guard was killed by Colonel Mustard in the Library with the rope, but she wins nothing.

For Christmas, let’s make peace and all switch to Linux so these douchebags will leave us alone.

Mama P says that all the guns are pointless because it’s not like they can just kill Sylar. Claire corrects her. If they hit him in the soft spot behind the skull, they can stop his brain from working and kill him. Sylar starts taunting Claire about how her mom abandoned her and her dad just thinks of her as a job. They have so much in common and both know that they can’t be damaged. “Well, except for a broken heart, and that’s what parents give us, don’t they?” WAAAAHHHH. You know what your parents should have given you? A damn spanking, that’s what. They could have stopped this shit years ago.

HRG and Meredith make it to the security room, but all they find is another dead extra. Sylar comes over the loudspeaker and tells HRG that he’s the hunted one, not the other way around. Back in NYC, Hiro is still hanging on to the flag pole on the side of the roof. He tells a pigeon about losing the formula and letting down his father yet again. The bird refrains from pooping on his head, which I find incredibly disappointing. Apparently the bird has missed the past two seasons of this show or he would have unloaded lunch.

Never count on a pigeon to do the right thing.

Ando, Daphne and Parkman are arriving at Suresh’s loft to get the formula so Ando can get superpowers and go back in time to save Hiro. Parkman’s being all flip about it like they have all the time in the world even though Ando is holding the sketch of Hiro hanging off a ledge. Daphne reminds him that if Hiro dies in the past, it could change everything in the future. Waffle stock would go down, Daddy Sulu wouldn’t have made a comeback, the rose blossom scene never would have happened…wait. This is starting to sound like a good thing. They break into the loft and start shouting for Suresh.

Wow. That’s quite a name. Can I call you Gum?

Suresh isn’t there, obvs, so Daphne figures he must be in the lab at Pinehurst. Matt’s like “Lucy, that’s dangerous!” and she’s all “I won’t do it, Ricky, I swear!” Then she jets out of there and Parkman is left alone with his bongos and Ando, who is making the same exact movement he made the first time he experienced Daphne’s after run wind. He’s fixing his hair.

Well done, Ando. Well done.

Suresh the Horny Toad is in the lab at Pinehurst, and since he has some time alone he records positive messages to himself into his tape recorder. “You’re pretty. Your face is smooth as a baby’s bottom. You should be on Oil of Olay ads. You will never get old. You will be the tenth caller and win tickets to the Miley Cyrus concert…” He is about to inject himself with the formula because he thinks that it will cure him. Of course it will. Throw some bad after bad. When I gained seventy pounds this year I fought it with pizza and it totally worked. Wait. That’s a terrible idea. Peter interrupts him right before he injects and holds a gun on him. Hey Peter, why don’t you mind your own damn beeswax? Instead of asking that obvious question, Suresh starts whining about how he coveted people’s abilities so he tried to give them to himself with disastrous results. Kring is obsessed with coveting. He uses that word in every episode. Feeling guilty? Stop stealing, Kring! Stop stealing!

Mohinder keeps on whining when Daphne speeds in a whips the formula right out of his hands. He throws Peter up against a wall when the thugs come in. Marlo from The Wire and Jethro. They tell Peter that they’re on his side now. They want to destroy the formula too, because if everyone else had powers they wouldn’t be as special. Oh, WAH. Every man on this show today is drunk on WHINE. What the hell? Someone please, please man up. Is it all the hormones that have been put into milk over the decades that has pussified America’s men? Feminism? Metrosexualism? Beaches? Kring, whatever issues you’re working out here, please take them to a doctor and keep them off my TV. Nathan throws over a lab table and whines “Nathan’s not in charge any more!”

But look what they’ve done to my BEAUTYYYYY!

The Injected Marine with the giant nostrils brings Nathan to on the floor of Papa P’s office. Nathan tells him to find Peter before he ruins everything and Nostrils eagerly says that he will and everything’s gonna be ok and now that he’s a hero he will save the…CRACK. Marlo comes in and kills him dead with a neck snap. LOL. Those nostrils were just too good to live on. RIP, Nostrils. Marlo will be babysitting Nathan while Peter does his thing to make sure Nathan doesn’t try to completely rewrite his entire character again.

Daphne shows back up at the loft with the dose of the magic jello. Ando is about to just shove it in his arm and Parkman stops him. Something bad could happen. He could grow two heads or turn green or get the ability to make more than one face. Daphne says that she always wanted to run so her power was running fast and Parkman was always worried about what people thought of him so his power is reading minds. What’s a scene tonight without bs pop psychology on what makes a weak man tick? And how does that explanation even make sense?

Elle was an electo outcast because that’s what her innermost desires were? Nikki wanted another personality to ruin her life and get her killed? Sorry. Logic. Let’s just roll with it. Otherwise there would be no way to make sense of how Ando can just inject himself with the power to control time and space so this f ing season can end. Head slap. Ando asks if he’s ever done something he knew was right even though everyone told him not to. Daphne gives him that smile like “you wouldn’t have the opportunity to possibly crush me to death every night if you had any sense and dumped me when I betrayed you”. Parkman finally gets it and gives Ando the go ahead. Ando injects himself, makes the Ando stock face, and passes out.

EW

No one comes to save Hiro, so he decides to climb from the pole onto the balcony himself. Well that was easy. He goes inside to talk to Kid Hiro and ask him why he’s sad. Uh, cuz his mom died like five minutes ago? Sensitive. Why is Big Hiro sad? Cuz he boned it AGAIN. He says that Daddy Sulu has a paper with numbers on it and enlists the kid to help him find it. I would like to take a moment to put my annoyance aside for a sec and thank Kring for not making Hiro ten again. Moment of grateful silence.

Back in an office in the medical ward, Mama P tells Claire to calm down and not go after Sylar because that’s what he wants. She says he’s like a kid having a temper tantrum and Claire says she wants to give him a spanking. Thank you! That’s the way to save the world, if you ask me. Discipline your brats! The phone rings. Claire looks all scared and dimly lit. It keeps ringing. She answers. HE’S IN THE HOUSE! It’s Sylar. He tells her that life is making hard choices and he will allow her to walk out of here with her mom and dad if she kills Mama P. You know. Like in Saw. But without all the clever parts. Sylar wants Mama P dead because she made him feel loved and wanted and then took it all away. Wizaaah. He adds that he’s a monster because of what HRG and Elle did to him. Not because he killed god knows how many people, but because they hewt his feewings. Claire shoots the phone instead. Sylar can’t believe it. That plot worked for Saw and four sequels.

I shoulda said it with my country accent.

Speaking of stealing plots, remember when this movie was called Liar, Liar?

HRG lets the three remaining prisoners out of their cells, and true to Heroes’ completely wrong casting policy, they are two fat homely guys and a homely black dude.

You’re all dying today. You know that right?

HRG tells them that if they can get Sylar’s head then they can go free and don’t try to escape because Sylar has them all locked in. Puppeteer blows Meredith a kiss and leads the other three away. Meredith doesn’t get the plan, but HRG says that it’s simple. To catch a shark you need bait. She’s horrified. HRG doesn’t really bother following them. You don’t just throw bait in the water, you hook it to a line. This is not going to end well.

Back in the lab, Suresh warns Jethro that the magic jello is highly combustible while Peter trashes the lab. Jethro kicks him in the nuts and throws him across the room. Luckily, nothing hits his cheekbones.

In the loft lab, Daphne throws a glass of water on Ando and he wakes up.

Well, glad to see you still have Ando face.

Ando asks if he has abilities, and Daphne says that so far all they know is that he can pass out well, gel his hair so that it never moves, and make the same stupid face no matter what’s going on around him. He tries to squint, but nothing happens. There’s a whole scene of him trying, but we all know he has some kind of red sparks that come out of his hands because we saw it in the first episode of the season so chop chop. Ando can’t act so please stop making him try. It’s almost as painful to watch as Peter wondering how many licks it takes to get to the middle of a Tootsie Roll pop in one of his meaningful scenes. Ando finally gets frustrated enough to slam his hand down on the table and red sparks come out.

And….Ando face.

Meredith is walking the halls alone now for some reason and she comes across the old vet’s metal hand in the middle of the floor. One fat homely guy down. A bottle of adrenaline comes rolling at her and she bends down to pick it up. Run! Too late. Sylar flings her gun against the wall and the Puppeteer comes out and freezes him. He says Meredith is his to love, and to kill. Aw! I have never had a man love me like that. It’s touching. Especially around Christmas. Oh my God I’m whining. This show is ruining my mental state. Puppeteer puts Sylar into the Karate Kid poster position. Someone on the writing staff loves The Karate Kid

Sy overpowers him in like two seconds, knocks him down, and injects Meredith in the chest with adrenaline. Unfortunately, she’s not wearing Uma’s wig from Pulp Fiction. This episode is going for a record number of movie plots stolen.

Two fat homely guys down. HRG passes the black homely guy dead on the floor. Man. Homely trifecta. Every time I see a homely fat or black person on the street I feel like warning them that Kring could swoop down and kill them at any moment. HRG finds Meredith curled up on the floor in a cell. The adrenaline has made her unable to control the fire from coming out of her hands. HRG goes into the cell to help her and Sylar locks them both in. He has switched out HRG’s rifle with a handgun containing one bullet. If he wants to save himself and Claire, he’ll shoot Meredith. If Saw didn’t work the first time, there’s always Sophie’s Choice. Sylar suggests he come up with a good lie to tell Claire when this is all over and then blames HRG for making him who he is. HRG does his best to not roll his eyes. I just wish he’d get right up to the window and start playing a tiny violin and fake crying.

Marlo is babysitting Nathan, who tries to convince him to let him go by explaining that working for Peter is a dumb move because Peter fucks every single thing he ever tries to do up. Nathan may be evil now, but he’s dead on with that assessment. He grabs a crystal ball off a side table and bashes Marlo in the head with it. They fight. Marlo brings back his arm to knock Nathan’s face in when Tracy comes up behind him and not only kills him, but turns him white first in a lame attempt to not get the show sued by the NAACP.

Only one black man has been harmed in the making of this episode.

Back at the loft, Ando’s powers are sparking out of his hands uncontrollably. Parkman, wise as ever, grabs Ando. Electricity shoots through his body and he hears all these voices. “Sucks” “Stupid” “What happened?” “Plot robbery” “On drugs.” “Getting HBO.” “Gotta pee.” When he snaps out of it, he tells Daphne that he just heard the thoughts of every single person watching Heroes right now. Daphne, who didn’t get the idea that touching Ando when his powers are out of control is a bad thing, grabs Ando’s shoulder and disappears. While Parkman and Ando WTF each other, she appears on the balcony and looks inside, where it’s a minute earlier. Matt’s bent over asking the viewers to please stop commenting on his weight and Daphne’s bad hair. Again, the Daphne inside grabs Ando’s shoulder and appears next to the real Daphne on the balcony. They morph into each other. She goes inside and tells them that she traveled back in time! Ando’s reaction?

Meredith isn’t able to control her powers much longer. She is spouting fire all over the place. Claire is watching from a laptop in the office with Mama P. She says that she doesn’t care if Sylar is baiting her, she’s gonna save her dad. She and Mama P walk down the hall, and of course Sylar grabs Claire and throws her up against the wall. He asks why she would go to save her dad even after he lied to her and neglected her. She says that that’s what family does and runs off to the cell. HRG tells her to punch the code in, but the code box has been ripped off the wall. HRG tells Meredith to press her fire palms up against the glass. She does and HRG shoots his only bullet into it. It just cracks. Claire tells them to stand back and jumps right through it. Sylar stole many powers, but knowledge of physics wasn’t one of them. Meredith insists on staying in the cell while HRG and Claire run off to find Sy.

Tracy tells Nathan that they need to run away and deny deny deny. Nathan says he can’t run and Tracy says that all they have to do is make sure the Governor is arrested for auctioning off senate seats and no one will even pay any attention to the mess they’ve made with their citizen army or their shady land deals. They can worry about finding the formula again later. She’s just trying to keep him safe because it’s her job. So he fires her. Excuse you? Did you not just see the other dude get frozen and break into a million pieces?

Over at the loft, Parkman tries to make sense of Ando’s power before we all turn the channel. You see, he’s a “supercharger” who intensifies others’ abilities. That means Daphne can run faster than the speed of sound, which means she could travel through time. You know, what Einstein said. LOL. Einstein’s slapping his forehead in his grave right now. I’m sure you can guess Ando’s reaction to this news.

Ando and Daphne hold hands and jet. In Daddy Sulu’s apartment, Kid and Adult Hiro have gotten into Daddy’s safe and have the formula and a giant rubber dildo. Daddy Sulu finds them and sends the kid out before grabbing his sword and attacking Hiro, who tries to fight him with the dildo. Hiro explains that he needs to destroy the formula to save the world. He rips it up, and Daphne and Ando speed in and whisk him away. Daddy Sulu is left with the torn up formula. At the loft in the present, Hiro bitches at Ando for saving him too quick. Guess how Ando reacts.

Daphne says that she knows where the formula is since she’s the one who destroyed it and Hiro says that she can make up for being such an asshole in the past if she helps him destroy it. Parkman gives her permission to go. Why does everyone need Parkman’s permission today? They show up in Papa P’s office, where Tracy is about to leave with the formula. Hiro asks for it nicely, and she calls him “Pikachu”. LOL. Hiro spins her around and punches her in the face! DAMN! A man hitting a woman has never been so adorable. He grabs the formula and he and Daph skidat.

In the lab, Peter knocks over the largest bowl of jello left, which spills all over the floor and heals Suresh’s face. Jethro gets his blue fire hands going and Peter’s like uh we’re all gonna die. Jethro says he doesn’t give two shits about Peter or his brother so buhbye! Nathan comes up behind him and knocks him out with a lead pipe. Then he hits Peter. Peter gets up and Nathan slams him in the knees and tells him he broke his heart. Oh wah. Jethro wakes up and starts the room on fire. Smooth move. Now you’re in the middle of a fire, dumbass. Peter finds one last injection of formula (HANDY!) on the floor and injects himself. He grabs Nathan and they fly off.

And now for a very dramatic scene involving Sylar, Mama P and Mama P’s waddles. The lighting people hate this woman.

She tries to smooth talk Sy by telling him that by killing Papa P he saved the world and she always knew he would, but he’s not having it. He knows she’s not his mom and that she’s been lying to him this whole time. He wants to know why. She says she wanted to love him like a son but he senses her lie and starts cutting her head open. She caves and admits that she wanted to use him as a thug because he was born evil and that’s what he’s good for. He gets all whiney and wah-y about it and since she’s in harms way she resists the urge to slap him and tell him not to be such a little girl. He almost kills her, but she says that she knows who his real parents are and he’ll never find out where the caterpillars on his face came from if he kills her. He loses it and starts to strangle her anyway but Claire comes up behind him and shoves a paper clip into his soft spot. And he’s down! Chop of his head and crush it, you morons!

Look, ma! A shark’s about to eat my eyebrow!

I’m glad I got from the jail cell to GlamourShots back here in time.

SYLAR’S DEAD? Somehow, I don’t buy that. He’ll be back. Right? RIGHT? I was just starting to like him again. Well, except for the whining. Dammit I’m so conflicted! Claire runs back to the cell to save her mom, but she’s still freaking out so she has to leave her to burn. Dang. This episode is a bloodbath. As Claire and HRG run off, Meredith erupts and the building goes up in flames. Somewhere in the desert, Peter and Nathan land and start fighting. Nathan wants to know why Peter saved him and Pete says that he may seem like a hypocrite for taking the formula, but he wanted to save his brother. Nathan says that he wouldn’t have done the same thing. Ouch.

Suresh gives his last meaningless good and evil monologue of the season while we watch Pinehurst burn and an epilogue clip of Suresh, pretty again, wandering around on the freeway. Huh? How in the hell did he escape when he was covered in magic flammable jello in an exploding building? Tracy picks him up and gives him a ride to the facialist. THE END.

But before we go, we get the first scene of Volume Four. Nathan is in a stretch limo handing over a file of all the heroes. He tells the man he’s talking to that they are dangerous and need to be rounded up before they can harm anyone. The 4400 plot still has some life in it! The man agrees to give the senator what he needs. Nathan says “Thank you, Mr. President!” Ooooooh! Uhoh. The President’s black and somewhat homely. You know what that means.

You’ve got til episode four and you’re dead. If you get fat on hiatus you’ll only make it to two, so watch your points.