Heroes: Three Broke Out Of The Cuckoo’s Nest

Here’s something new. This week’s Mohologue goes to HRG. He’s musing about-what else-Claire, with a little reflection on man’s inhumanity to man thrown in. I’m all for monologue gender equality, BTW. I think Ma Petrelli could knock an opening monologue out of the park.

HRG takes a break from the introspection to help Lauren snoop through Samuel’s past. Since that whole subplot with Edgar last week went absolutely nowhere, they need someone, anyone to lead them to the carnival. They’ve run out of friends and family and are looking through a list of Samuel’s former mailmen and people he may have stood in line next to at the DMV. Lauren suggests he might want to focus his attention on the one person he knows can get them to the carnival; namely, his daughter. HRG starts to snap at her, but realizes he hasn’t gotten any play yet, and backs off. And then… what’s this? Someone who grew up in the New York mansion where his parents worked? And her name: you guessed it, Vanessa. She lives in California, but what’s a measly few thousand miles when you have a magic teleporting carnival? HRG dials her up, sounding not at all creepy or suspicious. She claims she doesn’t know any Samuel and hangs up. Hey, maybe he could get her to talk if if he just showed up at her door instead of cold calling. Well, it worked for Samuel last week.

This is the same woman? Not seeing the resemblance.

Speaking of T-Sam, he’s writing a letter to this Vanessa chick right now-and why he’s writing it out by hand when he can just make the ink do whatever he wants, who knows. Before we can find out, he runs out of ink, and asks Lydia to get him some more ingredients. Lydia is in no mood to do anything for Sam, so he goes to his go-to: the fake sincere apology. Edgar, Joseph, Sylar, his unfortunate penchant for guyliner. Sam’s decided the day has come to collect his long-lost Vanessa to join them and rule the carnival underworld as his evil queen.

Lydia goes to complain about Samuel to her pyro daughter, who sticks up for him. Teenagers, whaddayagonnado. They’ll tell you the sky is green just to disagree. Lydia is thinking they need a new leader, someone of compassion, heart and-dare I say-empathy. Who is this empathetic hero she means? Someone to rescue them, and nurse them back to strength? “Maybe you can call him,” says Amanda, rolling her eyes as only a teenage girl can. “Maybe I can!” says Lydia brightly, and concentrates real hard. Swirly mental flashback stuff commences. Sure enough, all the way from the southern Ohio desert or wherever the carnival is, Lydia’s power wakes up the sleeping Peter. The compass tat that Sam gave him way back in episode two, the one that Peter apparently forgot all about, is back, and it’s spinning. So now Lydia can do tattoo projection. This power of hers just gets better and better!

LA, Long Lost Casa de Parkman

Matt’s playing Mr. Mom this morning, and every morning from the looks of things, making breakfast for the fam. Janice, with Edenesque short hair that’s even less flattering than her old bangs, hints around about Matt getting a job. It must be every bit as exciting as it sounds, because Matt would rather stay home with Baby Matt Parkman and futz around the kitchen. Janice thinks he’s scared to go back to work. Inadequacy issues? Surely not our Parkman. As she leaves, someone else shows up unannounced.

O HAI!

Yep, HRG wasted no time hopping a plane to LA to track down this Vanessa woman we haven’t even met yet. Matt has no clue who she or Samuel is-he’s like the last Hero on Earth not to have had a run-in with the carnival, so HRG has to fill him in. Matt’s not interested, of course. This is his month to be domestic. He’s not due for another nutty superhero road trip until next month. Parkman is the Clark W. Griswold of Heroes. The carnival will be playing the part of Walley World, natch.

Other cast members racking up frequent flyer miles are Hiro and Ando. They’ve made it to the Florida hospital where Hiro stashed Mohinder six weeks ago, give or take. Looks like Hiro’s going undercover as a patient. That shouldn’t be tough, since 1) Hiro’s mental anyway and 2) he obviously had no problems dropping off Mohinder there. Is this convenient or what? Next time someone pisses me off, I’m just going to drop them off at the closest crazy house, no questions asked.

Always with the checkerboard floors.

Hiro goes nuts shouting about Dr. Watson when he sees who’s in the first room. Hmm, wonder who could be in there? Ando zaps the door and breaks in to find out.

LA

HRG and Parkman are stalking Vanessa outside the building where she has orchestra rehearsal (she plays the cello, of course; didn’t Sam mention that once?) Here she comes now. HRG introduces himself as the guy she hung up on. When that fails to win her heart, he mentions that they have pics of her and Sam together. Way to earn her trust there, genius. Luckily HRG is not concerned how well his CIA spy stuff actually works as long as he has good old Parkman (Clarkman?) there to Jedi her into talking with them. So the three besties head off to Starbucks where Vanessa proceeds to cheerfully spill her guts to two complete strangers. Samuel used to write her poems, even proposed to her once. He still comes out to stalk her every now and then. She’s obviously not that into him. Pretty sure I see which way this is heading for the finale. You? Vanessa tells Samuel to step off, and/or gets herself killed. Samuel goes nuclear. Bada bing.

All this is exactly what HRG wants to hear, cuz now he has bait for a Sam trap. Lone Starr will come to ussss, he says in his best Dark Helmet impersonation. But how do you move a carnival? asks Clarkman. Funny you should ask that, because 1) I’ve been wanting to know how that stupid carnival jumps around and 2) why does the whole carnival have to move? Maybe it’s cheaper than a plane ticket these days.

NYC

Peter calls up HRG and leaves him a message about his new tattoo. Why’d it show up again? Where’d it come from? Why hasn’t he thought about it once since the second episode of the season? I guess he kind of did have a lot of other stuff going on, what with his dead brother being impersonated by a shapeshifting psychopath and all, but still. Meanwhile across town, Emma is practicing her three-note cello solo again and staring at the door expectantly when someone knocks on it. It’s Peter, of course. “It worked! I brought you here with music!” I just love how these powers become whatever the plot needs them to be every week. Maybe in the finale she’ll be able to send everyone running away from the carnival before it explodes. I wonder what she was thinking about to bring Peter there so quickly?

It’s ok, you can say it. You’re back in the 9pm time slot now.

Anyway, people discovering superpowers is really the best part of this show, so I’ll quit picking on it for now. Emma tells Peter that a guy named Samuel came to visit, and brought her the cello, and told her she could do this. See? He even put a nice sticker on it with a logo that matches Peter’s brand-new tattoo! How cool is that? Peter thinks gee, this could be the same guy he ran into back at the top of the season, so they head over to Peter’s mysteriously underlit apartment to look at the newspaper picture of him. Good thing he saved that when he took down all the clippings on his Wall of Fame. Yep, that’s the guy, and Emma shows him the compass he gave her. It starts spinning right on cue. Peter’s spidey sense tells him that Samuel is bad news. Hey, wonder why Claire never mentioned her trip out to the carnival when she spent all that time bonding with Peter last week. That would’ve saved a bit of time. Anyway, now that he’s starting to put all the pieces together, Ma shows up uninvited, gives Emma the stinkeye and scares her off.

Seriously. Turn some lights on in there already. You’re screwing up my screencaps.

The Cuckoo’s Nest

Ando and Hiro are hanging out in the rec room. I wonder how long Hiro’s been in there and if Ando just booked a room at the Holiday Inn next door. Must. Stop. Poking. Plot Holes. Or I’ll never get done with this. Hiro’s been doing some recon, and reports that they keep Mohinder too drugged up to use his super strength and break out. Wouldn’t you know the drug cart is coming around right now, so Ando waits until the orderly’s back is turned, finds Mohinder’s dose, and swaps the pills for aspirin. This almost works until the orderly wants to shake Ando’s hand where he’s palmed the pills. The only thing he can think of to do is hide them in his mouth while pretending to sneeze.

This is why you’re the sidekick.

Back in LA, HRG’s Sam-trap is all set up. Vanessa gave Samuel a ring and he’s on the way. She’s waiting in the lobby to meet him, armed with that staple of action shows, the homing device.

Subtle, ain’t it?

HRG and Clarkman are covering the exits, but Samuel thought to bring Copy Boy as backup. Eli distracts them while Sam sneaks in and makes off with the damsel.

All he needs is a top hat, a cape and a set of railroad tracks.

HRG zaps half a dozen fake Elis with his Tazer before catching up. T-Sam simply rips up the street and runs off in a cloud of dust. Clarkman comes tearing around the corner in a van, picks up HRG and takes off in hot pursuit following Vanessa’s homing device. Soooo, anyone pumped for the A-Team remake yet?

Ever heard of Google Earth? 1997 wants its map back.

Peter tells Ma off for getting up to her old tricks, acting all mysterious and blocking his bereavement nooky. She had a dream that Emma’s doomed, so what’s a mom to do? She’s going to help kill thousands, Ma says, and you can’t save her. I am Jack’s complete lack of surprise. Peter steals her power to find out for himself.

Funny Farm

Hiro bangs on the door of Mohinder’s padded cell, still talking in geekese. He mimes Mohinder breaking out of his straitjacket and then the door.

What would Mohinder do without someone around to remind him that he has super strength?

When he gets out, Mohinder is rightfully ticked that he’s been stuck in this place for six weeks and change thanks to Hiro. Luckily for Hiro, they have a daring escape to make before they can argue about it. They also have to deal with Ando, who’s all doped up on happy pills and making fireworks. They get him into a wheelchair and out the door just in time to be discovered by the friendly staff, yelling at them to get back in their cages.

Which one is E.T.?

Across the country, the B-Team tracks Samuel and Vanessa into the desert until the little blinking dot stops moving. Looks like the old throw-the-bug-out-the-window trick. Nope. HRG spots a crumpled-up carnival flyer on the ground. The whole flipping carnival was there, and now it’s gone, two minutes later.

The buddy cops go back to Chez Parkman to regroup. While HRG paces and fumes, Matt makes ratatouille for dinner. Has anyone ever actually had ratatouille? It doesn’t look very appetizing. Clarkman’s done helping Bennet and has to get fixing dinner before Janice comes home and chews him out. HRG, maybe remembering he’s got a long drive home, leaves.

In New York, Peter uses Ma’s power to dream about Emma playing cello in the hall of mirrors, and Sylar saying he’s come to save her. He wakes up, goes right over to Emma’s place and smashes the cello to bits. As if her power is tied to one particular instrument. I bet she could do the same trick by banging a trash can lid. Think before you do these things, Pete. Emma kicks him out, of course, which means that 1) he just permanently lost the compass to find his way into her pants and 2) she’s going to head straight for Samuel now. Nice work, Petey.

Here’s the scene we saw in an earlier montage, with Hiro, Ando and Mohinder running through the swamp. The villagers are chasing them with torches, and Hiro’s brain is in no shape for teleporting. Then zap him with your Red Lightning, Mohinder says to Ando. Electro-shock therapy, you know. Mohinder is obviously no neuroscientist. Seems like the equivalent of beating your laptop against the wall to get it to not crash, but I’m no neuroscientist either. It’s not like Ando could screw up Hiro’s brain any further, though, so he has nothing to lose. This works perfectly, of course, and Hiro is as back to normal as he ever gets. If only Ando had thought to try it last episode, they could’ve saved some money on plane tickets. They teleport out Just In Time.

HRG has teleported himself back to DC, and stops off at Arlington U to try and make up with Claire. It’s about an 8 out of 10 on the Dunder Mifflin Awkward Scale. Claire is on the way out the door, probably to answer Gretchen’s booty note, and is none to pleased to be blocked by her dad. She promises to call later on just to get rid of him. Speaking of awkward, Janice Parkman and her Kate Gosselin hair are chewing Matt’s ear off over dinner while he feeds the kid. He thinks he’s chickening out on his duty to save the world. No heroism for you, says Janice. Go get a job, clean the kitchen and make me some pie. Fie, you humdrum domestic existence. You must be stamped out AT ALL COSTS. Good thing I have a 25-year-old single Hollywood screenwriter to tell me how much my life sucks.

Vanessa is sitting outside Sam’s trailer, Copy Boy standing guard, when Sam brings her some tea. She says she wants to go home. He responds by, and I am not making this up, licking his finger and running it over her face. Works like a charm, of course.

I hope he at least brushed.

Back home, HRG tacks a pic of Vanessa up on his wall of shame and she definitely deserves it. Another knock. I will always remember Season 4 as The Season Of Knocking On Doors. It’s Lauren, just happening to be in the neighborhood, staking out the apartment awaiting his return. Now that he’s done with Claire and Samuel for the evening, he’s got time for a little R&R. There’s no blocking him now, right?

Wrong.

“Hello boys,” says HRG. I swear, Coleman gets the best lines, bar none.

Sooooo, lots of setup this episode, huh? Nothing much actually happened, but things are moving toward the endgame now. Emma will be headed straight to Samuel RSN, with Peter hot on her trail. Mohinder’s got that power compass he can use to get back there, which solves HRG’s problem. Things are about to get nuts. I’m signing off so I can squeeze this in before the next episode starts. And hey, we’re all caught up now! Yatta!