Heroes: You’ve Just Been Katt-Rolled

So I just got back from my pilgrimage to see the Mouse, and I haven’t even watched last week’s Heroes yet. I have read Flipit’s awesome recap of last week, though. Looks like he fast-forwarded through the boring stuff, but I think I’m caught up on the important parts. Like how Sylar, the Character Briefly Known As Fathan, got himself whacked by Swoosie Kurtz for trying to do the right thing. He’s dug himself out now and is walking down the street, just minding his own business, and gets himself arrested for Walking While Bloody.

The Bangs Are Back!

Carnyville

So we haven’t seen much of day-to-day carnival life, but now everyone’s sitting around a table piled high with food. An old woman is cooking stuff with her red-hot hand.

Judging by all the happy hippie grins, I bet those are the “special” waffles.

Samuel, who I’ll call T-Bag (Sam-Bag? T-Sam?) for the benefit of you Prison Break fans, is holding forth with a happy grin of his own. Slaughtering a house full of Republicans is great for getting the old aggression out, I hear. Everyone’s nodding and smiling a lot, so I bet Kool-Aid is also on the Carnyville menu. “By day’s end we will have a full table again,” is S-Bag’s explanation for his good mood.

The table looks pretty full to me now.

At a completely different table across town, Gretchen and Claire are eye-banging each other over breakfast. Claire is just giddy because she’s in college, living a normal life, instead of dying her hair brown in some alternate future or throwing herself in front of baby seals in Japan. Apropos of nothing, a sorority girl approaches with a rush invitation, all made up like she just left a taping of The Hills. Now I know it’s been like 30 years since I was in college, but when I was there, girls (even the ones in sororities) pretty much stumbled down to breakfast in sweats and flip-flops. No college student is presentable before 1pm. Shoot, they don’t get up before 1pm unless there’s an afternoon football game. Claire accepts the invitation, which stuns Gretchen like she was just zapped by Elle or something. Claire begs Gretchen to come with, because this is what normal college girls do, and as a reward she offers her… chocolate milk.

How about chocolate syrup and whipped cream instead? Anything to break the sexual tension.

Baltimore, Set of The Wire

That cop who bagged Sylar last night? So it was really too dark to see, but… OMG, it’s Winston Zeddemore from Ghostbusters! One thing I love about Heroes is how they find cameos for sci-fi cult stars. More on that later. Winston has called in a criminal psychologist to consult, because Sylar has amnesia. Yawn. The important thing is that this woman (named Gibson) has a hot British accent, so she’s mostly here to be Sylar’s Conflicted Love Interest. Hopefully her power, if she has one, is better than Maya’s Mascara Of Death.

Winston wants the doc to just put a big red “Psychopath” stamp on Sylar’s case, but she says they don’t do stamps. She goes in and plays good cop, and wants Sylar uncuffed. Yeah, I know he has blood all over his shirt, but it’s all his blood. Can’t they get someone to test that like they did with Claire back in season 1?

Mercy Heights Hospital (yes, that’s its real name)

Nurse Ratched, who according to HeroesWiki is actually a doctor, checks up on Emma and tells her those sounds she sees are probably just something called “hysterical blindness”. EPISODE TITLE ALERT!! I’ll get around to Googling that eventually, but it’s probably just a fancy title for “you’re going crazy, dear”. It’s a great name for a Finnish death metal band, not so much for a Heroes episode. Doctor Nurse Ratched just happens to mention that Emma is her daughter. “Do you follow up like this with all your patients?” “Only the ones who happen to be my daughter.”

Gag me with an iPod.

Doctor Nurse Ratched tells her daughter she’s in a dead-end job and needs to get out of the file room every now and then. She thinks Emma should go back to med school and quit blaming herself for the death of someone named Christopher. I think I saw this plotline on ER about 10 years ago.

Meanwhile, Mama P has come to New York to pay her youngest son a visit. Fathan is supposed to be there too, but as we know he’s a little busy being shot, buried, dug up and arrested. Peter doesn’t want to talk about Fathan or all his shiny new superpowers, because the writers need some excuse for it to take 6 weeks for Peter to find out the truth about Fathan. But he’s all Angela wants to talk about, and he hasn’t shown up yet, so Peter goes to work and leaves Ma at the apartment. She has a daydream flash, and it’s too short to see what it is, but it’s obviously scary because Mama P never has happy daydreams. Seriously. Does she ever just see herself cozying up with a fluffy pair of socks or having a nice hot flash on a cold day? I wonder.

Wossamotta U

So Claire and Gretchen go to this rush party. Because we need to be beaten over the head some more with the Penthouse lesbo thing, the theme is speed dating. We see quick clips of Claire all made up with biggish hair, talking to the camera, and again I have to at least give props to the directors for finding new gimmicks. The thing is, Gretchen has already talked to everyone that Claire is talking to, and all Gretchen wants to talk about is Claire. This begins to creep Claire out just a little, especially since Gretchen is watching and waving across the room like the nerdy date in a John Hughes movie. Seriously Claire, expanding your horizons isn’t worth it. If you really need the emo cred, just dye your hair brown again and tell everyone you cut off your little toe.

Edgy enough?

Emma’s walking down the street seeing sounds everywhere she goes. She stops in front of a speeding bus and Peter zips in to save her, which is like meet cute #6 for these two. Can we just get a room for Peter and Emma and Claire and Gretchen and have one big incestuous scromp-fest, and get it over with already? HRG and Tracy can be right next door. While you’re trying to get that image out of your head, how about we watch a Liberty Mutual commercial that just happens to feature Milo and his Season 1 bangs. Oh, and there’s Masi Oka doing an OJ airport run down the street. NBC is getting creative with their ads. Ish.

Emma walks home really fast, because Peter is obviously stalking her by now. Forget all the superpowers, Peter has zero powers of observation. He still doesn’t realize Emma can’t hear him. Peter tries to use his super speed to catch up to her, except nothing happens and he sees Emma’s trippy light show instead. He touched her, and now he’s got her power instead of Darth Ray’s super speed. Whoops. Good luck saving people with that.

T-Sam is out digging in the dirt, probably planting some more weed to put in the special carnival brownies. I don’t know why he needs a shovel if he can control dirt with his mind. He’s still confident that someone will join them before the day is over. Lydia wants to know who the new person will be and she goes through and names pretty much every major character. We get it, they have tabs on everyone, they’re like the Carnival CIA. Or the anti-Company. T-Sam fills the holes up, says wait and see, and Lydia leaves in frustration.

Didn’t even get to take her top off again. So sorry.

Back at the Freshman 15, Claire is looking for her sweater, and finds Gretchen wearing it. She offers to “just take it off” if Claire wants it back. Please, for the love of Sappho, just take it off. Not because I want to see barely legal girl-girl action. Because I just want to get this stupid gimmicky subplot over with already. We already know Claire’s love life is cursed. Zach: gay. Peter: related. West: emotard. Comic book guy: duh. Gretchen: serial killer. E: nough. A book falls off the shelf, causing Claire to turn around and look at Gretchen’s laptop. Claire’s entire online life is conveniently loaded up on there, along with a bunch of fake web pages from 1998.

But not her MySpace page.

They’re getting ready to head out for another rush party and Claire, suspicious, tells her to go on ahead. Kids today. They can steal movies off BitTorrent but can’t figure out how to clear their browser history.

Sylar, rebooted for like the 9th time

Sylar has total amnesia. He doesn’t remember what tea is, or basic things like hot and cold, but he does remember the English language. And is potty trained, I would assume. What would genre fiction do without selective amnesia? Dr. Gibson tells him he has the opposite of deja vu, which means he doesn’t feel like he’s ever seen anything before. She could read the whole lame script in that accent and it would sound hot. “The you in you is still in there somewhere,” she says, except he’s not. He’s three time zones away in Matt Parkman’s head, but maybe Dorky Good Sylar is still in there somewhere. He gets distracted by the ticking clocks.

Hospital

Peter walks by a room and hears a kids’ choir singing. It’s the theme from Greatest American Hero! HAHAHAHAHA see what I mean about sci-fi cult classics? I take back half of the nasty things I’ve said about this episode. Just because I’m feeling evil, here’s a link and now it’s stuck in your head too. Whatever happened to William Katt, anyway? Hey, that gives me an idea. Everyone see if you can trick your friends into watching that video. We can call it Katt-rolling. Original, no? Here’s that link again:

http://bit.ly/1WTBhJ

Go!

But back to our own lovably goofy superhero show. Peter sees the colors and across the room Emma, who is alright but nowhere near as smokin-hot as Connie Sellecca in the day, is seeing them too. Then they see each other seeing the colors. Meet-cute #7 if you’re keeping score. So now Emma chases Peter, catches up and does some semi-signing, which is probably the deaf person’s version of talking really loud and slow to foreigners. Peter finally catches on. Emma can read lips, of course, because every deaf person on TV can read lips or else they’d need to pay an extra actor to translate. Peter rambles about abilities and she’s confused, but hey, there just happens to be a piano in this particular hospital room, so he proves his point by playing a few notes. They sit down and make beautiful music together and BLEEECH I just barfed all over my laptop. For the love of Pete, don’t bad notes make pretty colors too? Peter finally uses his power to do something useful: he asks Emma out. Unfortunately he blows it by saying he wants to get her out of the file room, which is just what her mom said. Ewww. “What’s wrong with the file room?” she yells and stomps off.

Nothing, if you’re this guy from last week.

(I thought Flipit was making up the whole butt-xeroxing bit, BTW. Then I finally watched the episode. He definitely got the worst one so far. Way to take one for the team, boss.)

Claire finally makes it to the sorority mixer. She chats up another ex-cheerleader and then suddenly gives her a shove, Just In Time to avoid having a big heavy flag fall on her from the landing upstairs. And who should be standing up there next to it but our kooky friend Gretchen? This is enough fun for Claire for one night, so she’s out.

Ghostbusters HQ

Winston’s really enjoying playing bad cop to Sylar. He found out his real identity (Gabriel Gray, remember, because super-people always have alliterative names) and that he’s wanted for killing his mother back in Season 1. Sylar has no memory of any of this and protests that he’s not that person.

“Did you say ‘watchmaker’?”

“I also said ‘murder’. And ‘mother’.”

LOL.

Winston pulls the plug on the room’s camera and threatens to get nasty and “throw you down a hole, forever”. This triggers Sylar’s memory of getting shot and buried, so he freaks and accidentally telekinesis-es Winston through the one-way mirror. Chances of getting off with a warning: not so good. Hot Doctor Gibson is leaving work and taking with her a copy of what I assume is Sylar’s rap sheet. Sylar knocks on her window asking for help.

I thought she said they didn’t do rubber stamps?

Gretchen comes home to an angry Claire. So angry she’s going to rip that sweater right off her. Claire is fed up with the Googling and the talking about her at parties and the corpse-stealing and the not shaving of the pits and so on. She thinks Gretchen wants to expose her. She’s right, of course, but not in THAT way. Gretchen says she’s not stalking, she just thinks Claire is really interesting and she wants to be her. Why, that’s so EVEN MORE CREEPY… and so is the finally-we-got-it-over-with smooch that Gretchen plants on Claire. “I’m crushing on you,” she says. “Say something,” and bats her big creepy eyes a couple of times, and then, before Claire can answer, the whole sorority barges in with invites to join. And they brought candles!

Insert your own porno title here.

Carnyville

Lydia wants to know where Samuel’s new recruit is, since it’s getting late. Samuel isn’t sure, and needs to check the future real quick, so he stabs Lydia in the back with his magic ink stick. Nothing. Suddenly the head sorority girl appears next to him! “Hello Rebecca.” T-Sam assigned her to alienate Claire, isolate her, “push” her towards his gang. So this Rebecca can turn invisible. She knocked the book on the floor and set up Gretchen. She pushed the flag off the landing into Claire. And yep, you’ve figured it out, she threw Claire’s old roommate out the window. Lydia looks out the trailer window, and says to Samuel “your dust has finally settled,” whatever that means. “Looks like we’re pulling up stakes,” says T-Sam. Whatever that means.

Sylar, in the car with Dr. Gibson, keeps telling her he’s not a killer. She gets out and offers him her car to get away in. A police car pulls up and Winston gets out, proton pack all warmed up. Lightning bolts start sizzling around Sylar’s hands and Winston shoots him down. Sylar gets back up, of course, and takes off. Wonder where he’s going to end up?

Peter walks in his apartment muttering “so much for a human connection” under his breath. In pops… Hiro, having time-traveled here from last week! And falls over. Before you can say “Save the cheerleader”.

Emma is sitting at home with the cello. Did she steal that thing from the guy on the street? Seriously, they are crazy expensive. I knew someone in college who sold a violin so she could buy a bow for her cello. Anyway, Emma is all la-de-da, I’m a musician now, playing and looking at her diploma on the wall, which just happens to be from… Arlington U.

Did you know any “biomedicine” majors when you were in college? Me neither.

She starts playing harder, and a blast of pretty light shoots out of her cello and cracks her wall open. Huh? Oh, I know. All superpowers have to be useful in a fight somehow, so now Emma can blast the super-villains with her sound-light. It’s not like you could just have the power to conjure up a really great cheesesteak. Give me that over seeing sounds any day of the week.

Sylar runs through the woods, looking for a deus ex machina. It’s got to be here somewhere… oh there it is. T-Sam waits at the carnival gate doing his best ringmaster pose.

Welcome back, my friends, to the show that never ends. Well, except for that whole writers’ strike thing.

Sylar makes it to safety as Winston and the cops… just stop, because there’s nothing there but a cloud of dust. Is there anything Samuel can’t do?

COMIC BOOK LECTURE IN 3…2…1.. OK, fair warning. Samuel seems to be a direct ripoff of Magneto, who has the power to control metal… but since metal is in pretty much everything at a molecular level, Magneto can more or less do whatever the crap he wants. Magneto’s also one of those semi-good bad guys who thinks the ends justify the means and he’s just looking out for his people. Sound familiar? So Samuel welcomes Sylar in with open arms. “You’re safe here. Home.” Welcome to the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, brotha.

***TO BE CONTINUED***

Sorry Flipit, this episode was a bit better than last week. Better luck next time, but thanks for playing! The recap was triff though!