Recap: Heroes: Hello Mother, Hello Father. I Am Claire, Your Indistructable Daughter

When the final episode of Heroes aired in the fall, we were led to believe that 2007 was going to be all about “THE List”, but other than the first episode, the series has followed just about everything other than The List. I’m not really complaining though, because one of the things I love about Heroes is that it always does things that you are not expecting. The first part of the season was supposed to be about a cheerleader and saving the world, but it became a lot more. Now it’s supposed to be about the list (or more accurately, about Peter maybe or maybe not blowing up New York), and as we’ve seen from the last few episodes, it’s becoming much more as well. The Heroes are all connected by much more than genetic markers and unnamed research agencies and finding these new connections is becoming a really great ride.Well, the narrator was back. WTF? I thought they had everything working perfectly last week, oh well. You knew that this episode was going to have a ton of stuff happening because they started things off without Mohinder’s philosophical musings. Instead, we jumped right into the action with Claude giving Peter some “Jedi Training” as some of our forum members have called it.

We are still not sure the why or how Claude knows so much about the Heroes, but he has a pretty good theory on Peter’s condition. Right now Peter’s body has absorbed all of these powers, but using them has become a reflex. In order to use his ability to the greatest extent possible, he needs to be able to make them a conscious choice.

It’s really a marvelous theory when you think about it, but how does Claude propose to get Peter to that point? I have a great theory about Rosario Dawson and me enjoying a long life together with lots of kids and random Jonathan Larson dance numbers scattered throughout. But since my theories end when I wake up, I don’t think it’s going to happen. Claude actually has a plan to help Peter; he wants Peter to concentrate on using one of his powers individually. Next thing you know, Claude hands Peter a purse he took from a woman on the street and runs away. Ahh, the whimsy of unintentional petty theft! Will the wonders never cease?

At this point in the game, Nikki’s story line is a complete aside, but I still think it is really interesting. Although her connection to the rest of the Heroes is holding on by a mere thread, I think Ali Larter has been given the most difficult role and to pull off because Nikki really has no idea who she really is. Nikki got a little help last week from a Dr. Witherson, a psychiatrist who was trying to help Nikki with her multiple personality disorder. In order for the doctor to understand what is going on with Nikki, she needs Jessica to come out. The big problem with this theory is that Nikki is still afraid of what Jessica might do.

I give Dr. Witherson a lot of points for having courage, but I think she loses a lot of points for being more delusional than even I was with my Rosario Dawson fantasy. Granted, she obviously had no way to anticipate that she was dealing with somebody like Nikki unless she, you know, READ HER FILE. Last week Dr. Witherson made a big deal about knowing everything about Nikki after reading her file including what happened to Jessica. How can Dr. Witherson read those parts of the file and gloss over the parts that talks about her snapping night sticks with her bare hands and such?

Anyway, Dr. Witherson wants Jessica to come out, but Nikki still resists. To ease her mind, Dr. Witherson says that Nikki’s chains could keep an elephant attached to that chair she was in, and even though she talks calm and collected, she has no problem using it. I know that none of you were surprised with what happens next. Jessica comes out, breaks out of her chains and is on that taser faster than Alec Baldwin on a Krispy Kreme.

I can understand why she might not want guards in the room with her, but how can it be that she isn’t filming this and how can it be that she doesn’t have an entire SWAT team ready to come in if things go wrong? When the people eventually come in, Nikki is unconscious, and the taser is in pieces, an account of it having been jammed into Dr. Witherson so many times and all.

I’m pretty sure your arm is not supposed to do that

That might have been a scary moment for Dr. Witherson, but HRG was in situation that was even worse. When he got to the secret underground laboratory at Primatech Paper, he was worried about having to explain to his boss how he let Sylar die. Instead, he got to Sylar’s cell and found that he hadn’t been placed in a body bag for convenient storage. In fact, there was no need for a body bag at all because Sylar wasn’t dead.

If I were Sylar, I would have killed HRG right on the spot, but Sylar had some other plans in mind. Those plans would be Claire of course, and I guess Sylar thought that killing Claire would be twice as fun if he did it knowing that HRG would squirm in his cell realizing there was nothing he could do, and when he finally came home, the only thing left would be the young girl he had done so much to protect. Now would be a great time for him to display that secret Hero ability we have been wondering even exists, don’t you think?

Sylar reached into Mr. Bennet’s pocket, and pulled out his wallet so he could take a look at his driver’s license. How convenient! Sure, Sylar would learn HRG’s address and would know where to look for Claire, but more importantly, we would all find out his last name!

Or not.

Sylar took out the license and pressed it against the glass. Mr. Bennet’s ID said a lot about him, but it didn’t give his first name! WTF? They can’t do that to us! I was hoping that Sylar would take out Mr. Bennet’s library card or something else that would have his name on it, but I guess at that point it would have lost its dramatic effect. But hey, at least we know that Mr. Bennet is an organ donor.

So it looks like Claire is in trouble. Sylar could grab her at school, or he could grab her at home, but all is not lost. Claire was not going to be at school, and she was not even going to be at home. She decided that she really had to make this manatee thing seem really authentic, so she was driving to San Antonio with Zach to see the manatee that they had there. And even if Claire’s mom told that to Sylar, he would still be out of luck. Claire used the manatee thing as an excuse to go see her birth mother. With HRG locked up in Sylar’s old cell, it might seem like that Claire being out of town is just delaying the inevitable, but at least it gives us a bit of hope, no?

Everybody was talking last week about George Takei’s guest appearance. I thought it was a stroke of genius, especially since I tend not to follow too many spoilers. In execution, it seemed like they really just wanted an excuse to get George Takei in an episode because there really was no reason to even have Hiro in this episode, as sacrilegious as that is to even think about. It was really all a bunch of nudge nudge, wink wink, nods to science fiction geeks. I’m not saying that this is bad, but save the unnecessary stunt casting of the Heroes parents for when they decide to move Heroes to a new night. I mean, what’s next? Bringing in David Hasselhoff as Claire’s father? He could be a lifeguard! You know, I am going to shut up now so I don’t give them any more ideas.

I guess I shouldn’t be so bitter, because the parts with Hiro are always very enjoyable, but you’ll have to forgive me if I don’t give them the usual detail. Basically, Hiro’s father wants him to come back to Tokyo and take over the empire that he built. Even though Hiro works in a cue, he works for his father’s company, His father thought it would be a good idea for Hiro to work his way up and learn the business, but now that he sees that Hiro’s head is full of visions of grandeur, promises that Hiro will become executive Vice President when he returns.

When you think about it, that’s a really great offer, and Ando agrees. If Hiro becomes VP, then Ando will also be on the fast track. He might even become successful enough that Hiro’s (hot) sister, Kimiko, will take notice of him. Instead, Hiro sees this as another challenge that he must overcome, and even though his dad rips apart the painting that Hiro was supposed to take to Linderman, Hiro knows what he has to do.

Most people would jump at the chance to be a samurai-wielding crime fighting time traveler, especially when the alternative is working for the man, even if the man is your father, but even if Hiro was normal, he never enjoyed the family business. His sister is the one with the business sense and the passion for mergers, acquisitions, supply chain management and all that other shit, but the only thing holding her back is that traditional Japanese culture means that she will never be equal to her brother.

Hiro loves his sister and through a little trickery is able to make her speak out about how much she knows the business while at the same time making his father realize that he is absolutely the wrong person for the job. Hiro’s dad grunts a little, realizes that his daughter is qualified, and lets his son go about his silly business. Hiro gets a big hug from his sister (Ando tried to move in for the hug/cheap feel, but was denied) and Kimiko leaves with her father to go back to Japan. And check that license plate folks! Are those the call numbers for the Starship Enterprise? Woo hoo! Oh the writers are so witty!

Come to papa!

After all of that, Hiro and Ando are basically back to where they started at the beginning of the last episode, except their painting for Linderman has been torn in a bunch of pieces. And even that isn’t bad because Hiro’s father has his own superpower! Whenever he tears canvas it comes apart in completely straight lines at perfect ninety-degree angles!

When Claire learned that her mother thought she was dead, I am sure she was really sad because they missed so much time together. Then again, isn’t it better than the alternative, which is that Claire’s mother knew that she was alive, and decided to completely cut her off? And even though Claire had already spoken to her on the phone, she had no clue what to expect.

Claire’s mom, Meredith is a pretty interesting character herself. She said she traveled around Mexico to clear her head after the explosion, but the conspiracy theorist in me says that she was either hiding from other people, or she was told to stay hidden.

Learning about her mother’s past is interesting, but Claire wants some other types of answers. When her HRG brought in those two actors to play her parents, Claire wanted some answers about her abilities. Mr. Bennet obviously knows what is going on and can give her insight, but if she talks to him, she might have her mind erased. At first, Claire doesn’t want to talk about anything, but when she is talking to her “other” mom, Sandra Bennet, on the phone, it becomes obvious to Meredith that Claire didn’t tell her adopted parents where she is. It doesn’t really bother her however, because she knows that everybody has to have their secrets.

With that, Clair gets the courage to pull out a knife and slit her wrist. When I saw all the blood come out, I thought to myself, “Couldn’t she do that over the sink? Her mother already lives in messy trailer, no need to add blood stains all over the place.” But really, bloodstains are secondary. Claire’s other big fear about meeting her mother was that her mother would think she was a freak after seeing what she could do. Instead, Meredith showed Claire that she can start fire, and immediately Claire knew that she wasn’t alone, because at least one other person knew exactly what she was going through.

Seeing her mother’s abilities was a huge relief, and that really left only one other question that Claire wanted answered: she wanted to know about her father. Meredith says it was complicated, but promises to explain more the next time they see each other. With that said, Claire and Zach drive home, hopefully in plenty of time to enjoy her mom’s fajitas.

Claire might have been taking a little longer in Kermit than she had planned, but that is OK because she wanted no part of what was waiting for her at home. We know that Sandra Bennet’s brain has been friend after a few too many mind melds from the Haitian, so it really didn’t surprise me when she came home from the grocery store and didn’t bat an eyelash when a strange delivery man was in the house and said that he just happened to notice the dog was loose and the back door just happened to open, and he just happened to decide to stay. Unfortunately, that deliveryman just happened to be Sylar.

I guess I can’t blame Claire’s mom too much. After all, her husband does work at Primatech Paper, and Sylar had a Primatech Paper uniform on, so maybe it’s just a little bit of that famous Southern hospitality showing through. Now if she had seen that this delivery man was only a few moments earlier touching things in her daughter’s room, she may not have been so friendly, but Sandra didn’t see that, so she decides to invite Sylar over to dinner!

Sylar still creeps me out whenever he was on screen, but I am starting to get used to that. What really bothered me was that HRG was still locked up in Sylar’s old cell. Doesn’t anybody check up on these things? I would think that whoever he called to fake Sylar’s death hours ago would have begun to wonder that the hold up was and start making a few calls. Instead, we’re just giving Sylar extra time to plot the excruciating deaths of Claire and Sandra.

Luckily for us, no super villain is without his flaws and Sylar is exactly the same. He’s very powerful, but he’s proven that he can get a little sloppy and at times his arrogance can cloud his better judgment. Case in point? He had Sandra Bennet in the palm of his hand, but his obsession with Claire started to get the better of him and he started to talk about how special Claire was and that he was special as well. Sandra’s brain might be fried, but hearing this older guy had apparently been perving on her daughter while she cheered at football games brought her back to reality, or as close to reality as Sandra ever gets these days. On the lucidity scale, I would have to place her somewhere between Anna Nicole Smith and Paula Abdul

Sandra tries to get away, but it is really no use. By this time, Sylar has given up on the pleasantries and says that he came here to kill her daughter, but he’ll just kill her first instead. From that time forward, my eyes were fixed on Mrs. Bennet’s forehead. I was just waiting for that little trickle of blood that would indicate that Sylar was about to chop the top of her head off, but before anything could happen, HRG came through the front door, guns blasting. The Haitian was with him, so I guess he saved Mr. Bennet. The Eraser must have been in his office and suddenly realized that it had been a couple of hours since his boss had asked him to destroy somebody’s memory. Obviously, something had to be wrong, so he went to check around, found HRG locked in the cell, and freed him.

Sylar gets away, but Mr. Bennet is just happy that his family is safe. Claire comes home a little while later and it’s like nothing happened at all. And then she talks to her mother, who yells at her for skipping school. Claire tries to explain that they had talked about it just that morning, but when she sees her father home, she knows that something went wrong, but there is just no way for her to know.

The first step in Peter’s Jedi training didn’t go as well as planned. He was caught with the purse, and then he was left with nothing to do but obsess about how upset his brother would be. In fact, Peter was often caught up in what other people would think about him, and Claude thought that these distractions were holding him back. He tried to convince Peter that, in general, people suck, and the sooner he realizes that, the sooner he can get rid of his distractions and be on his way. Instead, Peter tried to convince Claude that people were good, and to prove it, they two of them decided to go spy on Simone.

Ah yes, Simone. Forgive me if I don’t feel the chemistry between Peter and Simone, but it’s just not there for me. A dog has better chemistry when it’s licking it’s own nuts, and the acting is just about as good too. Count me in as one of the people who would prefer Simone gets back with Isaac. One of the things that can kill a series prematurely is unnecessary love triangles, and I think this qualifies. Sometimes two people fighting over for the love of the third can work, but in this case, it seems like they threw it in to add a little more conflict.

For example, Simone comes to talk Isaac because she is looking for Peter and is hoping that he can paint a picture and tell them all where he is. Well, Isaac has been doing it, but whenever he paints a picture, Peter isn’t in it. We know that the reason is because Peter is invisible, but Simone is convinced that Isaac is holding back because he is jealous, and Isaac may be jealous, but he really just wants to stop Peter before he blows up.

Eventually, this leads to a tender moment between Isaac and Simone, which is very innocent and when you consider how much they went through with each other, not entirely unexpected. Peter has been following her, so I guess he overhears it, and it pisses him off. Ugh.

I thought the scene was so very predictable, but it did serve a purpose. Claude has made his point that Peter has to see the world for what it is, but Peter still resists, saying the people he love are not distractions, except on birthdays and major holidays when he has to buy everybody cards. Claude makes it very simple for him. Peter is a bomb and if he doesn’t figure out what is going on, millions of people in New York are going to wish he wasn’t distracted.

And then Claude decides to accelerate the training a little bit. Peter couldn’t conjure up invisibility, but maybe that’s because he didn’t fear the consequences. If the consequence was death, maybe Peter would feel a sense of urgency. With that in mind, Claude throws Peter off of the roof of his building. Peter will either learn how to use one of his old abilities, or he will die. Either was it’s going to make it a lot less likely that he is going to explode.

Peter doesn’t die, but not because he suddenly remembered how to fly. Actually, it was just the opposite. He fell off the building and hit a Taxi, which would have killed him, except in the heat of the moment, he was able to summon his healing ability. Claude is positively giddy that one of his methods finally worked, but Peter is less than happy. I have to side with Claude on this one. The whole time Peter said he wanted to learn from Claude, but he wasn’t willing to take any of his master’s suggestions. When dealing with a difficult pupil, you have to try drastic measures, and throwing your student off of the roof of a building definitely qualifies.

In the end, you can almost say that Peter was right. This whole time, Claude was trying to get him to focus inward and get rid of everybody else, but what brought Peter his power was remembering Claire and the energy that she gave off when she was around him. At least I hope so, because if he was thinking about his underage nieces’s hot ass, there could be problems. Suddenly, a lot of the old abilities start coming back, and Peter doesn’t know what to do. In fact, he feels like he is losing it. Thankfully, Claude is still there to calm him down, and by calm him down, I mean, “knock him out”, until the danger passes.

I thought it was an average episode, but like recent weeks, the producers have saved the best for the last five minutes. First of all, Isaac reports to HRG about his latest painting of Peter. It show’s Peter next to taxi and part of him is invisible. Isaac doesn’t know what it means, but HRG says that “it means and old friend isn’t as dead as it would seem.” Hmmm, so Claude knew HRG from back in the day? Very interesting.

And Nikki? She got released from prison. She didn’t want to be, but Linderman pulled some strings, and some convict confessed to all of Nikki’s crimes and the DA dropped all charges. I still believe that after what she did to her therapist, her release would be pending a psych evaluation, but I guess not. When we see her at home, it looks like she is very happy, but it’s really Jessica. Nikki is trapped behind a mirror.

Finally, the moment we have all been waiting for. Meredith calls her baby daddy, and it is none other than….Nathan Petrelli. I have to admit, it was a little bit of a shock, just because a lot of people had predicted it and this show has been so good proving our speculations incorrect. I was rooting for it to be Mr. Bennet. They would have to explain why he was no longer with Meredith, but I think that would have been a real surprise. I also would have thought it very cool if Meredith had called Nathan, but was really expecting to reach Nathan’s father, and just happened to call the last number she had for him. But the previews for next week seem to show that Nathan is indeed her father and there is no more tricker going on.

Having Nathan as Claire’s father still makes for some interesting scenarios. I think HRG knows Claire’s mother, and I would think that he knows Claire’s father. If you go back to the episode after Peter saved Claire, HRG was very antsy when the two of them were talking, and not just because she seemed to get googily eyes over her own uncle. Anyway, Peter has always been reluctant to talk about his powers, almost as if he knows they are there but can’t admit that they exist. Sort of like somebody who had there memory erased a long time ago.

I’m not saying that’s what happened, but we know that HRG knows Claude and Claude seems to know HRG. When he was with Peter, Claude saw a picture of Nathan and said “How can you not punch his face every time you see him?” At the time, I thought he was speaking to a sibling rivalry, but I think now that it was much more than that. Claude knows Nathan.

I also got to wondering about Nikki and the mirrors. It’s something I really haven’t mentioned, but it’s obvious it has something to do with her condition. I’m not sure what that effect is, but after seeing Nikki “trapped” in the mirror, I really hope they take some time to explain that and it wasn’t just used to spice the episode up with special effects.

Finally, what to say about Peter. First, I wonder if Peter was suddenly able to get his powers back, maybe Hiro can as well. Second, it would seem that Peter is the most powerful character now that he can recall these powers. His power is similar to Sylar’s except for that whole brain-eating thing. But being able to control his power would really be something right. New York is out of the woods? Maybe not. What if Peter meets Nikki, and Peter’s version of Jessica decides he still wants it to go boom?

There are so many good scenarios to discuss and that is why I love this show. I have thought it a little annoying the way they are throwing most of the surprises in at the end, but I can live with that.

What did you think of the episode?