Episode Report Card DeAnn Welker: C+ | 255 USERS: B- YOU GRADE IT Mirror, Mirror on the Wall
By DeAnn Welker | Season 4 | Episode 6 | Aired on 2009.10.19
At the carnival, Lydia the Tattooed Lady is showing Sylar around. They walk by people shoveling as she says that Samuel's brother, Joseph, began the tradition of morning chores because he believed that hard work brings the community together. Edgar's watching them jealously (threateningly?) from somewhere much nearer to the camera. Or maybe he's just admiring Sylar's chest hair, since his flannel shirt is unbuttoned down to his belly button. Sylar tells Lydia he's looking forward to the hard work, since he can't remember ever working before in his life. Then again, he can't remember anything so it's not like that means anything. They lean down and start moving rocks as she tells him how nice it is to have a handsome new face among them. Edgar's still irked, and Samuel's wiping himself off with a handkerchief as he watches. Apparently Sylar's chest hair is a big turn-on to him. Lydia leaves Sylar to work, and Edgar approaches him. He says that Lydia has a thing for bad boys, and Sylar wonders what he means, so Edgar explains that he's heard about Sylar stealing powers from other people and he's sure he can do some fancy tricks, but Edgar has some tricks of his own. Sylar's like, "Oh, okay. Excuse me." He tries to go back to shoveling, but Edgar turns and throws knives into the handle of Sylar's shovel. Sylar looks at the knives and says, "Wow." Everyone -- including me -- thinks Sylar's impressed by Edgar's superior knife-throwing skills, but Sylar finishes, "Those are kind of in the way." A forgetful Sylar is a much funnier Sylar, I think. Let's hope he never gets that memory of his back. He uses his mind/hand power to throw the knives back in Edgar's direction. Lydia asks Samuel if they should stop this, but he says "Boys will be boys." Edgar goes to possibly throw something else at Sylar, so Sylar throws him with his mind force into a wheelbarrow full of wet cement. Samuel breaks it up, telling Sylar he wants him to meet someone else.
As they walk through the busy carnival, Sylar explains how weird it is when that happens: his hand just rises up and things move around. He says it's like "motor memory," and Samuel tells him that memories don't only exist in the mind; the body retains everything, too. Fighter jets fly overhead, and Sylar morphs for one second into Nathan. Samuel's not looking at him, so he doesn't see it, but Sylar says that he feels like he was possibly a jet pilot in the military or something. He remembers that. Samuel tells him that's not his memory, and that someone's polluted Sylar's mind somehow. He says he thought Sylar's memories would return on his own, but it's just not happening. Hasn't Sylar been with them for, like, a day? Patience is apparently not Samuel's power. He says it's time for stronger measures. He introduces Sylar to a dreadlocked, leathery-skinned guy named Damien and asks Sylar if he wants to know the truth as the music picks up. Sylar does. Samuel tells Damien to "Take him to the house of mirrors." It's ridiculous lines like that that really make me hate the carnie storyline. However, I am enjoying Robert Knepper enough in this role to make it somewhat bearable.