Episode Report Card Sars: B- | 32 USERS: C+ YOU GRADE IT Comings And Goings
By Sars | Season 1 | Episode 7 | Aired on 2006.11.06
Radiationhaus. Clea gives Matt pills to counteract any possible radiation poisoning; he gulps them down, and then pointedly avoids a call from that hussy Janice, and when Clea asks about it, he changes the subject, saying that he doesn't think Rad Man is Sylar. Clea isn't convinced, but Matt shows her what he found in the bedroom: chemo pills, prescribed to a Karen Sprague (a.k.a. Mrs. Rad Man) by the late Dr. Fresco.
Cut over to the hospital. Matt and Clea come into Karen Sprague's room, where a nurse is tending to Karen Sprague while her husband Ted (a.k.a. Rad Man, and he looks like the caveman from the Geico ads) fidgets crazily with her bedding. Clea tells him to chill, but he immediately bursts out that he didn't mean to kill Dr. Fresco -- Fresco said he couldn't do anything else to help Karen, Ted tried to convince him otherwise, they argued, and Ted "lost control." Clea says gently that they can talk it over downtown. Ted's like, "Not when there's a nurse in the first act that can go off in the third," jumps up, and grabs the nurse. Matt and Clea both draw. Matt tells Ted to let the nurse go; Ted will, if he can stay with his wife, but Clea says no way, he has to let the nurse go or she'll shoot. Ted, wrangling the struggling nurse: "Do you have any idea what would happen? If you did that? Because I don't. Maybe I'll explode, maybe, maybe I'll take out this whole hospital -- maybe I'll wipe out this city, like an, like an atomic bomb! Leave me alone!" Maybe it won't be L.A. he wipes out, but the scene doesn't linger on this idea; Clea says that she can't do that, just as Karen's thoughts pipe up and tell "Teddy" to stop. Matt lowers his gun a bit, frowning, and then shouts that "Karen wants you to stop." Ted doesn't think she would say that, but Matt continues reading from the coma-to-English dictionary, saying that Ted needs to listen, he never listens, he's "too damn stubborn": "But you're still her Teddy bear." The nurse continues fighting to get free as Ted scoffs at Matt to give him a break; Clea says that Matt's telling the truth, and that Ted should listen. For some reason, this gets through to Ted; he loosens his grip on the nurse, who pulls away and looks down to find her arm striped with radiation burns from his grasp. Horrified, she runs from the room. Ted sinks back into his chair and asks Matt what Karen is saying. Matt, an ear cocked toward Karen, says that Karen doesn't blame Ted "for all the pain, the worry" -- it's not Ted's fault. Ted, in tears, says that Karen shouldn't be there: "It's not fair." Karen says that it never is, Matt reports, as Clea's eyes get damp. Matt describes a picnic Karen and Ted had in the pouring rain, and Ted picks up the story: they sat in the car and listened to "the whole American Beauty album." "She remembers it all," Matt says. "She always will." Rueful music plays as Ted cries. Then he asks what she's saying now. Long pause. Matt doesn't say anything. Karen opens her eyes, and then closes them again and flatlines. Ted sobs. Matt and Clea exchange a look; Clea nods as if to tell Matt that he did what he could.