Episode Report Card Erin: B | 1 USERS: A- YOU GRADE IT So many heroes, so little time.
By Erin | Season 1 | Episode 2 | Aired on 2006.10.02
At the car, she sticks the key in the ignition and sees that it fits. In the glove compartment is a set of registration papers in Niki's name. A heart-shaped sticky note is on the back telling her to look in the trunk and follow the map she finds there. Niki gets out and opens the truck, only to find the two dead thugs inside, drawing flies. A map sits on top of them. Niki grabs it before she throws up and immediately closes the trunk.
Peter's Hospital Room of Sad Sack Failed Fliers. Peter's sitting in bed, drawing a stick figure reenactment of his and Nathan's fateful flight. It's a very good likeness of the both of them. Except Peter's stick figure has an unexplainable hourglass shape over his torso that makes utterly no sense to me. Is he wearing a turtleneck? Does he have gout? And why is there a string hanging down from the upper right corner of the page? If you're going to take the time to DRAW a stick figure reenactment, I'd appreciate a little more attention to detail, is all I'm saying.
Mama Petrelli appears in the doorway and Peter hides his crappy drawing. She immediately starts into him about the roof thing. She sits on the bed and tells her son that his father committed suicide. Peter's stunned. "You said he had a heart attack." "I lied," she says. "For his reputation. His heart was fine." She also lied about the other heart attacks her husband had; they were all suicide attempts. "When he was twenty-three," she says, "he was diagnosed with major depressive disorder. He couldn't help it. It was just who he was." Peter asks why they never told him about this and she says they kept it from him because the disorder can have a genetic link and they didn't want to worry him.
"But you're telling me now," he says. "It can start with delusions of grandeur," she says. "Thinking you're invincible or indestructible. They are irrational thoughts that then turn suicidal." Anyone else think that Papa Petrelli had himself a little disorder of the heroic kind? Mama Petrelli says that it's time to take a hard look at his life and determine if changes need to be made. "Because there's something else I never told you," she says, leaning forward to hold his hand. "You were always my favorite. I cannot lose you." Peter kind of smiles at her lovingly and wonders why parents always choose the exact wrong moment to tell you shit like "you were always my favorite."