Episode Report Card Couch Baron: B- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Taste My Soup!
By Couch Baron | Season 3 | Episode 8 | Aired on 11.10.2008
Outside, Elle knocks on the side of a white van (I'm telling you -- never a good sign) with "Primatech Paper Co." all over it, and Bennet opens the back: "Cute meet." Heh. Elle says she doesn't get why they don't just take him in, so Bennet gets stuck delivering a tortured analogy about whale migration, the point of which is that Sylar's ability -- "the ability to transfer power from one vessel to another" (...okay) is extraordinary, and they need to study him in the wild, so to speak. Elle's like, great, but how do I get him to do it? Bennet considers this: "Pie." Elle's face: "I may have grown up sheltered, but I still know what that means, you sick fre...wait, you actually mean, like, apple pie?"
Creepy Eric Roberts has Meredith bound to a chair with her hands stuck in what look like flame-retardant mitts, which is smart enough of him that you wouldn't think he was running a company that's EGGING SYLAR ON TO BE A SERIAL KILLER. (Also, are we to think that Angela is okay with this? Or do we just figure that Arthur has a hand in it?) He conversationally lets us know some details of her rather checkered and fiery past before flipping the script and offering her the chance to become an agent. She summarily declines, so he asks why she hates The Company so much, and she starts to pipe up almost involuntarily before catching herself and simply saying she has her reasons. He tells her she can put those reasons aside, "or spend the rest of your life in an asbestos-lined cell." Wait, can they do that? What happens if the health inspector comes by? Meredith, as decisive and practical as she is, agrees on one condition: "Promise me The Company won't go after my brother." I have to give Eric Roberts points, creepy though they may be, for pointing out that she has zero leverage in this situation, and must do the same to Meredith for her resigned response: "When do I start?"
Out in the garden, Arthur is pruning some flowers when Angela practically skips out and asks him to reconsider coming to Peter's graduation party. Arthur does not directly call his son a fag, but the way he intones "nursing school" pretty much says it all. Angela whispers that when Peter's powers manifest, he'll become a great man, and she's in for enough disappointment on that front that I won't make jokes at her expense. Nathan then appears, and when Angela disappears, Arthur says that he's concerned, and he's asking not as a lawyer but as a father for Nathan, for the sake of their family, to hand the Linderman case off to someone else. Nathan, however, opines that Linderman is toxic to the family, and he'd be thrilled to put him away. Nathan starts to walk away, but sensing his father's unrelenting gaze, turns back and asks what's up. Arthur: "You look good in a suit, Nathan." Just in case that wasn't evocative enough of a funeral, Arthur turns and snips off a white carnation, and if this is the level of subtlety we're dealing with, why not pull a hearse around for your son while you're at it?