Episode Report Card Couch Baron: C | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT An Eclipse! An Eclipse!
By Couch Baron | Season 3 | Episode 9 | Aired on 11.17.2008
At Pinehearst, the camera takes approximately three thousand years to pan around Sylar, who's watching some workmen replace the window Peter went through. After his face is in full view, Arthur materializes behind him and claps him on the shoulder. After some boring talk about Peter surviving the fall, Arthur tells Sylar to come with him. "I've got something to show you." My mind goes to the Petrelli family incest place...
...and in a hallway, his follow-up declaration of "It's time I started acting like your father" does nothing to turn it away. He tells Sylar that the hunger he feels isn't about killing, but power, and he can take all the abilities he wants without sacrificing any more lives if he'll just access his empathy. As he opens a heavy door, he adds that he knows Sylar saved Peter's life, which he says demonstrates his capability for empathy. I think it demonstrates his capacity for extreme stupidity and for pissing me off, but I can see where Arthur might disagree. Also, though, if Arthur's so smart, wouldn't he wonder why Sylar pretended to want Peter dead and then saved him? It suggests some duplicity in his intentions toward Arthur, no? Sylar enters the darkened room, the door to which Arthur shuts behind him with a smile, and at the other end of the room, bound by heavy chains, he sees Elle, who seems to have ridden a high-voltage electrical current right around the bend. She stands and lets Sylar have it but good, and a season that has not exactly been subtle with the religious references does itself one worse by giving us a look at Sylar, arms splayed out to the sides as electricity courses through him, before going to the title card.
Back at Peter's apartment or wherever they are, Claire tells Peter they have to get out of there, and Peter says he knows -- but Claire can't come with him. She of course is not trying to hear that, saying she has to protect him, but he tells her he needs her to stay..."innocent." Okay, I have resisted many a joke about these two dating in real life, but that line just makes it absolutely impossible. So: EW. Just then, someone starts trying to break down the front door, so Claire tells Peter to run, and assures him she has a plan to hold them off. Peter heads down the fire escape ahead of Knox and Flint busting through the door. Claire overacts the smug nonchalance as she tells them they'll never find Peter, and when Flint notes that she's protecting Peter and holds up his burning hands, she tells him, "Don't you know? I'm the defensive player of the year!" Even Gossip Girl drunk and on meth wouldn't utter a line that nonsensical. Claire runs and jumps through the window, and we get a very cool shot of her plummeting past Peter to the ground below. Peter rushes down to his innocent niece-girlfriend as she snaps her knee back into place (that shit never gets old), and then, seeing Flint and Knox heading down after them, they run -- except Peter stops to stare at yet another painting of the world, and it looks like something bad is happening but I don't know or care what. Claire rushes back and snaps him out of it, and the two of them pull off a manhole cover and retreat into the sewers.