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Man. Being a superhero sucks more than you'd think. And it's not nearly as fun as it should be. And in the case of several of our new heroes, itâs downright painful and resembles someone taking a really high-pressured crap.
In tonight's premiere episode, we meet the son of a prominent professor who was "disappeared" while he was researching the possibility of human beings with supernatural powers; an indestructible cheerleader who can walk through fire without getting burned and whose bones have an annoying tendency to poke through her skin; a cyber-porn yummy mummy who either has the ability to divide herself in two and kill people or is actually totally schizoid; a whiny Emo hospice worker who thinks he can fly; his bitchy brother with political aspirations; a heroin addict with visions of the future; and a rather charming Japanese Star Trek geek who not only believes in his superpowers, but actually seems to understand them AND be able to control them.
An eclipse of the sun seems to be involved, but just how is never really articulated. And the kind of evil shadowy government bad guy also appears to be the adoptive father of the indestructible rah-rah girl but his story isn't clear yet. In the end, Emo decides to jump off the edge of a building in order to make his mark on the world (or the pavement) but instead of flying away like Superman without a cape, he just plummets down and is about to land on his bitchy brother when the bitchy brother actually swoops up to save him. Looks like this is one politician who will be soaring through the polls!
Thank you. I'll be here all night. Tip your waitresses. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Oh awesome! The first episode of this show begins with an exposition scroll! You know, kind of like Star Wars, only without the fadeout into the distance and the kickin' John Williams music. Dammit. I need popcorn. The exposition scroll says, "In recent days, a seemingly random group of individuals has emerged with what can only be described as 'special' abilities. Although unaware of it now, these individuals will not only save the world, but change it forever. This transformation from ordinary to extraordinary will not occur overnight. Every story has a beginning. Volume One of their epic tale begins here... " The scroll fades away and we get a spinning earth being darkened by an eclipsing moon and the "Heroes" title splashed across it.
Seriously? Popcorn. STAT.
We then get a close-up of a very cute actor by the name of Milo Ventimiglia. I had no idea who he was before everyone on the boards informed me of where they'd seen him last. He's playing Peter Petrelli on this show. Yes, I could just pretend not to know everyone's names, but I've been so totally psyched about it starting that I've obsessively visited the show website for weeks now and, also, there are a HELL of a lot of characters on it, so I think it's best just to get the introductions out and over with, no? So, anyway, Peter's shifting his eyes around and looking generally uncomfortable as a voice with an Indian accent says, in voice-over, "Where does it come from, this quest? This need to solve life's mysteries when the simplest of questions can never be answered? Why are we here? What is the soul? Why do we dream? Perhaps the answers lie in not looking at all. Not dreaming. Not yearning." The camera pulls back, and Peter appears to be standing on the edge of a roof somewhere. On the rooftop surface behind him, titles appear, as if printed on the tarpaper itself: "CHAPTER ONE 'GENESIS'." Oh, that is just so very kick-ass. The camera slides past title and over Milo, who looks like he's just about to drop over the edge. The voice-over continues: "But that's not human nature. Not the human heart. That is not why we are here." Then Peter gently falls forward and plummets slowly down off the building. The camera zooms around buildings and slides up streets until there's a sun flare and we're suddenly somewhere else with Peter, who appears to be just waking up from a dream.
He's wearing scrubs and sitting in a darkened apartment, reading the paper. A woman enters and apologizes for startling him. Peter says he's been having all these amazing dreams lately. The woman's father is sick in bed, and Peter appears to be his hospice nurse. The man only has a few days to live. The woman thanks Peter for being so good to her father. "Just doin' my job," says Peter. "No, you have a gift," she says. "You're like a son to him." Peter quips that this would make them like brother and sister, which would be awkward if he asked her out. No, dude. The fact that you're caring for her dying father would make it awkward. And inappropriate. Peter says as much and apologizes. The woman says she's dating someone and they quickly get off the subject of them potentially slapping their thighs together. He goes to change the IV and, after eyeballing Peter's ass a bit (inappropriate!), the woman moves away.
It's time to check in with Mohinder Suresh, the hottest professor of imaginary subjects ever to hit the sultry streets of Madras, India. He's standing up in front of a class, talking about the narcissism of mankind. He says that, although man has colonized the four corners of the planet, he is not the pinnacle of evolution; that honor belongs to the lowly cockroach. He goes on to describe how roaches can live without food for months, exist without a head for weeks at a time and are resistant to radiation. He ponders that if God made himself in his own image, then perhaps God is a cockroach. I think God would have something to say about that, don't you? She gets angry enough when St. Peter says she's having a bad hair day.
Suresh says that "they" say that we use only a tenth of our brain power which isn't true at all and actually kind of stupid that the writers included it in this show. It's called Google, dudes. I suggest you use it before committing shit like this to script. Suresh says that the Human Genome Project has discovered that tiny variations in people's genetic codes are taking place at increasingly rapid rates. "Teleportation, levitation, tissue regeneration, is this outside the realm of possibility? Or is man entering a gateway to a new evolution? Is he finally standing at the threshold of true human potential?" He stops abruptly when he sees a rather furry little man standing in the doorway. He brings the class to an end and the students leave. Furry Man doesn't say anything as Suresh just prattles on about how he knows he sounds like his father and the university can fire him too if they like but there's truth to what his father was researching. Namely, that there are real heroes on the planet. Furry Man finally gets to speak. Unfortunately, all he does is tell Suresh that his father is dead.
Once outside, Suresh books through the streets in a downpour as Furry Man tries to keep up. Furry Man tries to explain away Suresh's father's death as normal, saying that driving a taxi in New York City is dangerous, but Suresh says his father thought someone was following him and that he died because of his theories. Suresh is going to his dad's apartment to get his papers and research. "He was this close to finding the first of 'them'," he says. "His 'patient zero'. He tracked him to Queens, New York." Furry Man tries to stop Suresh from following in his father's footsteps, but Suresh is a man possessed. He needs to know why his father died and to know that it wasn't all for nothing.
He enters his father's apartment and sees a pair of glasses on a table. He seems to be confused as to why they're there. He opens up a box of files entitled "GENESIS." He pages through them, and there are files named "Rapid Cell Regeneration" and "Teleportation" inside. He goes to a large map on the wall and starts rearranging push pins as the camera slides past into another room where some guy stands, paging through documents. His face is unseen. His cell phone rings and Suresh hears it and realizes that he's not alone. He quickly scrambles to get his digital camera as we hear the unknown man say to someone on the phone that Suresh's father left behind everything but his computer, and that they should have a team come in and bag-and-tag everything. Suresh takes a quick digital picture of the map and takes the pushpin out of New York on the map. He disappears out the door seconds before the unknown man comes into the room. He picks up the glasses on the table and puts them on as ominous music plays. Oooh. He's just like Cigarette-Smoking Man only with glasses! He's Bad Glasses Man!
Phew. That was a lot of exposition there in a small amount of time. Good thing the five minutes are devoted to Ali Larter slinking around in her undies.
We switch to a dusky bed in the middle of nowhere as a blonde girl waves her ass into a digital movie camera. She rolls around slowly on the bed and finally turns over, removing her blouse. We see that the camera is attached to a laptop on a table. Just as she's about to remove her bra, the computer starts beeping and she runs over to type in that the time's up for whatever masturbating individual is watching her. He wants more. She tells him it'll cost another $39 bucks and he calls her a bitch because she won't show him her cooter for free. I'd say she's more of a good businesswoman, but whatever. She walks across the room and passes a mirror and, as she does, a part of her kind of warps out of the reflection and we hear whispering. Ladies and gentlemen, this is Nikki Sanders and she strips to make ends meet while occasionally seeing weird reflections of herself in mirrors.
Nikki leaves her porn den and enters her house, calling out for her son Micah to get up and get ready for school. She goes to wake him, but he's not in his bed. In fact, he's nowhere to be found. She runs out of his room and her slow-moving other self in the mirror trails after her. She finally finds Micah in the living room, fixing his computer. She warns him to be careful, and he just says he had to build a new logic board for his computer. She tells him he's the smartest little man on the planet and then asks him what the box is on the table. It's a pinhole camera; they can watch the eclipse with it. He then kind of tries to explain an eclipse to his mother, because clearly, strippers are stupid. She tries to hustle him up to get to school, and he just tersely tells her that he's already dressed and he's packed his own lunch. "That's what I've been doing this morning. What about YOU?" She's been reorganizing her sock drawer, you rude little shit, what the hell do you THINK she's been doing? She snaps at him that she's been working to pay their bills. What, McDonald's wasn't hiring?
The doorbell rings and Nikki tells Micah to get his stuff and wait by the back door. She peeks out the window and sees two large thugs standing outside. So, um, thugs ring doorbells now? I'm surprised they didn't send an advanced notice via American Greetings. Nikki and Micah run out the back door, with Nikki wearing a pair of cowboy boots over her jeans, which is just NOT DONE, people. They get into their car and peel off just as the thugs bust into their place.
We change locations and wind up in Odessa, Texas. We're in the frame of a video camera, which is shooting a large rusted structure as a small cheerleader runs up its stairs. She hollers out, "Camera ready?" The kid holding the camera hollers back that it is. He then says to himself that she must be seventy or eighty feet up and that this is all totally unreal. The cheerleader tells him she's ready and he brings the camera up just as she jumps off the structure and falls screaming down to the ground. Still shooting, the kid with the camera runs toward her and she just calmly gets up with her arm at a completely unnatural angle. Without grimacing, she just snaps her arm back into place and breathes into the camera, "This is Claire Bennett. And that was attempt number six." The cut on her face just... disappears.
Commercials. And if one of you doesn't go get me a goddamned bucket of popcorn and some Good-n-Plentys RIGHT NOW, I'm going to do the rest of this recap in invisible exploding ink, so help me God.
Peter's up on the roof again. Only this time, when he jumps, he appears to fly for a bit before he starts zooming into the ground. Before he can splatter into a million pieces, though, Adrian Pasdar appears and scares poor Peter awake. No shit. Adrian Pasdar. Who he is and what he's doing in Peter's dream will alllll become clear in a moment here. Peter's in a cab. He turns to see a bus stopped to him with Adrian Pasdar's face on it. He gets out of the cab and heads into a building. Inside, Adrian Pasdar is rasping into the phone at someone. He hangs up as Peter comes toward him and says he's super-duper busy right now. Adrian Pasdar is playing Nathan Petrelli, Peter's brother. Nathan's a politician who wants to be President and who is kind of a jerkface.
Peter tells Nathan about his dreams of flying/falling and says that sometimes Nathan's even in them. Nathan doesn't have time for Peter's Freudian bullshit. Peter says that his foot hovered when he got out of bed this morning. Mine does that every morning. It's called getting out of bed, dork. "I'm telling you, Nathan," he says. "I think I can fly." Nathan's like, oh, dude. No. I'm a politician. You can sleep with a hooker, you can even snort blow off her tits, but please. Don't go mental on me, okay? Nathan suggests that Peter jump off the Brooklyn Bridge and Peter thinks he should start with something lower, you know, like training wheels for fliers. "See a doctor, get some drugs," says Nathan. "But do NOT pull a Roger Clinton on me, man." Heh.
Peter says that something's happening to him, and for some reason, he thinks that Nathan's the only one who's going to understand it. Nathan's like, dude? Say it with me: I. Am. A. Politician. Park your crazy bus in the loading zone and deliver your insanity to someone else who gives a shit, okay? Nathan's phone rings and it's their mother. She's been arrested. For shoplifting. Wow. One brother's a self-centered politician, the other thinks he can fly, and their mother steals shit? That is one Thanksgiving dinner I want to be invited to.
We switch back to Claire and her nerdy videographer. She's depressed. Nerdeo doesn't know why; he thinks this is the single coolest thing to happen to their town in years. "Not if nobody finds out, it's not," she says. He asks why she wanted him to tape her if she didn't want anyone to know. She just says she has her reasons. Also? It's much cooler to introduce a character through a videotaped stunt than it is just through them falling to their death via a rusted-out piece of architecture. "It's not like you're not going to be popular anymore," Nerdeo says. Claire's disgusted with him for some reason. The idea of popularity never occurred to her. Her life is over, she says, because she's got a game tonight, homecoming in three weeks and she's a total freak show. She's broken every bone in her body, stabbed herself in the chest, shoved a two-foot steel rod through her neck and she doesn't have a single scratch on her. "Whaddya call that thing that's sticking out?" he says, pointing at her side. She lifts her sweater and sees two ribs poking out through her skin. "Oh, great," she sighs, shoving them back in as the skin closes over them. Hee. Ew. And hee. Claire requests the tape from him and he hands it over. She starts to walk away, but he offers her a ride on his handlebars and she turns around with another sigh. "Look... thanks, okay? I'll talk to you in front of other people at school tomorrow. Promise." He smiles at her, and she and her broken bones shuffle off this mortal coil. I can't decide if she's a suicidal bitch or just a bitch. Neither one is very promising.
Tokyo, Japan. A large clock on a desk is ticking. The screensaver on the computer screen shows a big blue rock monster thing. (Look, I don't know what's going to be important later or not, so I'm mentioning EVERYTHING, okay?) Hiro Nakamura, a gently nerdy young man, sits staring at the clock. He's staring so hard that he's breaking out in a sweat. Nothing happens. He closes his eyes and breathes and then throws down another stare at the clock. Again nothing. Finally, he lets out all his breath and quivers his face at the clock, his cheeks shaking, his brows furrowing. And that's when it happens. The clock? It goes back one second. Hiro jumps up and shouts in Japanese, "I did it! I did it!" Then he runs down a cubicle aisle and chatters at everyone in Japanese. He stops at his buddy's cube and tells him that he broke the space-time continuum. His friend's all, greaaaaat. Wanna go get some udon?
Hiro's enthusiasm won't be dampened. He tells his friend that he made his clock go back a minute and that this explains the subway being fourteen seconds late this morning. "I have discovered that I have powers beyond any mere mortal," he rather charmingly says. "Right, right," says his friend. "Like Spock." Only he says it in Japanese, so it sounds like, "Spocka," which is much, much funnier. Hiro's not insulted by this and, instead, seems excited by the prospect of being compared to Spock. Unfortunately, his boss comes along just then and shoves him down the hall to his cubicle. Hiro's buddy tells him to use his Spocka death grip on him and returns to his computer. On his screen is an image of Nikki without clothing. Looks like Hiro's pal has been checking out Nikki's stripper site on the company dime.
Speaking of Nikki, she's having a conference with the headmaster of Micah's school. Michah's sitting outside, reading a comic called "9th Wonders" and on the cover is the same blue stone monster that was on Hiro's screensaver. (See? Sometimes this shit's significant.) The headmaster is telling Nikki that Micah's very gifted, but that's not the problem. Nikki says his dad isn't around and that she works nights a lot and that Micah could probably use a stronger hand. The headmaster is an assmunch and says that the school isn't the right fit for Micah. What he's really saying is that Micah is half-black, Nikki's a whore, and the tuition ain't being paid on time, so, like, buh-bye! Nikki pleads Micah's case, but Assmunch just keeps saying "I'm sorry," even though he clearly isn't. Nikki then reveals that she wrote a check to the school for $25,000 in order to get her son into that snobfest, and that's on top of the tuition. Assmunch is all, oh, yeah, about those tuition checks? The last three bounced, babe. "Fine," she spits. "Take it out of the twenty-five grand I gave you!" He claims that was a donation. "Well, I want my money back," she says. "I want my money back NOW." He just sidesteps her and says it's already been spent. She doesn't give a damn. She wants it back. He starts to dismiss her, and she gets up and grabs his tie and very quietly, but still with a hint of violence, tells him she wants her money back. When she realizes she's not going to get it, she finally leaves and tells Micah they're getting out of there. As she passes an aquarium, she sees her reflection in it, only her reflection has a totally different expression on its face. Her reflection looks royally pissed off, actually. "Leave me alone!" she yells... at herself.
Meanwhile, in a police station in New York, Mother Petrelli is sitting in an interview room, checking her rings and pondering a jewelry store heist when Nathan enters and starts dressing her down for her little five-finger discount excursion. Peter follows and immediately kisses his mother on the cheek and asks her if she's okay. I get it. He's the nice one. The empathetic one. You see where I'm going with this? No? Carry on, then. Mother Petrelli says that the store dropped the charges, and all she has to do is fill out a form. "No big deal." Nathan's all, NO BIG DEAL? I AM A POLITICIAN MOTHER! "Do you have any idea what this could do to me if this gets out?" he drills at her. "With our family's past?" Hm. Wonder what that past could be? A father who could leap tall buildings in a single bound? Ponder that and get back to me.
Nathan continues to berate his mother, asking her what she could possibly need so much she had to steal it? "Socks," she says simply. Nathan's turning red. "Socks? SOCKS? Dad left you a fortune! What are you thinking? You know, it's been one ridiculous stunt after another over the last six months. Dad's gone! Just get over it!" Oh, he's a warm one. Peter just holds his mother's hand and thinks about flying over and pooping on his brother's head. He tells Nathan to leave mom alone and says that she's okay and that's all that matters. Nathan just ignores him and gets on his stupid PDA and starts talking about stopping this from getting out to the press. Peter's had enough. He gets up and opens the door. "You know what? Just get outta here. Go worry about your image. I'll handle this." Nathan completely misunderstands Peter's instructions and gets all, "Yeah! Totally! Good idea!" about it. He leaves. Peter kneels down in front of his mother and gently asks what she was thinking. "I just wanted to feel alive again," she says, touching her forehead to his. Aw.
As they're walking out, Peter comments that Nathan only cares about himself, and his mother responds that their father was the same way. "Alpha dogs, both of them," she quips. "You, in the meantime, for all your selflessness, and sitting with dying people... what? You gonna retire on what you make?" "Maybe I'll shoplift my socks," he retorts. She whaps him in the stomach and tells him not to get smart with her. "When you put everyone else first, you end up last. You put Nathan first, he took advantage." Peter observes that she was just pushing Nathan right out in front of him, and she says that Nathan took up more space than him. I'm not really sure what the hell that means. She goes on to say that Peter allowed Nathan to take the spotlight, and Peter just says that Nathan's his brother and he loves him. "Love is overrated," she says. Amen to that. Peter says that Nathan loves him too, and that they've always been close. She just comments that he wears rose-colored glasses, and Peter gets pissed off that she doesn't seem to be interested in speaking anything else but the truth lately and he'd really appreciate a little editing on her part. She apologizes and says that Peter hero-worshipped Nathan and those feelings were never returned. "You're wrong," he says. "It's biological. We're... we're connected. I never told you this, but when Nathan had his accident, I knew it." His mom's all, yeah, whatever, we all got the same call. Peter says that he knew before the call. He woke up, 300 miles away, and he knew that Nathan had been hurt. She just looks at him, lightly smacks him on the cheek, and walks on down the stairs.
Are you getting all this exposition? Because my fingers are getting tired...
Nikki and Micah head up to a house with a lot of cacti in front of it. Micah says he hates this house because there aren't any books in it. Nikki says she'll be right back, she just has some stuff to take care of. Micah wants to go see his father, but Nikki doesn't think that would do any good. "Your dad's not in any position to help us right now," she says, dragging him up to the door. Micah asks what his mother has done and she just tells him that she would never let anything happen to him and that she loves him more than anything in the world. "Mom?" he says. "Why'd you look at yourself like that in the fishtank?" She doesn't get a chance to respond because the door opens and a woman with a large amount of hair appears in the doorway. "How long?" is all she says. Nikki says it'll only take a couple of hours. Big Hair tells Micah there's ice cream in the fridge, and he and Nikki enter so that Big Hair can give Nikki what-for about borrowing $30K from the mob. Big Hair asks if she's been gambling again, but she hasn't; she needed the money to pay bills and get Micah into private school. She's two weeks overdue with the payback and says that she thought she could handle it, but she's under a lot of stress right now. Big Hair's like, uh, yeah, join the club, stripper.
Nikki's on the verge of tears and she says she feels like she's losing it a little bit. She says she's seeing things and that she feels like someone's watching her. Big Hair's all, uh, DUH. The thugs are watching you and they're gonna put you in the hospital. But Nikki's like, no, no, no, besides them. Like, I feel like I'm watching myself! From a mirror! And I'm really angry in the mirror! Only she doesn't say any of that because that would sound like crazy talk to Little Miss Big Hair over there. Big Hair just tells Nikki that she needs to come up with the $30K plus interest, like, now, or the mob is going to slit her throat. That never makes sense to me -- why, if you lend someone money and they don't pay you back, would you kill them? It hardly seems like they're going to be able to pay you back WHEN THEY'RE DEAD. Nikki just tells Big Hair to watch Micah and leaves.
Then we're at a big ol' train fire with dozens of firemen running around trying to put it out. Claire and Nerdeo just happen to be passing, and they stop and watch the chaos for a minute. "Cool, huh?" gasps Nerdeo. Yes, Nerdeo. Fire, death, and destruction are extremely cool. Jackass. Claire asks how hot he thinks it is in there and before he can answer, she hands him the tape from before and tells him to turn on the camera. She ducks under the barrier and runs directly into the fire as he tapes her. She heads into a burning car and sees a man trapped by fire. The flames don't even touch her. She grabs him and runs out and her cheering uniform has a couple of flames attached to it. A fireman sees them and immediately runs over to put out the flames. He throws her to the ground with his coat over her and she just tells him she's okay. When he removes the coat to check for burns, he discovers that she's completely unscathed. She just looks at him like, "Yeah? So? I'm indestructible, okay? WHAT OF IT?" So... she doesn't want anyone to know about her powers and yet... she goes running into a burning fire to... keep her anonymity? That... makes ALL sorts of sense. Yes it does! She runs off before anyone can get her name or ask her where she got that adorable fire-retardant cheering outfit.
New York. Suresh has arrived at his father's apartment in Brooklyn. The place is a single room of utter destruction. The landlord who's showing Suresh around says he can get this cleaned up for a hundred bucks, but Suresh knows his dad wasn't a slob; the bad men have already come and destroyed the place. The landlord says they rent by the week, and he'll need to know if Suresh can afford it. He just says he has a job as a taxi driver, because getting a job as a New York City taxi driver is incredibly easy to do in 24 hours, especially when you've just flown in from India! Suresh looks around and sees a roach on the floor and immediately steps on it. Dude. What if that was God you just stepped on? She'd have your ass in a sling and you'd go straight to hell and you'd die! He starts going through his father's files, most of which look like duplicates from his apartment in India. Suresh starts replacing tacks on the map, running strings from them all, showing the amazing amount of potential heroes across the planet. He then spies a cassette tape on the floor. The label on the front says "SYLAR." And, no, I have no idea what that means yet.
Now it's time to meet the drug addict with visions of the future. We head over to a dirty-but-cool looking studio where a disheveled guy is rambling around, grabbing paintings that look like they were pulled out of a comic book. He opens a can of black paint and starts rubbing it all over his paintings, destroying them. In walks the daughter of the dying man who Peter was caring for. She appears in the doorway for a second, backlit. The artist looks at her and freezes. He returns to destroying his paintings and she's all, uh, honey? What the hell you doing? She quickly realizes that he's three inches from throwing a complete nutter and steps in front of him before he can toss more black paint onto a painting of a total eclipse of the sun. And, yes, I am now channeling Bonnie Fucking Tyler. The woman, whose name is Simone, demands to know what the hell is going on. The artist, whose name is Isaac, says he doesn't even remember painting half of the canvases in the room because he was high at the time. "I've been chasing for a month," he says, obviously referring to the dragon that is heroin. Simone tells him to get himself into a damn program and get clean. She tells him his latest paintings are fantastic and he just says they're evil. She's like, dude? Get some methadone, like, now. Also? What the hell are you talking about?
"What the hell am I talking about?" he says, pulling up a painting of a bus on fire and throwing it onto a table. "You see this? Suicide bombing in Israel. I painted it. Three weeks ago." Simone's all, uh-huh. So? Isaac picks up a newspaper and tells her to look at the number of the bus in the featured story. It's the same as the one on the bus he painted. "This happened yesterday," he says, laughing crazily. "There's something... wrong with me." Simone tells him they can get him some help and he says there's only one-way to handle this: he's going cold turkey. Simone wants to help him go through it, because she loves him. Isaac just thinks he'll drag her down with him and he doesn't want to be a party to that. She tries to comfort him, but he just hollers at her to get the hell outta there. She steps back and runs out of the office. The TV across the room is showing the train wreck with Claire running out of it. Isaac stops hyperventilating for a minute and looks over to a nearby canvas. It's a painting of the exact same train wreckage. I can't tell if Claire's there or not, though.
We check in with Nathan at his senate campaign headquarters. Peter walks in and Nathan beckons him over as he ends a phone call. Nathan says that Mother Petrelli's rap sheet is officially buried. Peter tries to get Nathan to understand that their parents were married for forty-one years and all this crap is just a plea for attention. Nathan just ignores this statement and offers Peter a job; he says he trusts him and he's good with people. He needs someone to coordinate the volunteers. Yes, because coordinating volunteers is so much more worthwhile than easing the pain of dying people. "I'm a shark, Pete," says Nathan. "Everybody knows it. And now it's starting to show up in the polls. I bring you on, it kind of reflects well on me... " Pete's all, oh, dude. That is low. I make you look good so now you want to bring me on to watch your back, huh? Nate's all, yeah, duh. Also? This makes me look like I put family first, which I so clearly don't, but the average dumb voter doesn't know that, right? "You didn't hear anything I said earlier today, did you?" asks Peter. "What, about how you can 'fly'?" snits Nathan, lazily flapping his hands in the air like a diseased bird. "Yeah, I'm going to pretend for both our sakes you didn't say anything like that." Peter doesn't dignify this with a response and Nathan just says he's offering the coordinator job for Pete's own good. Pete says he already has a job. "Yeah, watching old people die? There's a career," says Nathan. "It's not cute anymore, man." Okay, since when did caring for dying people become A) a slacker job and B) something unworthy of respect and admiration? Because I tell you what, my dad had a hospice worker with him when he died and she rocked the house. Right there in our damn den, Alice made everything okay with my dying father. And you will never convince me that hospice workers aren't the complete and total shit.
Nathan goes on to say that Pete's dreamy-kid-in-the-back-of-the-classroom-staring-out-the-window shtick has gotten old. "It's time for you to grow up," says Nate. He pulls some "I know you're walking in my shadow and I'm just trying to do right by you" bullshit and Pete calls him on it and says he doesn't want his goddamned pity and finally walks out. Outside, Pete sees Simone across the street hailing a cab, and he looks like he wants to call out to her, but he doesn't. Instead, he hails his own cab and asks his driver, who just happens to be Suresh, to take him to the corner of Center and Canal. And instead of going, "Corner of who and where? I just got here from India! I don't even know where the airport is!" Suresh just nods and heads out into traffic. Pete looks up into the sky and sees the eclipse starting. Suresh sees this and comments, "Solar eclipse." Pete wonders if it's going to be a total eclipse and Suresh says it will in some other parts of the world, but not here. He then blathers on about how it'll be a global event and how that makes you realize just how small our planet is and how small we are and Pete looks at him like, uh, yeah, buddy. How 'bout you just get me to Center and Canal and leave the Magic Eight Ball talk for someone who gives a shit? Or maybe that's just me.
It must be just me because this speech prompts Peter to ask Suresh what his name is, and they exchange introductions. "Lemme ask you something, Mohinder," says Pete. "Ever get the feeling you were meant to do something extraordinary?" Suresh kind of scoffs and just points out that he's driving a cab. "No, I'm not talking about what you do," says Pete. "I'm talking about who you are. I'm talking about being special." Suresh is like, yeeeees, crazy man. We're all special. Pete gets irritated and sits back. "That's not what I meant." Suresh notices Pete's mood change and starts professor-ing again. "Some individuals, it is true, are more special than others," he says. "This is natural selection. It begins as a single individual, born or hatched, like every other member of their species. Anonymous, seemingly ordinary. Except they're not. They carry inside them the genetic code that will take their species to the evolutionary round. It's destiny." Pete likes the sound of this.
Back in Odessa, Claire's walking off her burn as Nerdeo follows with his bike. He chatters at her about saving that dude's life, and she tries to ignore him. Then we catch up with Hiro, performing his daily calisthenics in the park with the rest of his co-workers. He stops for a minute and looks up at the sky. Then we see Nikki, creeping back into her house, looking around for the thugs. This awesome folksy guitar song is playing. Suresh and Peter sit in their cab contemplating their destinies as the song trills about "in your eyes." No, it's not Peter Gabriel. Shut up. Claire looks up at the eclipse. Hiro looks up at the eclipse. Isaac looks up at his needle and spoon and heroin. Nikki picks up the pinhole camera and looks at the eclipse. Behind her, one of the thugs passes into the kitchen. Nikki doesn't see him. But he's a stupid thug, so he's diving into a box of Lil' Debbies, and she hears the rustling and slowly turns around to run the hell out of there. The greasier of the two thugs captures her before she can make it out and they all head into the Porn Den for a little conversation.
Greaso tosses Nikki onto the bed and says that fifty grand is a lot of money and Nikki's all, uh, dude? Try thirty. But this is the mob, not the Bank of America, so they're not really sticking to the original amount that Nikki "borrowed." Nikki tries to reason with them, using Micah as a bargaining chip. Greaso isn't really the fatherly type, so it doesn't work on him. Instead, he makes her a little business proposition: he's going to give her a chance to lower her debt a little. You know, via the whole taking off of the clothes, thing. Nikki gets his drift and starts angrily taking off her clothes in the least alluring way possible. Greaso just laughs and laughs and laughs as Fatso films the entire thing. Nikki rubs her face again, which is quickly becoming a signal that she's undergoing a little... pressure. She's about to take off her jeans when she catches a glimpse of her other self in the mirror. Greaso smacks her down and she immediately gets up and tells him, "Screw you." That's not really the hot naked action he was hoping for, so he punches her lights out and we go to black.
Meanwhile, in a Tokyo train station, Hiro's trying to convince his work buddy that he can, indeed, bend time. His buddy humors him and asks him that, if he really does have this power, what's he going to do with it? Join the circus? "No one ever got laid by stopping the second hand of a clock," he rightly says. Hiro just enthusiastically says that, as he learns to use his powers, he'll learn to bend space, too. Then he'll be able to teleport himself anywhere on the planet. "Like Star Trek?" says the friend. "Like Star Trek!" agrees Hiro. Dudes? There are, like, a billion other, better, teleportation references than Star Trek, okay? Nothing will ever beat, "Beam me up, Scotty" sure, but damn, I think the writers need to page through Netflix and do a little research. "Every hero must learn his purpose," says Hiro. "Then he'll be tested and called to greatness." At the end of this statement, Hiro does this totally adorable flourish with his hands like he's making his "superhero" pose. I am totally in love with his character right now. It's just so refreshing that he full-on believes in his superpower. His buddy is not so pleased with him and says that he needs a stiff drink. Or ten. "Beam us up, Scotty!" he says with a grimace as Hiro continues to pose like a superhero.
We head on over to a Tokyo lounge where we're supposed to believe that the Chinese Backstreet Boys from YouTube fame are performing an impromptu revival of their famous hit. Only we're in Japan. And they're... Chinese. But, whatever, it's a funny little moment. Hiro and Buddy are sitting at a table as Buddy gets increasingly drunker and drunker. There's one thing I know about certain Japanese businessmen: they can drink until they're so drunk that they don't resemble human beings anymore. It's awesome. Hiro is giving Buddy a lecture on how everyone thinks time is a straight line, the shortest distance between two points. But, he says, time is actually more like a circle with a line through it. Hiro says that every ten-year-old dreams that they have magical powers and now he actually has them! "I'm not a loser anymore!" he says. His enthusiasm is infectious. Buddy asks Hiro again what he's going to do with his power -- like, is he going to get lots of money for it? "A super hero doesn't use his power for personal gain," says Hiro. Buddy's all, bah! What good is it for, then? I mean, can you teleport yourself into the girls bathroom? Hiro looks over his shoulder at the line outside the entrance. He says that, if he had to, he could teleport into the girl's bathroom just fine. Buddy challenges him to do it while he goes to grab more beers. Hiro says he's going to do it, dammit. Then he closes his eyes, breathes, and opens them in this really comical manner like he's driving lasers into the ladies room.
Back with Nikki, she's passed out on the bed and the phone is ringing off the hook. We hear her voice on the answering machine and then Micah's voice telling her that he hates it at Big Hair's house and he wants her to come and get him. Nikki slowly wakes and touches her cheek, wincing. As she gets up, she sees the fat thug on the floor, covered in blood, dead. Her sheets are drenched in it as well. She looks over to her left and Greaso is dead too, with a big slice of mirror sticking out of his neck. She's thoroughly freaked out. She sees that the camera is still on and goes over to grab it. When she does, she suddenly sees the big mirror across the way, and her reflection in it. Only this time, the mirror is shattered and the reflection in it not only has a totally different posture and facial expression, it's also covered with large splatters of blood. As Nikki watches, her other self brings a finger up to her lips and goes, "Shhhhh." Whoaaaaaa.
After the break, Peter gets a phone call from Simone. She wants him to meet her at her dad's place and she sounds really panicked. Peter tells her he'll be there in ten and tells Suresh that he'll hop out right here. He gives money to Suresh and they exchange a momentary glance of meaningfulness. Peter leaves and another passenger gets in the back. Suresh asks where he's going and the passenger, who just happens to be wearing the same glasses as the Bad Glasses Man back in Madras, India, tells Suresh he's going to JFK. They drive off. Bad Glasses Man starts talking about his family and how he misses them. Then he asks Suresh what kind of name "Suresh" is, and Suresh immediately gets all, "how the fuck did you know my name?" on him. Bad Glasses Man points out that it's right there on his cab license. Big Glasses Man starts ham-fistedly talking about Suresh's father and how he's not teaching anymore and Suresh very quickly picks up on the fact that this guy knows way too much. "Probably lots of 'Sureshes' where you're from," says Bad Glasses Man, "like 'Smith' or 'Anderson'." Heh. Nice Matrix reference. Suresh doesn't enjoy it, though, and he immediately peels around and dumps the car as soon as he can, sprinting away into the recesses of New York. Bad Glasses Man gets out of the car and looks after Suresh with a creepy smile on his face.
Oh, lord. Claire's mother is a dog breeder. And not just any breed of dog. No. It's one of those damn puffy-ass dogs I can't stand. I hate puffy animals. If I pet an animal and come away with eight pounds of fluff and dander, someone's going to have to restrain me because there'll likely be a shaved animal in the near vicinity relatively quickly. Anyway, Mrs. Bennett is blathering on and on about her stupid puffball of a dog as Claire delivers the food to the table for dinner. Mrs. Bennett asks the kids what they did today and Claire's brother says he and his friend saw a homeless Mexican guy they thought was dead. Claire's brother is an asshole. I just thought you'd want to know. Claire looks straight at her mother and says, "I walked through fire and I didn't get burned." There's a beat where no one really knows what to say. Then Little Bro just goes, "What the hell is that supposed to mean?" And Mrs. B commends Claire for being "really profound." She continues to blah blah blah about how people come up against all sorts of fires in their lives and when "we test ourselves and face our fears, we usually don't get burned." Claire whips out a samurai sword and cuts her own head off and goes, "How's THIS for not getting burned, Momma?!" Or she just stares at her mother while she talks to the dog in a baby voice. I hate that dog. And I'm growing increasingly less fond of that mother.
Tokyo. Buddy's returning from the bar with a couple of beers, only Hiro's nowhere to be found. There's a commotion over by the girl's bathroom and Hiro's getting dragged out by a couple of security guards. As he passes Buddy, he goes, "YAHOOOOO!" and gives him a thumbs up. I adore him. Hiro gets tossed out into the street and Buddy follows after him. Hiro's all, I teleported into the girl's bathroom! Buddy's all, ENOUGH WITH THAT SHIT. Hiro quickly walks away, unconcerned that Buddy doesn't believe him. "Why do you want to be different?" says Buddy. "Why do you want to be the same?" says Hiro. Buddy says that's what he is and Hiro says that's what everyone is. Homogenous. Yogurt. Only he says it in Japanese, so it's, "Yogurato," which is killing me right now. Hiro says he wants to be special and Buddy says they're not special; they're Japanese. Hiro's like, whatever man. I wanna boldly go where no man has gone before. Because there is no sci-fi but Star Trek, apparently. And old Star Trek at that. Buddy's all, that's right! You're special! "You're Super-Hiro!" Which... hee. I could wind up loving or hating this show, but I will always be a fan of Super-Hiro.
Simone and Peter are at her father's place and she's ripping the joint apart looking for morphine. Peter's confused -- her father isn't about to die just yet; what's with the morphine search? She says she needs him to come with her someplace and he's like, uh, but you just asked me to come HERE. He says he needs to tell her something and she's too busy rushing around looking for drugs to bother listening to him. Peter doesn't seem to care because he starts talking about his destiny and what he's supposed to be and Simone is like, seriously, dude? MORPHINE. Gotta go! She says that he's a nurse, so he can give someone a shot and help him. Peter's all, help who?
House of Puffy Dogs. Claire's doing the dishes because, in addition to being indestructible and popular, she's also a house elf or something. Seriously. Put that little shit of a brother to work, okay? Her mom brings in the napkins and stuff and talks about going to the movies on Saturday and doing some mall-time. Claire seems less than enthused. "I love you, Mom," says Claire. "But?" says her mother. Oh, NICE response, Mom. Claire just asserts that she loves her, but her mom is all, I know you think I'm trying to be your best friend again and how you hate that and apparently, I suck and whatever. Claire says they can go to the movies together, it's fine, and her mother blah blahs about how she wants to be close again, and how Claire might push her away and Claire absentmindedly removes her class ring and it falls down the garbage disposal. Instead of turning it off, Claire just reaches right down into the disposal and grabs her ring. When she brings her hand back up, it is seriously gnarly, y'all. It's bloody and bent and looks like the root end of a tree that's been uprooted by a storm. Only with blood on it. And some roots missing. Claire looks at her hand as it just... straightens itself out and tries to return to normal.
Her mom comes into the kitchen and Claire whips around, hiding the partially mangled hand behind her. Mom's still blathering about being a cool mom or whatever and Claire's hand is dripping blood all over the floor. She finally gets to her point and says, "You should know who you are and that it's enough. Because who you are is special." "About that," says Claire. "There's something I need to say. Something I've never talked about because it would upset you and dad. I think I'm old enough for you to tell me who my real parents are." Her mother just immediately hugs her and tells her that of course she's old enough. Claire goes to embrace her mother with her mangled right hand and sees that it's completely returned to normal. There's a male voice off-screen and it seems that Mr. Bennett has returned home. Mrs. Bennett goes to greet him as Claire shoves the puffy dog away from her spilled blood that he seems to be LICKING UP. Ewwww. Claire runs up to her daddy and goes to hug him and he is... Bad Glasses Man! Oh, that can't be good. This opens up all kinds of wrongness. Does he know about her real parents and that's why he adopted her? Or he doesn't know and this will turn very bad very soon? This will only end in tears and destruction. And yet? This is still totally awesome.
Tokyo. Hiro's on a train. The clock above his head says "11:43." I'm assuming that's "PM." A poster across the way advertises New York City. Hiro stares at it. He closes his eyes. He concentrates. Suddenly, the clock above his head starts speeding forward as his cheeks shake. He opens his eyes and the clock above his head says "1:00." The train doors open and everyone slips past him and, suddenly, instead of people passing him, it's cars passing him and he's in the middle of Times Square, right in the heart of the Big Apple. He looks up and spins around and throws his arms up in the air and goes, "YATA! HURRO NEW YORK!" Hee. I want to make him my pet.
New York City. Isaac's den of iniquity. Simone and Peter approach the door, and it seems that she's told him about Isaac's future-predicting paintings. She goes to turn on the lights, but nothing happens. Peter pulls out a flashlight and shines it around. He steps on a syringe. Looks like Isaac couldn't quite handle the cold turkey. They find Isaac on the floor, overdosed, but alive. Peter tells Simone to call 911 and she pulls out her cell phone. Peter looks off to the side and sees a painting. He gets up and props it up against a table. It's Peter in the painting and he looks like he's flying. Or falling. I'm not really sure. Isaac regains consciousness briefly and says, "We have to stop it." Then we see another one of his comic-y paintings and it depicts what looks like a nuclear bomb landing right to the Chrysler building. "We have to stop it," he says again.
We get a lovely aerial view of New York, which is all the more awesome because I happen to be here right now on business, and then we hear a voice-over from Suresh, repeating some of the stuff he was saying at the beginning of the show. "This quest," he says, "this need to explain life's mysteries, in the end, what does it matter when the human heart can only find meaning in the smallest of moments?" Peter's standing on a rooftop, slowly waving his arms in the air. "They're here," continues Suresh's voice-over. "Among us. In the shadows. In the light. Everywhere. Do they even know yet?" Peter looks determined.
Down below in an alley, a cab pulls up. Nathan gets out and pays the driver. He calls Peter on his cell. "Alright, I'm here. Now, whaddya want?" Peter doesn't answer, but a cell phone drops from the sky and shatters to Nathan's feet. He looks up and sees his brother standing on the edge of a building. "I've been up here all night!" he calls down. "Thinking about this, thinking about my destiny. It's my turn to be somebody now, Nathan!" Nathan tells him to quit screwing around, but Peter has never been screwing around less. He calmly centers himself and looks up at the sky. He raises his arms, smiles, and drops off the building. And you want him to fly. You really do. Only he doesn't. He just falls. Like a ton of bricks. As his brother watches. But then, in this entirely fantastic moment, Nathan... FLIES UP TO CATCH PETER. It's Nathan who can fly, not Peter! I really did not see that coming.
Nathan seems as surprised as Peter (and me) that he's flying. Peter's all, dude? YOU'RE FLYING. Nathan's all, I KNOW. ISN'T THAT WEIRD? Peter's all, uh, how're you doing this? Nathan's all, I have NO idea. Peter makes some weird movements that clearly tax Nathan's newfound ability to, you know, soar and shit, and suddenly, Peter loses his grip and Nathan can't hold him and whoops! There goes Peter!
To be continued...